Vol. I / COVER
HFT—001 +

An incomplete
guide to
Hannah Tran

Researcher · Designer · Writer · Maker

Volume I
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
2026
Revised August 2026
Hannah Tran · An incomplete guide · Vol. I
Edition00

An incomplete guide to hannah tran

Volume I · Revised August 2026

Printed nowhere. Compiled in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Edited during a season of applications, paperwork, and excessive rink travel. Contains environmental systems, JavaScript, clay dust, rural Pennsylvania, several invented territories, and approximately fifty ties.

HFT–001FIRST DIGITAL EDITION
Frontispiece01
PORTRAITAsset reserved for Hannah’s selected editorial portrait

I study the systems hidden inside ordinary life.

Then I turn what I find into stories, interfaces, exhibitions, and objects.

HANNAH TRANResearch · Editorial Design · Environmental CommunicationCurrently in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Contents02

Contents

04 Selected Work06 MediaScape08 Milton: Planted in Place10 Community Trail Research12 The Ahurea Project16 Hjernelandet20 Lines of Inquiry22 Objects & Making26 Miscellaneous Evidence28 Curriculum Vitae32 Correspondence
Editorial note03

A note on completeness

This guide does not contain everything I have made. It contains enough evidence to show how I work: I investigate complicated systems, find the human story inside them, and build a form through which someone else can understand what I found. Sometimes that form is a research platform. Sometimes it is an exhibition, an essay, a campaign, a ceramic object, or an imaginary country. The complete projects remain elsewhere. This book provides the routes.

01 · Selected Work04

Selected work

Four projects. Four different questions.

Orientation05

Notice the system. Understand the audience. Build the translation.

The projects ahead move between research, environmental systems, editorial design and public interpretation.

RESEARCHINTERFACESENVIRONMENTEXHIBITIONSCULTURE
MediaScape · Fig. 03A06

Same event. different language. different reality.

Comparative outlet view

Computational media analysis · NLP · Interface design07

Mediascape

How does political affiliation change the language through which news organizations describe the same climate event?

MediaScape is an interactive research platform for comparing how news outlets frame climate-change coverage. I developed the research framing, comparative information architecture and interface concept, letting readers move between computational patterns and the original language beneath them.

ROLE · Researcher, designer and developerMETHODS · Corpus design, discourse analysis, NLPFOCUS · Climate communicationSTATUS · Active prototype
Milton · Documentation08

Planted in place

Installation · Publication · Archive

Exhibition design · Archival research09

Milton: planted in place

How can a local museum make the environmental history of a place visible to the people already living inside it?

The first exhibition at the Milton Municipal Museum brought together archival maps, local history, botanical research and editorial design. I developed its visual system and narrative structure, moving from the history of a region to the typography on an individual label.

ROLE · Lead designer and exhibition curatorCONTEXT · Milton Municipal MuseumDELIVERABLES · Identity, interpretation, publication
Community Trail Research10

Lewisburg ↔ montandon

A trail is also a negotiation.

SAFETY · ‘Where does the crossing go?’ACCESS · ‘Who can reach it?’PROPERTY · ‘What changes at my edge?’MOBILITY · ‘Could this be transportation?’
Environmental infrastructure · Public perception11

Community trail research

What happens when infrastructure that appears universally beneficial meets the particular fears, habits and histories of a community?

This research examined perceptions surrounding a proposed Buffalo Valley Rail Trail extension. I helped translate individual responses into larger patterns without erasing the local concerns inside the data.

ROLE · Community researcherMETHODS · Surveys, stakeholder analysis, mixed methodsOUTPUT · Findings and communication recommendations
The Ahurea Project · Visual archive12

Me in culture

TÔI TRONG VĂN HÓA

POSTER 01GOODIE BAG 02CAMPAIGN GRAPHIC 03PUBLICATION 04
Cultural storytelling · Editorial systems13

The ahurea project

How might cultural education feel native to the visual and social language of young people online?

Founded in Vietnam in 2020, Ahurea combined editorial design, online events, publications, merchandise and participatory campaigns. As founder and creative lead, I built an operating editorial system capable of holding a growing community together.

10K+ COMMUNITY149K+ CAMPAIGN REACH40+ COLLABORATORS80+ NATIONAL TALKSHOW PARTICIPANTS
Intermission14
“Adults appeared once the activity had become a game, as though competence had already been established somewhere offstage.”
From Dispatch 0515

Why would you do this to yourself?

Power skating, public apprenticeship and the quiet rule that adults should appear finished.

Inserted publication · Vol. 0116

Hjernelandet

Dispatches from the country inside my head.

