Suzy Chan

0:00 [Applause]

0:03 product branding and visual arts and social design it is an honor for me to be here to share my talk with so many experienced designers and you guys three years after my graduation so thank you it's nice there for the invitation I was born in Guangdong China and moved to Macau when I was very young Macau is a place once colonized by Portugal it's like Hong Kong is a very culturally integrated place I spent my first 21 years in China when I was 21 I went to study at London College of communication UL I graduated in 2019 and went back to China in 2021 I moved to Germany to live and work today my topic will be wrote around how I face culture shock as I live and study in different places over the years and shape and influence my designs through different life experience a few years ago.

1:10 I really shot article from Ruben patter's book The polity of design which mentioned the difference between traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese in the book it says people who use traditional Chinese which mainly in Hong Kong Macau will say those who use traditional sympathy sorry the people who use traditional Chinese meaning in Hong Kong Macau will say those who use simplified Chinese mainly in Midland have no heart and those who use impoverished Chinese who say those who use tradition Chinese have no friends so this is actually a very good example of the cultural difference that I have experienced since I was a child this is a common phenomenon incontinentness features between people often caused by confused identities it can be said that I feel these gaps all the time and have to learn to live with them as a Chinese born in the 90s my generation is catching up with China fattest growing decades in the past 20 years the experience of our generation of Chinese young people is condensed and will be fast moving Guangdong the place where.

2:21 I was born is also the first place where making China was established in the 90s I remember when I was a kid my parents friend become a millionaire in a few years because of the factory producing fake Gucci bags for his boat and went bankrupt for in a few years for other other reasons all this experience gave me a very deep memory this is a crazy unspoken experience that expression brings and this leads people in our age to always have the illusion that the world is a process that only raised forever and never Falls in 2016 with this great month of local education I applied for ualrcc in JPL for my Dem University to go to come to London so London is another crazy crazy place for me but sort of place where people often scream on the tube when I started to learn I was like a Greedy Mouse that fell into a big boss of rice that's what I would say in Chinese I was trying to observe all the information and culture that was around me I wasn't yet ruining English and spent all my time studying thy nerd I study I started to explore freely about typography visual language and for example in my visual archive project I stitched fonts by hand and tried the college idea of the time without purpose also such as one of my projects on consumerism and Q culture called Kawaii salon also a poetry about Maria microplastics also portray about mutation food in the UK supermarket and portrait for international students in the UK called nobody asked me and more typography projects so London represented infinite possibility for me at the time but at the same time because of Language and Cultural issues it seems that all this possibilities were in relevant to me I felt like I was in a bubble so I want to be more involved in the society so I started a part-time job I've done lots of part-time jobs during my first Christmas break in London I worked part-time in Asia Supermarket in 2004 every day at night young people often came into to steal alcohol or sweat fake credit cards the Hong Kong owner of that Supermarket always paid me Cashway for tax evasions later.

4:58 I went to work as waiter in Chinatown restaurant where I make fujian migrants who were smuggled in the UK around 2000. And they told me about the Dover tragedy my Chinese College told me that one of their friends almost went on that trip that was a big shock to me who was born in the 90s in southern China and where everything seemed to be sufficient it made me realize that the society and the world seem to be working in many ways that I didn't know about I asked them why are you risking your life to live your hometown poverty is worse than that they told me during the day I would study and work and write a unit and after class I spent 30 minutes on the Northern night to go to the part-time job the 30-minute process is like traveling from an ideal utopian to the real world this got me rethink about what I've learned can relate to the real world I'm facing this experience is an important turning point I started to create from my real experience and observation of society I graduated in 2019 and in my graduation project I wanted to do something about my own culture so I looked back to my culture background Macau Macau is another weird and crazy place for me it used to be colony and it is the only place in China where China where you can legally Gamble gambling tourism is making about 50 percent of the economy this casino known as venetians parishion and Londoner encapsulate what American capitalists see as European style and six them in this Oriental town as the main economy income of Macau the development of the global gambling industry along in Macau China brings huge profits and disadvantage so my desire is to inspire local residents to communicate with the government through a series of prints they are made to push the government balance between development and accessibility I design advertisement of Macau Casino based on traditional Chinese rituals to make people memorize that City by the way of secret spy is like burning fake money through which the information approaches will be carried to every corner of the city so this project is the first one I had great pleasure with but it had a problem that it wasn't a real project I wasn't in the city I wasn't interacted with the people.

