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Qian Qian

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Qian Qian (b. 1979) is a graphic artist and designer based in New York City. One of the “20 under 30 New Visual Artists” by Print magazine, he has worked with such clients as Nike, Panasonic, Coca-Cola, and Motorola. His work has appeared in many international design publications, and exhibited in V&A Museum in London, and Lincoln Center in New York. He has a Masters degree in digital media design from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and had taught graphic design at Missouri State University, USA. In 2005, He initiated and curated Get It Louder, a ground-breaking design exhibition in China’s Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

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New graphic design in China

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{“Shadow Play is Fun!” illustration by Qian Qian.}

Recently I stumbled upon an interesting article about new graphic design in China. It’s an interview with Javin Mo, of the HK-based Milkxhake design collective. Actually, it’s been posted at Ping Mag more then a year ago but still up to date.

In Hong Kong, we started our graphic design history only in the 1970s. In mainland China, it’s been like ten to fifteen years maximum. And in the last seven years, I’ve seen a lot of interesting projects online by these 20-something people. I can see the freedom in spaces like Shanghai or Beijing, because contemporary art is super crazy there. These two art scenes are providing a really good atmosphere for graphic design. The kids can find magazines for their illustrations and open-minded clients for collaboration, especially when it comes to art- and culture-related product design. That’s quite different from Hong Kong where it’s pretty commercial: our art space is not as big as China’s right now. That’s why not many designers can just do art- and cultural-related things and survive…

 

Read the rest of the article here.

 

Chinese Type Design Competition

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As for me one of the most interesting and inspirational events of this ICOGRADA congress was an exhibition of the best fonts of Chinese Type Design Competition. I’m sure that even people who are not got used to Chinese characters can appreciate the beauty of this fonts and find inspiration there. And I feel that basic rules and principles are the same for Latin and Chinese type design.

To showcase the font designers use chosen poem with all different characters. They do not make all existing characters for the competition. Well, this is not just 26 letters of alphabet and obviously would take one person years and years to design font with thousands of characters. Usually this is a project for a design team.

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ICOGRADA Beijing: China Academy of Fine Arts

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I feel like I had to start with this general post about ICOGRADA event in Beijing.

The last week of October ICOGRADA and Chinese authorities organized international design congress. It was a huge event that attracted designers from all over the world. The big kick to promote China and Beijing in the world and design in China. There were  many intersting exhebitions, lectures by prominent international and Chinese designers, workshops, performances and so on.

The main venue of the event was CAFA (China Academy of Fina Arts). This beautiful building is the new CAFA Art Museum, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

And this is the logotype of the event, stylized Chinese character “XIN”…

And further I’m going to write what it’s all about…

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Exhibition: Beijing Typography 2009

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Another interesting exhibition featured by ICOGRADA in Beijing was Beijing Typography Exhibition 2009. It showcases typographic works of international and Chinese designers (mostly posters, but also books, motion, light design etc.) in order to explore aproaches and trends in modern typography and embrase cultural diversity. You can read more about exhebition at Faces of Design. Personally, I discovered many interesting Southern Korean designers. Probably need to do some research on this country’s design.

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Chinese Graphic Design in the 20th Century: A Documentary

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Last week of October was huge for Beijing. ICOGRADA world design congress was held in the city. So interesting! Unfortunatelly it was hard to visit even a half of events, though I spent whole days at the congress. In next few post I will show some pictures from exhebitions I’ve visited.

Like this… “Chinese Graphic Design in the 20th Century: A Documentary”.

Actually it was limited mostly by posters of communist era and advertisments of the beginning of 20th century. But interesting anyway. Especially to compare exhibits with Russian comminist posters I’ve seen so many times.

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Official start

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So it’s the time to announce official opening of “HELOHOLO says” blog. HELOHOLO gonna says about art, design, China and the rest of the Universe. It’s going to spread seeds of inspiration and flowers of beauty, and hopefully will surprise somebody one day. Or another.

So welcome! Blog is going to live (long and happy life) at heloholo.com/says and also going to be cross-posted to hellgus.livejournal.com