JULY 202640.273 N · 76.887 W
Editorial system17

A publication with its own geography

Hjernelandet is an essay atlas for observations that refuse to remain separate: infrastructure, food systems, language, environmental contradiction, movement and belonging. I developed its identity, map, taxonomy, dispatch registry, editorial templates and reading system.

LAND & CLIMATECITIES & MOTIONLANGUAGELIFE
Dispatch sampler18

The local is never only local.

02 · Everyone Drives Something Enormous03 · The Fresh Food Desert Inside the Orchard04 · I Thought I Needed a Third Place
Featured dispatch · Life19

Why would you do this to yourself?

Power skating, public apprenticeship and the cost of appearing unfinished in adulthood.

Complete essays open as ordinary vertical articles. The guide remains your place in the authored sequence.

02 · Research Notebook20

Lines of inquiry

Not every question becomes a project.

Some remain open long enough to alter several projects around them. These are working questions—not claims of completed expertise.

Working questions21

10.1 · can transformers learn formal languages?

Using deterministic finite automata to distinguish structural understanding from probabilistic approximation beyond training distributions.

STATUS · WORKING QUESTION10.2 · TRANSGENDER IDENTITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT ON TIKTOKSTATUS · SEMINAR AND INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
03 · Hannah’s Håndværk22

Cabinet of objects

Wheel-thrown, hand-built and always slightly unpredictable.

OBJ. 11.01 · ORCHID TEAPOTOBJ. 11.02 · POUR-OVER & POTOBJ. 11.03 · FOREST TUMBLER
Museum catalogue23

Pottery between the quiet and the strange.

Select an object in the index to see its photograph, materials, dimensions and story.

OBJ. 11.04 · HORN BOWLSOBJ. 11.05 · TINY FRUITSOBJ. 11.06 · BERRY BOWL
Clay Meets Ice · Process24

An object designed to represent speed.

Coiled and slab-built stoneware · modeled lace structure · separate blade attachment

Material practice25

Clay meets ice

Hockey and pottery involve many of the same problems: pressure, timing, balance, material response and the moment when conscious instruction becomes physical instinct. The clay skate began as a joke and became one of the most technically demanding objects I had attempted. This is where I prefer to work: where unrelated systems begin explaining one another.

KILN OUTCOME · NEGOTIATED
04 · Miscellaneous Evidence26

A partial inventory

From Hải Phòng · Currently in GettysburgDanish, English and VietnameseComputer Science + Environmental StudiesCeramics instructorHockey player · right shot · usually wingApproximately fifty tiesBelieves Williamsport deserves an ice rinkDistrusts kilnsInvents countries when existing geography becomes insufficient
Contact sheet · 01—0627

None of these objects explains me.

Together, they make the task slightly less impossible.

01 TIE02 CERAMIC TOOL03 HOCKEY TAPE04 UNFINISHED MAP05 HẢI PHÒNG OBJECT06 RINK EPHEMERA
05 · Curriculum Vitae28

Selected experience

MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE · Marketing & Operations Intern · 2025BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY · Research Assistant · 2024—25BUCKNELL RED GRANT · Undergraduate Researcher · 2023MILTON MUNICIPAL MUSEUM · Lead Designer & Curator · 2023THE AHUREA PROJECT · Founder & Creative Lead · 2020—21
Education & practice29

Computer science + environmental studies

Selected study: interface design, environmental policy, qualitative and quantitative research, language and computational systems.

CERAMICS INSTRUCTOREDITORIAL & VISUAL DESIGNERENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATORINDEPENDENT WRITER & PUBLISHER
Capabilities30

What i can bring to a project

I am most useful when a project is technically or culturally complicated and needs to become understandable without becoming simplistic.

RESEARCH & SYNTHESIS · interviews, surveys, discourse analysisEDITORIAL SYSTEMS · information architecture, publication designDESIGN & INTERPRETATION · identities, exhibitions, interfacesTECHNICAL PRACTICE · JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML/CSS, PythonMATERIAL PRACTICE · ceramics, objects, installation
Correspondence31

Would you like to make something together?

I am interested in research, environmental communication, editorial design, public interpretation and digital experiences—especially work that crosses more than one of those categories.

GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIAAVAILABLE FOR RELOCATION AND REMOTE COLLABORATION
Errata & future additions32

This guide omits several projects.

Also omitted: most unfinished thoughts, numerous ceramic failures and almost the entire tie collection. Corrections and additions will appear in the next revision.

HFT–001CLOSED AUGUST 2026NEXT REVISION · UNANNOUNCED

This guide remains incomplete.

hannahferny.com