About me
A Chinese graphic designer and illustrator based in London. Founder and director of Yi Studio. www.yi-studio.co.uk
Projects
- 1984This project started out with the truth that every time I went into a bookshop and looked through the book covers, those with handwriting typography stood out the most. What makes handwriting so special comparing with for example digitised typography? What is the inner quality of people’s handwriting? Can the special quality of handwriting be harnessed in cover design? Based on the former research of unit1 and 2, my major project is a trial to answer these questions. Preface: The dystopian novel 1984 written by George Orwell (1903 – 1950) describes a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party. Under the watch of the party leader “Big Brother”, life in this story is a world of perpetual war, pervasive governmental surveillance, and incessant public mind control [1]. Personal expressions are rigorously restricted and individuality is removed from human beings little by little. Probably as well known as the book, the television commercial 1984, first broadcasted on December 31, 1983, introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer to the world for the first time. The commercial utilised scenes from George Orwell’s 1984: myriad people with exactly the same looking are facing a huge screen, on which the Big Brother is giving a speech: “[…]we are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause[…]” An unnamed heroine representing the coming of the Macintosh races towards the large screen and destroys it with a hammer. Then accompanied by a scrolling black text, a voice reads: On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh and you'll see why 1984 won't be like ‘1984.’ Now considered a watershed event, the launch of this first personal computer declared the advent of the digital age. New technology quickly changed our way of life and many traditional methods have become rather doomed cultural practices. Handwriting, for example, is one of those dying activities. By choosing from thousands of digital fonts set in everyone’s computer, we create clean, calm, professional looking typography. By doing this, we can literally become ‘one people’ with ‘one will’. Somehow, we’ve lost our identities and unique expressions again. This book aims to highlight people’s individuality and free expressions permeated from their handwriting, which present a rich and strong visual quality. Borrowing George Orwell’s 1984 as a container—the text of the novel are printed inside of the French folding page that one can still see through to read, 100 pieces of “1984” written by UAL students from different age, course and cultural background are shown in this book. Those letters are done immediately as soon as given the context of the novel and pretty much showing an instinctive and natural expressiveness; the simple text describes people’s different understanding to the novel, which is interesting to link with the lettering following. Referring to the index, respondents’ original handwriting can be found, which presents an unconscious visual expression compared with the conscious visual expression in the book. Though subtly, the unconscious expression and the conscious expression together contribute to the unique visual quality within people’s handwriting. Seems like a randomly collection of people’s handwriting, this book, however at the core, is more a celebration of being human: celebrating humanity in a fiction about inhumanity. The handwritten lettering shown here possess a visual quality that is raw but vigorous, rough but honest; one can smell the freshness of vitality and authenticity when reading, and it all owes to the beauty of individuality, the beauty of free thoughts, rich emotions and capricious feelings. “To write is to be human.”[2] Please enjoy. [1]Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition (1996). HarperCollins:New York. p. 734. [2]“To write is to be human.” nha-handwriting.org.uk
- But Stone Cannot TalkBook design for ‘the Battlefield of Fathers’ and ‘the Battle of Forefathers” . 'The Battlefield of Fathers’, written by Dongpan Zhang (2009, Shanxi People Publishing House), is a fieldwork about survived veterans who fought the Yunnan-Burma War, which is a vital battle for China to defeat Japanese Army in the World War II. Few mainland Chinese know the event and an army called Chinese Expeditionary Force now due to political reasons. I found this book on my grandfather's shelf and was driven to finish it right away by curiosity; one of the historical sites of the battle is literally beside my grandparent's house. How come I know nothing about the battle and those many who devote their lives for it while it's so close to me? I decided to take this event as the subject of my final project for bachelor degree, carried out a fieldwork to visit all the main battlefields in Yunnan Province to find those survived remnants of the war. All the materials I gathered from this trip are edited into the book ‘the Battle of Forefathers’ (?????), which is written by myself as a memorial of the event as well as an echo to Dongpan Zhang’s book: I can only find monuments’ remains of the battle as very few veterans are still alive, but stones can’t talk. The two books are from views of two generations, the cover of the former is in solid black while the later is faded into gray and flaked away, suggesting the battle has been wiped and forgotten. The inner page employed a look of document file, implying the historical value of the event.
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Work history
Illustrator Graphic Designer
Flexible with working on different project and with different people! From graphic design background but LOVE drawing! Speak fluently in English and Chinese.
Skills
- Visual Arts
- Print Design
- Art Direction
- Design
- Illustrator
- Indesign
- Photoshop
- Hand Drawing
Education
Graphic Design
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