Shenzhen, China's first City of Design designated by the UNESCO, is home to some of the most creative minds in China. Some of them are established designers seeking for greater achievements, while some are aspiring young people hoping to making a difference. The following is a series of reports on Shenzhen-based designers. While sharing their stories, these reports give a glimpse of how design has changed our everyday lives and contributed to the city's rising creative power.
"Design gives meaning to things." While being asked what design is in a nutshell, Italian designer Sara Biancaccio, who owns a design studio named Panglossian in Shenzhen, shared her answer with a smile.
Located in an old housing compound in Futian District, Joys & Coffee is like "a violet by a mossy stone," half hidden from the eye as it is so small — narrower even than the parking space in front of it — but nevertheless embracing a power to heal those looking for a moment of peace.
When you are visiting Shenzhen Bay, getting wowed by myriad of birds flying and foraging around, you may pity yourself for knowing neither their names nor habits and end up referring to them as sparrows, ducks and seagulls. What can you do? Local designers find a way to help: bilingual interpretation boards.
Peng Cheng, born in 1990 in Henan Province, is a Shenzhen-based illustrator and graphic designer whose clients include UPS, Apple, Adobe, Mercedes-Benz and Coca-Cola. Having developed a passion for visual art at a young age, she sees design as an old friend and also as a channel to share her voice.
In DXD Studio, everyone is the boss. The chill kind, not the bossy kind. While many of their peers are struggling with work, mocking themselves as "corporate slaves," the young designers of the studio, all born in the 1990s, enjoy an unrestrained work life at a work place they've built in the way they love.
During the same time little Yong Siong Yow was being enchanted by the costume design of “Saint Seiya” at his home in Malaysia, dreaming of becoming a painter when he grew up, Su Su, a little girl in North China’s city of Tianjin, was absorbed in the fantasy world portrayed in Chinese animation film “A Deer of Nine Colors.”
Tiger Pan, a Shenzhen-based award-winning designer whose customers include well-known Chinese consumer goods brands, such as Mengniu, Tsingtao Beer, Bestore and many others, thinks design has a commercial nature, and the principal goal of packaging design is to help his customers win a bigger market.