{ design@tive } information design

In previous post in which I discussed chinese calligraphy, I talked a little bit about chinese calligraphy’s history, and my impressions of its influence in contemporary chinese design. Since a lot of people have been asking me for more on the topic, I’ve decided to post on YouTube some videos of a trip my wife, a couple of friends and I did to Zhu Jia Jiao, one of the many river towns just outside Shanghai.

In Zhu Jia Jiao, we’ve met Master Yue Le, a local artist that makes his living on creating banners/posters for tourists that visit that town: with our little domain of Mandarin, we’ve asked him to create some banners to represent something he would consider typical.

He was very kind to explain to us that — in traditional chinese culture — one would hang banners at the door of the house, wishing neighbors and visitors good omens; such tradition is still kept in most cities around China, but mostly during festivals and special occasions, like the Spring Festival.

In the first video, he tells us he is going to paint one of the most chinese typical wishes, which is “Welcome Home” (I would say that is a pretty cross-cultural wish, right?). Like an artist, a poet, or a designer, he make some sketches on a little notebook before painting the banners, trying to figure out the most auspicious characters to use.

In the second video, he paints the message “Huan Ying Guang Lin Wo Men De Jia”, which roughly translate as “Welcome to Our Home”: note how master Yue tries to make the visual alignment mentally, as if he was hesitating to start before painting.

In the last part, he paints our names; obviously, our western names have to be “converted” to Chinese, which usually involves either one of two strategies: first, try to find words that sound like their original western names, like “John” would be translated into “Jiang”, or — second — find the equivalent words to our names in Chinese; like my name “Itamar” — which in Tupy-Guarani, an indigenous language in Brazil — means “Coral Reef” was translated into “Hai Yan”.

In China, calligraphy is much appreciated — note how many locals gather around master Yue — but is not widely practiced by the younger generations, and it is a risk of dying. So, it was really nice to see the interest of the young ones gathering around master Yue, ask him questions, and observe him at work.

Nanxum: Calligraphy/Typography Tradition
credits: Itamar & Fabiane Medeiros

Calligraphy has a long and respected tradition in China, swirling around history and myth: some legends attribute its invention to a man called Cang Jie, around 2,600 b.C. Nowadays, Calligraphy has become a symbol of eruditeness, and has a strong influence on Chinese design. I’d dare to say that, with its strong repetition and reproduction practice drills, Calligraphy has modeled the Chinese world view. Let me explain why:

Recently I took part of the Scholarship Review Board of Raffles Design Institute, in which I had to analyze the work of 400 chinese students that apply to the Visual Communication Program, coming from several art academies and high schools of Shanghai, as well as far out provinces of China. The work submitted by the students should portray their abilities regarding two specific skills: Rendering and Illustration.

For the rendering examination, several batches of students were asked to watch a slideshow of celebrities (tv stars, pop artists, politicians, etc), still life, and landscapes. The students were asked to — within a 5 minute timeframe — to reproduce in an answer sheet the images they saw in the slideshow. For the illustration examination, the students were asked — again within a 5 minute timeframe — to illustrate concepts, like “happiness”, “flexibility”, “honesty”.

During the analysis of the students’ rendering skills, I was astonished with the overall quality, precision, confidence, and speed. Some of the drawings had the potential to be mistakenly attributed to some professional illustrator.

In the other hand, during the analysis of their illustration skills, I was surprised by their difficulty of illustrating the concepts (including the students that had performed well in the rendering part): the large majority of the students approached the concept in a very superficial way. Even their style changed: candidates who had portray mature and confident strokes during the rendering exam started drawing like children, using stick figures.