Dan Hu // Portfolio Storyteller, Songwriter, Student danhu2023@u.northwestern.edu masquerola.weebly.com linkedin.com/in/danwho Updated September 2021
I am Dan Hu, and I attend Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications. My passions include everything from:
music production and songwriting,
Film Branding & Design Photography
to branding and graphic design,
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Publication Design Music Production Journalism
to journalism, photography, and much more.
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Writing Science Miscellaneous
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Film
Masquerola
The Visible Poetry Project December 2017 – April 2018 I was selected as the youngest of thirty filmmakers to take part in the 2018 Visible Poetry Project, giving me the opportunity to work alongside professional filmmakers. With a minimal budget, I lead a team as director and producer. The Visible Poetry Project screened at the New York Poetry Festival, in Seattle, Beijing, and cities across the world.
Cities
RomEO
Brilliance
October 2017 – January 2018
February 2020 – March 2020
September 2021
Music video for the song Cities A new couple meets by the bike Product video and quick guide by my friend Joyce Zheng. rack in this video ad for eo LLC. for Brilliance Laser Inks.
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Branding & Design eo Bikeshare LLC October 2019 – March 2020 I was Director of Marketing at eo Bikeshare LLC, a student-run dockless bikeshare startup at Northwestern University. Marketing, website, branding, merch, video commercials – I did it all. Clockwise from top right: Team photo; Spring launch flyer; example bike tag; website landing page; sticker.
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Imagine 2018 / hackBCA December 2017 – September 2018 I served as Director of Design for my high school’s annual hackathon, one of the largest and longest running high school hackathons in the nation. Because the nature of our event was different from past years, I was in charge of overseeing a complete rebranding of the event. I led a team of artists to carefully select fonts and colors to develop our new visual language. Our brand tells a story consistent with the event slogan through the futuristic space theme: shoot for the stars.
Above: Our logo. Right: Our three poster designs that were used as advertising and prizes for the event.
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Above: Our Imagine 2018 team wearing the shirts I designed. Below (clockwise from top left): Website design; sticker; photo of two attendees with shirt and badge; sticker. hackBCA presents
Sept. 29 – 30 @ BCA.
IMAGINE 2018
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BCA History Conference February 2019 – April 2019 Shortly after finishing my work for Green Ribbon Day, I began my branding and design work for the BCA History Conference. 2019’s theme was WWII, and my designs were inspired by propaganda and design principles from the general time period. The vehicles featured are based off of archival photography, to maintain a certain level of historical accuracy. A bright color palette was used (as opposed to darker colors usually associated with war) to attract students to sign up for the event.
Above: Our brand colors. Right: I designed three posters for the event.
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Green Ribbon Day January 2019 – March 2019 Green Ribbon Day was the newly established mental health and wellness day at my high school. Green is the color associated with mental health awareness, and to promote the event, I wanted to create posters that gave off a feeling of peacefulness. I also designed the logo for the event, and now, Green Ribbon Day is observed yearly at my high school.
Life is a balance. Join us March 5th @ BCA for workshops about mental health and wellness.
What does “mental health” mean to you? We ean all think a little bit more about how mental health afeets our lives and the people around us.
The Mental Health Club meets in Room 20 on Thursdays at 7:40 AM.
1 in 5 teenagers live with a mental illness. In a classroom of a 20, that’s four students in the room who could be struggling to keep up with schoolwork, maintain friendships, enjoy hobbies, get through the day, or even just get up in the morning. What do you know about mental illness?
Source: World Health Organization
Join us March 5th @ BCA for workshops about mental health and wellness. The Mental Health Club meets in Room 20 on Thursdays 7:40 AM.
Talk about it. Above: Our logo. Right: Posters and handouts that I designed.
Join us March 5th @ BCA for workshops about mental health and wellness.
The Mental Health Club meets in Room 20 on Thursdays at 7:40 AM.
Join us March 5th @ BCA for workshops about mental health and wellness. The Mental Health Club meets in Room 20 on Thursdays 7:40 AM.
