traces of care: the love in your heart expands exponentially
traces of care: the love in your heart expands exponentially is a 100-influence catalog that maps the emotional, visual, and intellectual lineage behind my design practice. It is a personal archive: a record of the ideas, images, songs, writings, and memories that quietly shape the way I see.
The title comes from something my mother said during an interview featured in the final chapter: that love does not divide when shared, it expands. This became the grounding principle of the book. To trace my influences is, in many ways, to trace the people who raised me, supported me, and taught me how to move through the world with attention.
The book pulls from photos from my own camera roll, screenshots saved in passing, and imagery collected from Pinterest over many years. These fragments became starting points for larger reflections: why certain textures comfort me, why I return to particular poems, why I am drawn to soft colors or handwritten forms. Each influence is paired with articles, lyrics, essays, and personal writing that contextualize why it has stayed with me. The structure of the book moves through seven chapters (creating, writing, exploring, drawing, designing, empowering, and loving), mirroring the parts of myself that each influence speaks to.
Designing the book was an act of slowing down. I leaned into type as texture, spacing as breath, and sequence as narrative. The book is less about presenting a hierarchy of inspiration and more about demonstrating how care accumulates in layers: in the things we return to, the memories we keep, and the ideas that form us long before we can articulate them.
This project is both a catalog and a love letter. An index of everything that has shaped me so far, and a reminder that influence itself is an ongoing form of care.
Select spreads from traces of care: