New Graphic Design in China

Sooner or later some of the creativity, energy and talent that’s driving the currently booming chinese art market was bound to spill into the more commercial territory of graphic design. With the impending Olympics, a global ubiquity of knowledge, and a greater emphasis on art and design as a legal means of illegal political expression, Chinese graphic designers are rising to the occasion. Ping Mag has posted a Q&A with Javin Mo, of the HK-based Milkxhake design collective, about what’s happening now in the country and which designers are leading the pack. The resulting piece is an excellent snapshot of what some have deemed the new Cultural Revolution, complete with links and pictures.  Here’s a taste:

Ping: Regarding influences, Shanghai used to be a great capital of graphic design in the 1920s and 1930s because it was such an international city. Later on, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and during the Cultural Revolution, of course, there was no commercial graphic design apart from political propaganda. I wonder how people started from scratch in the ‘70s and ‘80s… When searching on Amazon, surprisingly there was only one book about Chinese graphic design - from 1990!

Javin: Again, it’s just been ten years! The young people born in the late 1970s and 1980s, like me, had a really strong Western influence. Before, people did not have many imported design books. I talked to one designer from Shenzhen, and he told me that there is a strong community of graphic designers right now. But since they can’t read English, every time they get a magazine, they ask the translation company to translate it to Chinese to circulate it to designers they know.

Read the entire interview at Ping Mag - “New Graphic Design in China”