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Retro-North Productions March 2019 – June 2019 Retro-North Productions is a film production studio I started with my friends to make short films and videos over the summer of 2019. The visual language is fashionable and modern and designed for social media. Right: Logo and wallpaper. Below: Instagram story highlights.
Entrepreneurship In Action (EPIC) March 2020 – Present As Co-President of Northwestern University’s entrepreneurship student group, one of my many duties was to work with our Marketing Chair to develop our brand by designing new banners and stickers, and redesigning the website.
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Photography Phonetography June 2017 – Present Before we get to the main course – first, here are some pictures I shot on my phone.
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CalmlyGoingWild January 2018 – April 2019 CalmlyGoingWild is my photography page on Instagram, which peaked at 7,500 followers and amassed nearly 700,000 total post views. Every other day, I would color edit and upload a photo from my archive. Over time, not only did this give me valuable color editing experience, but I gained a following on Instagram. My photography has been featured on the cover of Aerie International, and has been awarded by the School of the New York Times. This spread: Pictures from Alaska and British Columbia. Next spread: Portraits.
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Publication Design The Official Newspaper of the Bergen County Academies
The Academy Chronicle
Volume II, Issue 8 // March 2019
The Best Restaurants in Bergen: BCA Answers
Speaker: Dr. Sang-Mook Lee
// Krishi Desai
// Grace Tan
// Eli Engler
The Academy Chronicle asked BCA students what their favorite restaurants in Bergen County are– here are five of the top results! Page 8
We asked BCA students about how they felt about Dr. Sang-Mook Lee’s address to the student body, and about speaker visits in general. Page 9
The spring movie release schedule of 2019 is stacked with exciting prospects– what upcoming movies should you go see? Page 13
December 2017 – May 2019
It’s Spring! Playlist
In late 2017 I joined my school newspaper, The Academy Chronicle, as design editor. That first year, I completely redesigned the newspaper, standardizing fonts, margins, and other aspects of the layout. The result was a consistent, beautiful newspaper, which I would pass on to my team of four assistant design editors.
The Academy Chronicle’s own playlist for jumping into the spring season! // Jenn Baer // Pgs 11 – 12
Contents
Right: Cover of March 2019 issue. Below: Other issues of the Academy Chronicle.
spaper of Bergen
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Volume II, Issue
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Memory Maps April 2019 – June 2019 As my senior year of high school came to a close, I decided to gather my friends’ memories into a book. Memory Maps is a collection of stories from dozens of students, and the memories they cherish from special locations around our high school. I published the collection as a hardcover book and sold over 40 copies – and I hope my friends will fondly reread it for years to come. Right: One copy of the book. Below: Selection from Memory Maps.
DAN HU AND JESPER BAJWA ColorInBCA We founded IRIS as a meditation club to sneak some naptime into school– but instead, we ended up painting the walls of the basement hallway. Wild. More students chill during their frees in the hallway now than before, so that’s good. We hope we brought people together during the mural painting, and that people had time to relax and chat while doing it– and that we accomplished the original intention of IRIS of helping kids destress. We hope we’ve livened up the school just a little bit. And we hope kids will spend their frees in the ColorInBCA hallway for years to come. 26
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Music Production MasqRosé January 2021 – Present Music is where all my passions come together. Graphic design. Photography. Video. Branding. And of course, the music itself. I began teaching myself how to produce music in January 2020, and during the COVID pandemic, songwriting became my main project. In November 2020 I began developing the persona of MasqRosé, and in January 2021 I released my first song, Regolith, a futuristic, synthwave song. Three months later, in April 2021, I released why am i still here? everyone else is gone, an indie pop song. And another three months later, I released Pastel Cadillac, a hip-hop song. Going forward, music will continue to be my main project. This page: MasqRosé logo; profile picture; website landing page; and my iconic Rose Tinted glasses. Next page: cover arts for Regolith, why am i still here? everyone else is gone, and Pastel Cadillac; thumbnail of the music video for Pastel Cadillac.
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Mashups Pen Pineapple Apple Pen + Gentleman Mashup
From Nowhere (Croll + Baardsen)
September 2016
July 2015
Shortly after the Pen Pineapple Apple Pen video was released, I mashed it together with PSY’s Gentleman. The video was surprisingly popular, currently at 204,000 views.
