Makiko Higashi’s interest in communication started when shes was a linguistics major in Japan. It was later through teaching English and Japanese, and working as a sales assistant that she began to discover how visual communication leads viewers to have a deeper interpretation in the interactive process with its capability to widen the approach to communication. Moreover, her own experience as a non-native to the English language has shown her the power of graphic design to cross cultural barriers and reach out to a common understanding since attending Communication Design at Parsons The New School for Design where she earned her second bachelor’s degree.

“I need a period to pursue my own creative voice and develop my works with more honesty.
I am here to have opportunities to take risks and learn from my mistakes throughout the design process, as well as build a set of core values as a creative for the subsequent stages of my career.”

Favorite work:
“‘Impulse and Intention’ (2010) is an experimental framework designed to shape the creative process. This project uses the notion of random actions to strike a balance between the instinctual nature of the artistic gesture and the methodology of design strategy.
A series of visuals were created impulsively, prompted by a random selection of music.
These gestural statements were then combined with ‘intention’ into a composite image, whose concept was derived from randomly generated words. The series of CD covers and booklets shown are the end result of the process.”