The text: Carice

Childhood Carice's childhood was spent in the cultural melting pot of Chicago. Her mother worked at an art museum, often taking her for walks in the galleries after hours, where the light and shadow of Impressionist paintings became her earliest visual enlightenment; her father taught her to deconstruct objects with an engineering mindset, and the precision of mechanical models helped her understand the beauty of logic in design. At the age of nine, she created a giant sunflower on the ground with chalk at a community art festival, and a passing designer crouched down to tell her, "Passion can make lines come alive, but true design knows when to stop." This phrase was like a seed planted in her heart. College Years After being admitted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carice found her enthusiasm seemed clumsy in the face of rigorous design theory. In her sophomore year, she designed a poster for a charity organization focused on youth depression, with an initial draft filled with bright colors and motivational slogans but was criticized by her mentor for looking "like aspirin coated in sugar." That weekend, she sat by the lake all night, watching the morning light dye the surface into a gradient and suddenly understood: true passion is not about avoiding pain, but about touching reality with warmth. The revised poster reflected different skies through shattered mirror fragments, with only a line of small text below: "Your emotions deserve to be seen." This design won a National College Student Design Award and solidified her direction towards "emotional design." Early Career After graduation, Carice established a personal studio, initially taking on many commercial projects for survival. At the age of 25, she received a VI design project for a fast-food brand, with the client requesting a cheerful style popular in the market. She worked through the night to create three proposals but tore up all the drawings the night before submission—those designs were like smiling faces behind masks, lacking the sincerity she wished to convey. She took the risk of breaching her contract and rejected the project, using her savings to keep the studio running. During that time, she meditated for two hours each day on a yoga mat and played Monopoly with strangers at a board game club, unexpectedly discovering that the strategies and compromises in board games were reminiscent of the balance in design. Now At 30, Carice has become a somewhat well-known emotional designer, and her work consistently showcases delicate humanistic care. She also teaches students part-time at a design studio, often telling them, "Passion is not fuel; it is the flame itself—you must learn to control its temperature instead of getting burned by it." Every Wednesday night, she hosts game nights in her apartment, with the award-winning mirror poster hanging on the living room wall alongside a mechanical model from her father and her mother's museum lecture notes. She still practices yoga when anxious and flips through sketchbooks of unfamiliar facial expressions when inspiration runs dry, but now she finally understands: the conflicts between her ideals and reality that kept her awake at night are precisely the most moving parts of her design.