My favorite song is From Nowhere by Dan Croll. I like one remix of it too, and I mashed the two together so that I could get the best of both. The remix is now at 97,000 plays.
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Journalism The Yappie January 2021 – Present I’m an Editor for The Yappie, the most read newsletter on Asian American politics and power. We’re the only nonpartisan publication tracking Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) politicians, activism, and influence. Our main product is a weekly briefing. The Yappie’s briefings are read by officials in the White House, Congress, and state legislatures across the country. Our stories have been featured in Politico, USA Today, PBS NewsHour, Yahoo News, Insider, and elsewhere. It is our goal to become the Politico of Asian America. Right: My debut piece, “The Asian Americans who helped Biden win”.
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New York Times Opinion February 2020 My video coverage of members of the Northwestern University College Democrats canvassing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was published on The New York Times Opinion’s Instagram story on the day of the Iowa Caucuses in 2020.
BuzzFeed News September 2020 Several months into the COVID pandemic, I published photography/artwork in BuzzFeed News illustrating the warped sense of time I felt while in quarantine. Right: My Instagram story for NYTOpinion. Below: My photography in BuzzFeed News.
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Facebook November 2019 In 2019 I was invited to Facebook’s New York office to be a part of a panel discussion about how young people consume news through Instagram – to an audience of about two hundred journalists.
The Daily Northwestern September 2019 – March 2020 At The Daily Northwestern, Northwestern University’s student newspaper, I was an audio reporter and co-creator of the NU Declassified podcast. I hosted or produced 10 bi-weekly episodes.
Alfalfa Studio February 2019 – August 2019 Interview the Gram was an interview series I did for the blog of Alfalfa Studio in New York during my internship there. Once a week, I interviewed a creator on Instagram – including photographers, graphic designers, comic artists, and more. I conducted 15 interviews over the course of several months.
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Writing The Doomsday Bible September 2017 This short story placed 2nd in the genre category of the Ringling Storytellers of Tomorrow writing competition. Author Virgil Suarez said of the story, “I’m quickly drawn into this story and its extremely plausible darkness.” The story asks a simple question: what goes into a book written for the survivors of an apocalypse?
From How Far Should You Initiate a Greeting? October 2018 If you write with the smallest font size available in Google Docs, you can fit 2,141 words onto a single page. That’s how long the train of thought is of the main character of this short story, when they see someone approaching – but who’s still too far away to say hello to.
Science Kaye’s Effect March 2017 – April 2017 Despite all the artistic work I did during high school, my academic “concentration” was actually in science. As independent research under the supervision of Dr. Ozgur Dogru, I studied Kaye’s effect, a phenomenon occurring in shear-thinning liquids in which they “bounce” when poured as a thin stream. Right: A photo of a “multiple bounce” occurrence of Kaye’s effect. Additionally, a laser was positioned to send light down the liquid column – and surprisingly it followed the liquid as it bounced.
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Miscellaneous 128 Strongholds December 2020 – January 2021 In January 2021, I became the first person ever to visit all 128 strongholds in the Java Edition of Minecraft. It’s a record I’m quite proud of, and my Reddit post about it received over 57,000 upvotes.
ColorInBCA December 2017 – June 2018 Along with a friend, I co-founded and lead an initiative to paint two massive murals at my high school. Over 30 students joined us each week to take time after school to relax and just paint. Over a few months, we transformed a long, windowless basement hallway into a vibrant place to be. The name was inspired by the project Colour In Faith.
I worked with our school administration to obtain funds, and I convinced our principal using Photoshop mockups that we should paint directly onto the wall, so that students wouldn’t be afraid to touch or lean against the artwork. A good mural should be a friendly but unintrusive part of its environment. Now, new students sit and hang out by the ColorInBCA murals, which will stay for years to come.
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Above: The design for ColorInBCA’s second mural, measuring 26’ x 8’. Below: The design for ColorInBCA’s first mural, measuring 90’ x 8’.
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