SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS (SVA)
Bina Thorsen is a senior studying graphic design. She grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, and moved to New York for college in 2018. With her mom being an artist/product designer and her dad working with E-learning, Bina says that graphic design felt like the perfect middle-ground. Her work is heavily derived from sociocultural observations, and she often merges digital and analog materials. She has always been intrigued by the tension different methods create when combined and loves working in unconventional ways. Bina is currently interning at Pentagram on Matt Willey’s team. A few other things she enjoys: hummus, Broadchurch, and badminton.
WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL INSPIRED?
I get inspired by people, materials, objects, photographs, movies, books, anything. I will say that my best ideas usually come at night, though. It’s always right when I’m about to fall asleep, which is unfortunate.
IF THERE WERE NO BARRIERS OR CONSTRAINTS, WHAT PROJECT WOULD YOU WANT TO WORK ON?
That’s such a difficult question because I’ve never been in a scenario where that was the case. Usually, it’s exactly the other way around. If I found myself with no limitations to my design, I would probably make something huge, just for the sake of it. Maybe I would make a kilometerlong book with one word on each page, and you have to find that word in the one kilometer that the page is covering. Or maybe I would design a planet that functions as a clock. We could see it from Earth as we rotated around it. I don’t really know. It would probably be something strange, though.
WHAT ARE YOU READING/LISTENING TO/WATCHING?
I am currently reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, and I am anxiously waiting for the finale of La Casa De Papel. I never really got into podcasts. I think I’m too restless and too bad of a listener to ever get into anything that requires me to concentrate.
