We were lucky to catch up with Ginger Ooi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ginger, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I worked on was one of our latest Travel Series titles here at Assouline – Kyoto Serenity. Although it has been wonderful working on projects on locations across the world such as Cartagena, Santo Domingo, Rio de Janeiro and more. This one hit close to home as it was where my father attended college and was a frequent location of our family vacations growing up. Therefore, I had a strong sense of responsibility in making sure this book turned out to be extraordinary.

From researching images based on locations we’ve frequented to reading and understanding more about the culture and heritage. The book wasn’t just meant to be visually aesthetic but also works as a window for the reader to understand more about the destination. The tagline of our Travel Series is that you are able to “Travel from Home”.

Recently, this past February, when I visited my family in Malaysia to celebrate Lunar New Year, it was really wonderful to gift my father the book personally. For him to flip through the pages and even recall some of the locations just via memory, it was a true bonding moment, and I’m so glad this book forever immortalized this moment for us to share.

Ginger, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Of course, hi everyone! My name is Ginger Ooi. I was born and raised on a small island in Malaysia called Penang, but ever since I was young, my exposure to art and media from around the world gave me a strong sense of exploration and curiosity. Therefore, in 2017, I moved alone to New York with just two suitcases.

Coming from Malaysia to now living in New York, you meet all sorts of people from various walks of life, and that instilled the thought to me that every person has a story to be told, and I’d want to be the voice that helps them. Majoring in Journalism in college with a focus on visuals, I knew I wanted to partake in the creative realm of visual storytelling.

Fast forward to today, I currently am a Photo Editor at Assouline Publishing – a leading luxury publishing house best known for our coffee table books that ranges in numerous topics. I’ve worked with clients such as Netflix, Apple Music, Bulgari, and more in translating their story into the best visual essay through imagery. From inception to completion, I will work closely with clients on understanding what product they’d like to achieve and how we can successfully bring that to life with external visual components such as illustrations, photoshoots, or conducting research on the best image pairings or more. Followed by licensing and obtaining all the high resolution files to ensure we have the best product for print.

What sets me apart from the rest is my honed ability to make a cohesive narrative out of so many different artistic visions. In the art and media I have consumed and researched over the years, I have become an expert in recognizing the best parts of any project and am currently doing this on a massive scale for so various projects across the board simultaneously.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

This may sound cliché, but I’d love to put my name out there. Growing up, I actually once resented my name as my last name meant Yellow in Chinese, and Ginger is a very uncommon name in Malaysia. Therefore, having the name “Yellow Ginger” wasn’t a label you’d imagined 9-year-old me wanting to have while walking through the school corridors.

I’d finally come to terms with it during high school and learned to appreciate it more, but now, hearing the barista say, “Your name is so unique,” brings a smile to my face. Though I’m not expecting my name to be on the next Nobel Prize, I would still love to be part of an impactful project that is associated with my name. To know I was part of a group of people that made something happen. That drives my creative journey, knowing the ultimate goal is still there someday and people will remember the name Ginger Ooi.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is actually the story of how I got into the creative field. I had originally enrolled into NYU as a Chemistry major. It seemed the more practical route at first, I was involved in the school paper in high school but when faced with the dreaded SATs and other exams, it made me wonder if majoring in humanities was the right route to go. I do enjoy Chemistry and the idea of how we are all made of the same elements, and how if you combine two separate things, it could create something completely new.

Then came college, and I was completely taken aback, most of my peers seemed sure of their career path and were ready to take the MCAT and go to med school, but I knew that path wasn’t for me. I recall going up to my college advisor and as we were going through options, he mentioned one thing to me as we talked about the Journalism double major program NYU offers. “Not many people who know science can write, and not many people who can write know science,” which really stuck with me.

When that shift happened, it felt like I was able to truly be my true self once more, I was able to use the skills I’ve learned from these two drastically different components and bring them together. One thing that really coincides with both is the element of staying curious, Keep asking yourself questions to learn more about a certain topic or story and with that may come a solution that you never saw coming.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @yesitsginger
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginger-ooi

Image Credits

All images © Ginger Ooi, except images of Louis Vuitton Virgil Abloh and Kyoto Serenity are Courtesy of Assouline