V&A Museum: China Design Now

Yesterday I visited the V&A Museum to see the design exhibiton about China. The exhibition was in three sections, representing three different cities in China, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.



Shenzhen: Frontier City

No longer than 30 years ago graphic design in China did not exist. Before the design industry began to flourish Shenzhen was nothing more then a cluster of fishing villages on the northern border of Hong-Kong. In 1980 these were converted into the countries first Special Economic Zone, which is now the worlds largest manufacturing centre. Shenzhen, could be called the 'birthplace' of contemporary Chinese graphic design due to endless printing resources available.

Typography became very popular in Japan due to the unique pictoral Chinese characters, which is rather different from the 26 letter alphabet in Western tpyography.

My favourite piece of design work from the exhibition were these two posters. The first called, Graphic Design in China, by Chen Shaohua, 1992, and the second called Design and Lifestyle by Alan Chan, 1998.