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.

Big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand.—Tom Peters

Although Twitter hasn’t become a mainstream in the social media network, but I do believe it will catch up.  This is the age of the Individual.  Think about how Justin Bieber was discovered?

The First Step of Branding is Visibility

Twitter currently offers 20 themes for background along with preset colors for the elements on the page. You can modify the colors of the overall background, text, links, sidebar background and the sidebar. However, for a designer, it is best to change the generic background and come up a unique design to represent YOU.

Customize Twitter Background

When creating a custom background, few things need to consider:  where is my brand location? How big is the monitor resolution? What am I going to do with the right side of the space?  Think about brand location is your business card location, the space on the left side is the most logical location. A resolution of 1024×768, which is the standard resolution of a 15-inch monitor, and a resolution of 1280×1024 is for 17-inch or larger monitor.  Just remember, when designing a 1024×768 standard background, it will shift the main center section of your Twitter page to the left more than a monitor with 1280×1024.

STEP 1:

You can use your PhotoShop, Illustrator, or any programs that you are comfortable with. In my case, I used Photoshop. I set my twitter background image at 1600×1200 at 72 dpi. I create a guide at 290 pixel and anther guide at 1225 pixel.  My “business card” included an illustration and my url, which located in the space of 290 x 1200 pixel. See my final twitter background .

STEP 2:

Twitter Setting

Switching backgrounds and changing the color palette of your Twitter page is easy to do. Select “Settings” in the top of links on your Twitter page, click on the “Design” tab and then click on “Change background image” and click “save”.

That’s it!

For more information on how to customize your twitter page, go to http://support.twitter.com/entries/15357-how-to-customize-your-twitter-design

Pencil Sculpture

Can a pencil being used as an artwork itself? Check out Dalton Ghetti’s pencil sculpture.  Amazing work!

So what is Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Cretive Awards? Well, it’s a two years-old European competition. The criteria for entering is advertising that appeared only in a Microsoft-run website, such as MSN.

Microsoft decided to re-brand their Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Creative Awards. They hired UK Studio Johnson Banks to come up with a new logo and look.  The design was focusing on catchier and more memorable name “Mouse.” The new logo was  well-received, and it won tons of design awards. Here is Johnson Bank release the press about the logo.

However,  it was discovered that the logo was a lift of a shampoo logo. And here is the link about the apology from the design studio.

I am sure someone lost their job over this one.

Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Creative Awards Logo

Shampoo Logo

Contemporary American Graphic Design

Push Pin Graphic

The Push Pin Studios reintroduced the illustration to be part of the design, and reapplied past styles and forms to their graphic design solutions, while designers in Europe codified Modernist graphic design into  so-called the International Style (Swiss Design), which focused on mathematical grids, simplified geometric forms, vibrant contrasting color, and free from propaganda and commercial advertising.

American designers, on the other hand, were attracted to individualism and expressionism. Among American graphic designers, two graphic designer students from New York, Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser, found the Push Pin Studio in 1954. They borrowed from Surrealism, Expressionism, Art Deco, Pop arts, and 1930’s comic art, and transformed their style to posters, editorials, books, packaging, and magazines designs.

Milton Glaser Graphic Design

The Push Pin Influence
As Glaser said in his interview, Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, “I realized that history is not my enemy, I should use history as my raw material and incorporate to my design.”  They used art and graphic from Renaissance paintings to comic books as their sources of inspirations for forms, shapes, or visual ideas. For that, they often introduced new and unexpected forms.  In interview, he said, “Creating a puzzle is like activating the mind, they likelihood will remember it and respond to it.”  Push Pin combine art and design, which is why it was so attracted to viewers and readers.

Style

Quote from Glaser, Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, “I don’t like to be classified as Push Pin style.”  Indeed, it is hard to pin point what is Push Pin style.  According to Chwast, the desire to state the client’s message in as personal yet as accessible a vocabulary as possible. In another word, Push Pin represents a strong graphic personality and it often based on humors, plays, and surprises.

Push Pin Style Poster

I enjoy fashion illustration, and I thought it would be great to incorporated my illustration with vector image of butterflies, and here is my final piece of  my interpretation of Push Pin Style.

I thought Joomla will be perfect for them.

Before and After

Before

After

Client: Certipath, provides externally portable organization and individual identity assurance by certifying that your organization’s credentials.

Objective: visually convey its corporate message by customizing a flash banner; reorganizing the information for easy access; full control of the site maintenance;  quick development time; low cost.

