ACT-UAW Local 7902, 2025
Designers: Aarya Kini and Emily Keren Li

Merchandise design for my union local, representing over ten thousand workers in NYC. 100% union-made shirts and baseball caps for NYU and New School part-time faculty, student workers, and health service employees.




The design’s components were meant to be modular, able to scale across different merchandise items. Aarya and I worked on sketching different logos endlessly, wanting to meet the unique energy of a growing unit of New York City teacher-workers, and the original spirit of the United Auto Workers’ wheel, the wheel of collective power. Through participating in a merchandise competition, designs were democratically voted on by members and to be distributed amongst the Local.

There’s no surprise this winning design was made amidst a critical revival of design in politics. Bold color, homages to signpainter type, and aesthetics inspired by the working class were key markers of the Zohran campaign identity, designed by the team at Forge. The playfulness of the angle of the type while brightening up the UAW’s blue ultimately speaks to a unit in motion: continuing to lead the charge in the progressive labor movement in the United States.


❶ 2047 ❷ Dungeons & Dragons ❸ Student-Faculty Solidarity ❹ New Student Workers Union ❺ Mee & Gee ❻ NASA Disasters ❼ ACT-UAW Local 7902 ❽ BLOC