UCLA Arts Alumna Veronica Peitong Chen ‘16 on Creativity, AI, and Architectural Thinking
Veronica Peitong Chen ’16 is an award-winning interdisciplinary designer and artist, specializing in creating innovative experiences powered by artificial intelligence/machine learning and emerging technology. At the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts), she double majored in design media arts and architectural studies. Currently, she is a senior designer at Adobe.
Veronica Peitong Chen presenting at METCACON 2025 in Seoul, South Korea.
What initially drew you to UCLA Arts?
What drew me to UCLA Arts was that rare blend of versatility and depth. This is a place where theory, media, and design don’t live in separate wings but in conversation with one another.
I was immediately drawn to the Design Media Arts (DMA) program. It’s one of those rare undergraduate tracks that treats visual design, code, video, and interactivity not as add-ons, but as essential tools of creative practice. You could pivot from typography to creative coding to immersive installation and still feel entirely at home.
What really sealed it was the intellectual cross-pollination and the freedom to roam across various disciplines at the broader campus. Even as a DMA student, I could enroll in business, philosophy, literature, and various studies. I’ll never forget a Buddhism lecture on impermanence, where no form stays fixed, and how that idea later sparked an installation project whose visuals didn’t reset but evolved. This level of class selection flexibility meant my ideas could breathe, bump into unexpected ones, and grow in surprising ways.
Then there was the faculty lineage: names like Casey Reas, Rebeca Méndez, Rebecca Allen, Christian Moeller, and Noa Kaplan teaching right there in DMA. Knowing I could learn from someone doing serious, boundary-pushing work in the fields of art and design was a sign this place could constantly push forward ideas and challenge my thinking.
UCLA Arts stretched my creative boundaries from day one. If given the chance to chart my path all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d choose it again in a heartbeat.
What inspired you to double major as both Design Media Arts and Architecture and Urban Design (AUD)? What was the benefit of studying in both departments?
From early on, DMA felt like a sandbox where I got to explore and experiment with visual systems, interaction designs, color theory, and so much more in the design discipline. But no matter how deep I dug into media, I always found myself asking: How does this live in physical space? How does it shape, or is shaped by, the environment around it? I wanted to zoom out.
Perhaps that impulse comes from watching my mom sketch architectural plans when I was little. Designing for architecture feels like a beautiful blend of human behavior, material analysis, engineering constraints, spatial flows, and design, where everything is layered with aesthetics and function. Those memories made me believe it was possible, and necessary, to study a discipline that branches beyond design.
One summer, I stumbled across AUD’s JumpStart program. I thought, why not give that a try? The program was really rigorous, immersive, and unlike anything I’d done before. Within a few weeks, I learned to think in sections, material, form, and programmatic layering. That taste of architectural logic cracked open a new lens for me.
So I decided to commit to doing a double major in DMA and AUD, where I could immerse myself in both disciplines, separately yet interconnected. Studying both gave me a dialectic mindset, where each discipline informs and enriches the other in unexpected ways.
In architectural studios, for example, I found myself reaching for the graphic design and editorial design principles I learned in DMA whenever I needed to communicate complex spatial ideas. I’d treat a building section, site plans, and presentation boards as more than representations of the building. Instead, I would adopt a slightly different strategy when I used color theories, visual hierarchies, and compositional balance.
Conversely, software fluency from architecture, especially in Rhino and parametric modeling, leaked into my DMA work. I became more comfortable scripting complex 3D forms, importing architectural logic into my visual work. When I moved into Maya for 3D animation, the spatial logic and modeling discipline from architecture made that transition feel intuitive and sometimes even comfortable.
Finally, the hands-on fabrication and building culture from architecture grounded my DMA thesis. I was able to build a responsive installation that didn’t just exist as pixels, but as a tangible space people could walk into, touch, and inhabit. That marriage, where the interactive systems live inside built form, would not have been possible without fluency in both departments.
Looking back, DMA sharpened my design imagination and interface thinking; architecture grounded me in structure, materiality, and spatial empathy. Together, they opened a hybrid path where digital and physical are in conversation.
Veronica Peitong Chen presenting at Adobe MAX.
Looking back, what experiences at UCLA Arts most shaped your creative practice and/or career path? Were there particular professors, classes, or projects that had a lasting influence on you?
When I look back, one of the most pivotal experiences was taking Interactivity with Casey Reas. It was my first real encounter with programming as an expressive medium, not just a tool. Suddenly, I saw code as paintbrush, not constraint. That class reshaped my philosophy: design wasn’t just about form or function—it could respond, adapt, question. That shift followed me all the way to graduate school at Harvard, where I dove headfirst into computational design, algorithms, and AI.
But it wasn’t just one class. In Rebeca Méndez’s editorial design class, I learned to treat design as a system. It is about how visual hierarchies, pacing, and narrative unfold across pages, spreads, and spatial sequences. That taught me how to structure complex ideas with graphic coherence. Meanwhile, Christian Moeller’s video production class pushed me to manage projects with real gravity: coordinating shoots, timelines, talent management, technical pipelines, animations, and logistics. Together, those courses sharpened both my ability to map conceptual systems and to shepherd ambitious work from sketch to screen.
Professors like Reas, but also those who invited critique across disciplines, shaped not only what I make, but how I make decisions: to lean into uncertainty, to trust prototyping early, to let aesthetics and logic co-evolve. In many ways, UCLA Arts taught me to live between worlds—code and clay, light and structure—and that hybridity continues to guide my path today.
What are some challenges you faced after graduating, and how did your education at UCLA Arts prepare you for these challenges? How did you overcome them?
One of the challenges I experienced in my career was translating speculative, future-driven ideas into high-fidelity representations, especially when the existing technology couldn’t quite support the type of work. But thanks to the interdisciplinary experience at UCLA, I was able to solve the asset preparation issue by bringing my architectural 3D modeling fluency into product design scenarios. I prototyped an environment and experience that was able to create a workaround for the goal we wanted to achieve. Because I was able to push to think across media, those prototypes became proof points and were used to paint what the future could look like. This concrete visual representation helped align different stakeholders and craft the path towards the next step. Over time, that ability to translate between disciplines became one of my strongest assets.
What advice would you give current UCLA Arts students who are preparing to launch their careers?
First: experiment relentlessly. Treat every sketch, every side project, even failed ones, as a chance to discover what you care about, what language you respond to. The act of experimentation could really liberate you from perfection and open doors you never knew existed.
Second: push yourself into discomfort. Say yes to projects that stretch you, take on roles you feel underqualified for, and lean into uncertainty. When I first tried a video commission (outside my comfort zone), I learned more about pacing, team dynamics, and narrative than in many studio classes.
Third: treat every project as part of your portfolio. This is what I learned during my first day of orientation and I’d love to share the same with the students today. That mindset makes you more intentional, more polished, more future-aware when it comes to career decisions.
Why is an education in the arts and architecture—and the pursuit of creative practice—so important today, perhaps more than ever?
Because we live in an age of complexity and fragmentation, education in the arts and architecture is more essential than ever. Creative practice trains you to navigate ambiguity, weave together logic and intuition, and craft spaces—both physical and conceptual—that feel meaningful. In a world increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms, artists, designers, and architects remind us of emotional resonance and the authenticity of human touches. They become translators across disciplines, making dense systems legible, ethical, and poetic. This kind of education helps us question, reframe, and rebuild the world in the way we want it to be.
Header image: From left to right, Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, and Veronica Peitong Chen presenting at Adobe MAX. (Courtesy of Veronica Peitong Chen)
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