Daedalus Guoning Li: Weaving Worlds of Art and Design at the Walker Art Center

Minneapolis is now home to a transdisciplinary design talent, Daedalus Guoning Li (they/them), the 2025–26 Mildred S. Friedman Design Fellow at the Walker Art Center. This prestigious role is given to only one designer each calendar year.

Li brings a wealth of experience to the role, and with a bold, unique design style. Li’s design philosophy prioritizes the sensory, spatial, and poetic functions of design, ensuring that each project resonates with both clarity and emotional impact. Their academic background is as impressive as their professional experience. Li holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art and a dual BArch and BFA in Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where they also participated in the European Honors Program.

Before joining the Walker, Li honed their skills at Pentagram, the internationally renowned design studio, where they contributed to the immersive experience of Rolling Stone’s legacy for Illuminarium Las Vegas. Their tenure at Isometric Studio in New York saw them contributing to major cultural projects such as “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” at Cooper Hewitt, “re: collections” and “Frida Kahlo: POSE” at Rose Art Museum, and the AIGA-recognized project “Company.” At Isometric, Li melded an architectural sensibility with typographic precision, crafting spatial identities deeply rooted in equity-driven storytelling.

Li, born in China in 1995, is a graphic designer, graphic artist, and exhibition designer whose work gracefully navigates the intersections of image, language, material, and space. At the Walker, Li is actively contributing to exhibition graphics, institutional campaign identities, and brand refresh initiatives, bringing a unique blend of material experimentation and conceptual depth to the institution.

In 2023–24, Li developed the full exhibition identity for “Groundwater Earth: The Before and After of the Tubewell,” curated by architect and scholar Anthony Acciavatti at the Yale School of Architecture. Drawing inspiration from cylindrical drilling diagrams, water flow systems, and dot-line mirroring motifs, Li created a visual system that bridged geospatial infrastructure with design history. This layered approach to editorial, spatial, and tactile methods resulted in a resonant narrative field.

At the Walker, Li collaborates closely with curators, fabricators, and fellow designers to shape public encounters with contemporary art. Their designs are not merely about clarity but about evoking specific effects, emphasizing material presence, and fostering conceptual resonance. They are currently leading the development of a new wayfinding system that aligns with the Walker’s brand refresh, as well as designing the seasonal identity for Mini Golf, one of the museum’s most popular public programs. 

Delving into the Art of Book Design and Collaboration

Beyond exhibition design and institutional branding, Li has a profound connection to the world of art books, approaching each project as a unique and collaborative endeavor. Asked about their approach to designing art books and collaborating with artists, Li explains, “Whether self-initiated or in collaboration, my approach always begins with identifying a point of entry. That entry could be a single word, material, or gesture—something that threads the design method, image treatment, and conceptual framing together. Sometimes it’s drawn directly from the artist’s work; other times, it emerges in dialogue, as a shared reference or an intuitive form of trust.”

Li views the book not just as a container, but as an object in itself—a materialization of thought, pace, and structure. “Designing a book means establishing a system of rules: how the general conceptual approach is translated into image-text relationship, how typography is expressed, how images are treated and displayed, how silence is treated. But equally important is knowing when to break those rules. Books are tactile, time-based, and durational—they invite touch, pause, and sequencing. They should invite interruptions and hold contradictions,” they add.

Collaboration, for Li, is about extending the logic of the artist’s work, not imposing their own. “Aside from understanding the background, research, and content of the works, my design also responds to the work’s tone, texture, rhythm, and emotions—whether that means mimicking breath patterns, channeling archival systems as visual anecdote, or leaving deliberate gaps. It’s not about illustrating the work, but amplifying its atmosphere—letting the book become a space where thoughts and form unfold together.”

Notable Art Book Designs: A Glimpse into Li’s Creative Process

When asked about specific examples of their best designs for art books, Li highlights a particularly meaningful project with artist Sophy Naess. “The book compiles her past personal writings—zines she had self-published over the years—into a cohesive volume. My role was to preserve the diaristic, intimate quality of the work while giving it new form. I chose Pirelli, a revival typeface of uncertain origin, full of quirky gestures that resist traditional elegance. The format mimics a classic paperback but is slightly scaled down to echo home-printed zines, using folded letter-size paper. Since it’s an artist’s journal, there’s no image but only text. Typographic treatment became the most important part during the design process. Different indentation, italicization, and line breaks signify different voice, types of writing and quotations. Sophy printed and hand-bound every copy herself, keeping the tactile and personal spirit alive.”