Before and After

Before

After

Client: The Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) is a cooperative effort by the leading defense and aerospace firms, supported by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop a framework of policies and mechanisms to enable secure collaboration across multiple jurisdictions.

Objective: up-to-date look, web 2.0, and easy to find the information.

The new site has a flash banner, but also allows non-flash visitors to have a non-flash banner.

Why Joomla?

Joomla is the most popular open source CMS soft available in the market.  Joomla has a large community support the software and many plug ins.  The extensibility is the key.  Joomla allows you to make changes in no time.

Image source from http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

image source from http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

So last week I blogged about “The Power of  Poster Design”.  While I was reading about Obama’s poster “HOPE” thru the internet last week, I found a very interesting online article “Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey” from a Los Angeles artist Mark Vallen. I don’t know who is Shepard Fairey until then.

For what I have read, Obama’s publicist, Yosi Sergant, suggested Fairey to create some art in support of Obama in late October 2007, and  Fairey got the permission from Obama campaign to design an Obama poster right before Super Tuesday.  He designed the original poster “Progress”  in one day. On October 2008, Fairey claimed he has printed  500,000 posters, 1,000,000 stickers, clothing, and other items with the image sold through his website.  If you are interested in Shepard Fairey,  just search on the internet, you will find tons of information about him along with the accusations.

Inspiration or plagiarism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own without  giving the credit to the creator; to “inspire” means to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural inspiration.  For what I have read so far, I will have to agree with Mark Vallen.

Shepard Fairey

This week, one of my assignments is to write about design history.  I was especially interested in 1920s Russian Suprematism and Constructivism. Although both art movements were after WWI and started in Russian, but I thought the artists/designers at that time were facing the similar changes as we have it now in USA.

Our country has slip into two majors political views:capitalism and socialism.  Someone said, history repeats itself.  Have you see some of the posters design lately? Certainly, the design style has been reapplied to this modern time, and the designer of this poster gave us a new layer of meaning behind it.

If you are new to  the Russian art movements, let me give you a short introduction.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ERA

Looking back through the history of design, the 1920s (Industrial Society era) was a very interesting time in Russian history, as well as in design history. The1920s was the period of time that Russian artists divided into two ideological art movements: Suprematism and Constructivism.

Suprematism focuses on geometric forms and believes that the role of the artist should be to throw out the old order and conservative art. This movement was led by Kasimir Malevich. The suprematists devoted their effort to support the Red Army and the Bolsheviks, and produced massive propaganda posters.

Constructivism believes that the role of the artist is to serve the needs of society. Constructivists called on artists to stop producing useless things and advocated using art for practical applications. They devoted themselves to industrial design and visual communication. The movement, which was led by Vladimir Tatlin, later became one of the most influential ideologues for modern design.

The biggest patron for both art movements is Russian Government.

MOST INFLUENTIAL DESIGNER

One of the most influential designers in this time period was a Russian Jew, EL Lissitzky. He was a multi-talented artist, typographer, architect, and designer. He was one of the most important figures of the Russian avant garde. His famous designs included 1925 advertisement designs for Pelikan Industries; the 1926 exhibition room for the International Kunstausstellung art show in Dresden, and displays for the official Soviet pavilions at the international exhibitions; the 1927 All-Union Polygraphic Exhibit in Moscow; the 1928 Press Show, a pavilion design revolving around the theme of a film show in USSR.

Lissitzky often used drafting instrument construction and paste up to achieve his designs. One of the most influential graphic designs was the book The Isms of Art 1914-1924.  In that book, he created the visual program for organizing information into a grid system, balancing white space, using halftones and large bold sans serif. He also explored the potential of montage and photomontage for complex communications messages.

STYLE
The style in this period often used bold color, bold and large sans serif font, diagonal axis, asymmetrical balance, and photomontage. More poster usage examples can be found at Bolchevisks.

Lissitzky

Rodchenko

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Some said, Shepard Fairey, the designer for the Obama Poster, challenges the traditional patriotic symbolism of the flag which has become and image of economic and military power that underlies this freedom we have. And both Fairey and Obama wanted to send a different message—a message of hope.

If you understand the history in that period, what do you think about the Obama’s Poster?  While I was writing my little essay, it got me interested in the little symbol on the poster—”Obama’s icon”—the rising sun.

Obama Symbol

Some said, it looks like a Pepsi logo, what do you think? One thing is certain, this icon has been broadly used, and it is the first time in US history that we have created a brand for the US president, Barack Obama.

Check this youtube video.  Whether you agreed or not, but you have to agree that we can’t ignore the power of design.