In a part of Beijing where I live there are a lot of old red brick buildings. They all look pretty much the same, but number plates. Oh, those number plates! It’s amazing how different they could be. Two building next to each other might speak with totally different voices.
One day I spent couple of hours walking few blocks around my house hunting for those plate. Check it out!
Another example of Chinese creative branding. Why so serious?
What a weird demonic creature, called white horse=)
Advertisement at hardware exhibition in Yongkang, China.
Somewhere in Beijing…
Some old houses here in Beijing have pretty beautiful number plates.
Just some random photo from this nice sunny today.
I like to collect all kinds of visual culture stuff. Here’s a bunch of Chinese advertisements I’ve found on streets of Guangzhou. Some are funny, some are ugly. But definitely it’s something different from Europe or States.
In January I went to Shenzhen and found there an exhibition of GDC, the first global design competition in China, which is held every two years.
Here I share with you photos of some exhibits from there, mostly posters.
Also you can view this materials at my Flickr space.
Some curious findings from Shenzhen, posters, signs, sculptures and just weird objects I’ve met on my way.
Also this stuff directly at it’s Flickr set.
Findings from previous trips: China (July-October 2009), China (October 2008), London (july 2008), London (March 2008),
Another exhibition from ICOGRADA Beijing was about sitting in public places. I must say that most of exhibits are not just curious and good looking but pretty comfortable which I checked personally.
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.
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…
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.
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.
