Today, I am going to introduce a new category in my blog: Design in China. My idea of this came from my assignment this week: Branding. Don’t ask me how did I get there. But I thought it will be an interesting subject.
According to Wendy Siuyi Wong, (Wong, 2001, 2005) the design history of China is hardly heard or seen, and it was not until 1979 that it began to take shape. Wong thought that the reason the modern design history of China had not been noticed by the Western world prior to this was because before the “open gate” policy of China enforced in 1979, most design was in the form of propaganda of communism. Wendy Siuyi Wong, states that Modern Chinese graphic design is almost a mystery to the Western world. According to her research, she called the Greater China region which includes Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
After Hong Kong and Macau returning to China in 1997 and 1999, it is finally possible to consider a unified design history of Greater China.
INFLUENCES
These traditional elements such as Chinese arts and crafts were later combined with foreign influences to form dynamic modern design styles. The most prominent example of Chinese modern design is found in the Shanghai style of the 1920s and 1930s. Design works produced in Shanghai during this period reflect various outside influences due in large part to the existence of numerous foreign concession zones in the city.
Shanghai Style: Art and Design Between the Wars
1920 to 1930—Shanghai
The Shanghai period represented both the beginning of Chinese modern design and the best of this emerging form before the Second World War. Creative design work of the quality produced in Shanghai could not be sustained during the war, and after the Communists gained power in 1949, commercial graphic design was seen as a symbol of “Western lifestyle” and said to be a “waste of national resources” because it encouraged the consumption of non-necessary products. However, the Shanghai spirit of commercial graphic design continued under the capitalist economic system and British colonial rule in Hong Kong after the war. (Wong, Detachement and Unification:Chinese Graphic Design)
1960s— Hong Kong
Chinese local designers previously trained in Guangzhou and Shanghai had to alter their style to fit into the new commercial environment dominated by American companies and to meet the standard set by American-trained designers. This transition was significant to the history of Hong Kong design because it brought Western design theory and principles directly into contact with Chinese culture. Among the newly arrived American designers, Henry Steiner has been the most influential. Steiner demonstrated new possibilities in incorporating Chinese cultural symbols and written characters into his Western-style design works. In Hong Kong he successfully established the principle of cross-cultural design, successfully adapting the generally understood concepts of Western design into the Hong Kong/Chinese context.
1980s—Hong Kong
Hong Kong played a major role in fostering and building connections with design practitioners and institutes in mainland China and Taiwan in 1980s. Compared to work from Hong Kong, Taiwan graphic design was less exposed to Western design due to political constraints, censorship, and martial law on the island until 1987.
By the mid-1980s when Hong Kong designers were developing into two divergent design trends: incorporate Chinese elements and entirely Western style. Although Hong Kong played a leading role through the 1980s because of its relatively free and liberal environment for creative ideas, starting in the 1990s the quality of graphic design work in mainland China and Taiwan improved rapidly to reach an international standard. By the late 1980s, the political situation in Taiwan had become more liberated, and economic development was in the direction of international linkages. From this period on, rapid improvements in the quality of Taiwanese design can be seen, and Taiwanese design organizations began to initiate joint activities within the Greater China region.
1990—Mainland China
The 1990s can be seen as the era of rapid establishment of graphic design associations, expanding activities with many events centering on poster design and graphic design publications within Greater China, and the active participation of Chinese designers in major international poster design competitions. While Hong Kong and Taiwan will likely keep up their high quality work, their sheer volume of output will never equal that of the mainland designers, who have recently been outstripping their Hong Kong and Taiwanese counterparts in sheer numbers of awards won, in large part due to the fact that there are many times more active designers in mainland China as compared to the other locales of the Greater China region. The future will definitely see an increasing visibility of mainland designers on the international scene.
Today, China is different than ever. People are starting to become more and more interested in the China. As a designer, I found it is fascinated. One of the interesting links I found is 3030presee, an independent publishing house that focuses on books about new art and design from China.
Reference: Wong, Detachement and Unification:Chinese Graphic Design.