Another significant project was the Yale School of Art Painting and Printmaking 2024 thesis catalog, “and the forms which linger humming in our ears,” titled after a line from Aimé Césaire’s Le Verbe Mâronner. “With my collaborator Darnell Henderson, we restructured the book to physically split in half—one side for artist bios and works, the other for reflective journals. This mirrored the duality of exhibition and process. The back section was treated with a consistent image threshold effect, creating visual cohesion while allowing each section to echo and inform the other. The result was a catalog that requires viewer to shift the reading sequence to understand the connection between the artowrks and each artist’s personal notaitons, structurally intentional, yet “

These titles have found their way into artist-forward spaces like Printed Matter (NY), bungee space (NY), ss space space (Taiwan), Multiple Formats (Boston), and Artbook @ MoMA PS1. They also reside in institutional collections, including the Yale University Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library and RISD Fleet Library. Many circulate through informal channels—gifted, mailed, traded, shown at art book fairs, or tucked into exhibitions. The distribution, Li notes, often prioritizes the intimacy of exchange over commercial routes.

Harmonizing Sound and Vision: Collaborations with Musician Mizu

Li’s collaborative spirit extends beyond the visual arts, finding expression in their work with musician Mizu. Li has collaborated with Mizu on two of her albums and her website, creating visual landscapes that resonate with her unique sound. “Mizu and I have been friends for a long time  before we began collaborating. I’ve witnessed her personal transformation and her shift from classical cello training at to a genre-defying practice that blends cello, field recordings, composition, and digital manipulation. Her music lives in a world of fog, forest, breath, and ancestral memory, deeply personal, self-referential, yet echoes through time and musical canon—so our visual work had to feel just as layered, tender, and experimental,” Li explains.

For Mizu’s second full-length album, Forest Scenes, the collaboration was inspired by Mizu’s experiences in São Paulo. “Mizu shared stories of her time in São Paulo—how the clash between concrete facades and lush jungle landscapes ignited her creative process. That friction became central to our visual language. I created abstract paintings using traditional Chinese brush techniques, then scanned and digitally manipulated them, layering them with photography to mirror her sonic approach: organic, textured, digitally manipulated, and multi-dimensional.”

The EP, 4|2|3, scored for choreographers Baye & Asa, saw Li designing custom brutalist-inspired typography alongside stark editorial imagery by Tanner Pendleton. “The visual tone echoed the dystopian, post-industrial themes in her score,” said Li. “Across our collaborations—albums, visuals, and her website—it’s always been about resonance, not decoration. We build worlds together, where sound and image breathe in the same rhythm.”

Revealing the Invisible: A Designer’s Pursuit of Subtlety and Meaning

Asked about how they make the invisible visible as a designer, Li responds with a thoughtful perspective. “I try to listen for what vibrates beneath the surface. The “invisible” might be emotion, ideology, trauma, or gesture—things not immediately seen but deeply felt. Design, for me, becomes a way to trace those residues: a word placed too close to the edge, a blur that won’t resolve, a misregistered print that resists clarity. These decisions are deliberate—they invite pause, discomfort, or recognition.”

Li often experiments with materials and digital techniques to surface the undertones they want to express. In P for Performance, an artist book, they assembled press portraits of public figures and cropped them at the neckline, sequencing them into a silent image book. “Without names or context, the viewer is asked: what codes gender, power, or legibility? What’s asserted or withheld? The book became a study in representation and erasure—asking not what identity is, but how it’s constructed and read.”

Drawing from psychoanalysis, queer theory, and diasporic thinking, Li’s goal isn’t clarity or spectacle, but a kind of lingering presence. “I want the work to flicker—appear, disappear, and stay with you in the space between,” said Li.

Daedalus Guoning Li’s presence at the Walker Art Center promises to bring a fresh and deeply considered perspective to the institution’s visual identity and exhibition design. Their commitment to collaboration, material exploration, and conceptual depth makes them a truly exciting addition to the Minneapolis art scene.