Before coming to NYUAD, sophomore Arfa Rehman was not intending to study visual arts. Now, she is a designer with burgeoning talent whose work is featured in Visual Arabia’s first Design Yearbook, which includes submissions from artists, designers and media professionals worldwide. She is the only undergraduate student represented in the book.

Rehman regularly keeps up with the design scene in the region and first discovered Visual Arabia, a design conference held in Dubai on March 20, via Twitter.

“I saw they had a yearbook, and they were calling for entries from around the region from professionals to students, and I thought that was cool so I thought I’d submit something,” Rehman said.

Rehman submitted an assignment from her Introduction to Visual Arts Practice class, which explored the use of patterns through a series of colorful diamonds overlapping to create an illusion of depth.

“That’s something that’s interesting to me — how we perceive a flat dimension in design and how it can be appear to be three-dimensional,” Rehman said.

The news of the selection was exciting not only for Rehman, but also for her professors. While Rehman was unable to attend the conference, Professor Gofredo Puccetti, Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Arts, attended and brought back several copies of the yearbook.

“He said that there weren’t a lot of students who were published, it was mostly professional work, so it was exciting for the both of us,” Rehman said.

Outside of the classroom, Rehman is actively involved in design within the NYUAD community. In 2012, she co-founded the Design Collective alongside other students who were part of the Designing Abu Dhabi class, a J-Term course taught by Puccetti. The Design Collective has undertaken various projects, ranging from the branding of Marhaba 2013, the Global Issues Network conference, the Sila Connection conference and the RealAD Show.

Rehman also has a design internship on campus with the Office of Intercultural Affairs, where she organizes cultural events at NYUAD and designs all its promotional material.

“Just as effective good design can be, bad design can be dangerous,” Rehman said. “It’s not something that people think about a lot but I think it is something important to pay attention to, which is why I think it’s great that the design team is emerging in NYUAD and the Gulf region in general.”

Rehman, who is looking forward to taking more courses in visual arts and working on more projects for the Design Collective, hopes to continue contributing her work to expand the field of design in NYUAD and the Gulf.

“For now, this is a field that I’ve come to really, really like and I hope to definitely continue working in it even if it’s not something I pursue exclusively,” Rehman said. “ I do think I’ll always want it to be part of something I do.”