Zhihong Shen’s talks

Zhihong Shen, who is a professor at Wuhan Textile University in China, had a talk on Tuesday class about the concept of design through showing his graphic design works. Although it is only a shortly ten minute’s speech, he explained the concept so well.

His type of design works used the Chinese characters express the inspiration of design. One of his works really caught my attention. It is a poster about the idea of Art, which is a design include the technique of hand drawing and computer. The using of colors only included black and white. When I first looked at the picture, a question popped out of my head “What was that?”  I feel surprised because I couldn’t figured out what it is even I am Chinese. However, after he explained about it, I totally changed my mind and I started to appreciate his design. The letter in the middle of the page is a Chinese character means Art. The way he made the word misty since he wanted to tell people the principle of Art. It is represents no matter in anytime; designer and artist should not over designing. Because when a work carries too much technique, the work will come out with the misty message as the same idea of the poster. You can see how contents and forms work together by looking at this poster. The content of this  poster is the idea of good design should be creative but the technique is no as important as the idea.  Since technique is a tool to help for designing. And the most important of design is the concepts and ideas.  And forms is how Shen use the techniques to make the word fuzzy in order him to bring out the message to viewers.

Shen said design is a process and an action. First step before started to design, designers have to understand their customer needs. Also think the better way to express their idea, in order to achieve own great design.