7:29 So the idea that I want to do something real gradually become stronger and stronger in my mind at the end of 2019 I graduated five years of school life gave me a strong dessert to embrace Society so I started creating jobs for myself from 2019 to 201 I divided my work into three categories and continued to do them one is about culture as a freelance designer I work with different cultural institutions and create visuals for them the second part is that I set up the brand I designed products and sell them indirectly to customers and the third part is that I'm insisting on doing a social project about children's companionship on the in China so the first part is about culture this is a collaboration with artist students or company making company the discussion background of the exhibition is the current cultural chaos in China like Tech talk Etc my visual solution is to use the visual and white visual language just like animals in the white jungle and even grow right widely into the skin of another animal but the system continued to Cooper operate so this is a project to press Theory during pandemic it's nice that cooperate with Dropbox and invites different artists to express an opinion for everyone during quarantine period and this comment can be even bad ideas that just make people laugh so my whole idea is about how to survive your relationship marriage during isolation.

9:04 This is exhibition about women's space and status and times in Guangdong Times Museum and I also make projects called ops typeface which inspired by comics I also have with the I also have a project about three London groups but sales and spawns and Eastern migrants raising fund for LGBT groups in Indonesia and more other visuals for different organizations so the second part is product while working on these purchase it can be said that the ego of being a graphic designer can be fulfilled but I often think of my experience as of a self as a salesperson in the UK at the time China was always equaled with China market and China is always seen to be an actual concept internationally just like Paris is a symbol of romance and China is the num it's a number and market symbol AS Chinese gen Z were regard it as the number in the world represented the new com consumer Force form developing countries so I thought I'm in China now I know people and everything here.

10:18 I have nothing to lose why don't I try to get into the market in order to learn more about the relationship between China and Chinese market so during to to 2020 going outbreak I use most of the time at home to create and started to contact the factory online in Chinese Factory it's hard to make small order the biggest challenge every time I negotiate and order with an experienced boss is how to make myself look like someone with thousands of orders and finally it's convinced them to make order for me of 100 pieces the process is always very funny so this is some products I make during that time there's also so in the malls and the third part about the factory because of production I have Assist to many different factories in person.

11:15 This is a larger largest fabric marker in China where you can ride a motorcycle through one fabric store after another it is endless and Wild in 2018 China's textile explore reached 21 billion meters accounting for about one-fourth of the worst Tesla is supposed in the process of visiting different factories I always make many children who are left in the corner they are the all the children of people who walk in the factories I found that their personality have to extreme one is very enthusiastic the second is extremely afraid to communicate with people because of the parents long working hours all often over 12 hours most of their time our school is basically spent in the factory all of this caught my attention when the Western media talk about met in China it start talking about those huge and practical issues live wakes working hours labor security Etc but as a country that attached great importance to family responsibility when I talk to many practitioners I found that the dreaming Force for them is for to making money to make money is often for the family especially for their children behind this complex economy Miracle of China the motivation of individual is very simple but this more important factor has been overlooked in an insecurity environment when those Factory owners make money they want to make more money but in the process of expansion they are always paying again that bond to lose no matter whether the business expansion is successful or not the emotional companionship and education of the children will definitely be missing so I started to think if the discussion cannot be completed through simple more moral criticism then with such a huge topic and my limited ability here what can I do for the individual so from 2019 to 2021 I have been to the factory almost every weekend to see shinching and her sister two daughters of the factory owner I think co-creation can be the effective companion.

13:31 So I bring all my painting tools and share with them from simple painting at the beginning to compress Clothing Design later in the busy Factory environment we created a mini Factory in the corner using the resources and environment of the factory to maximize their talent transforming high in fiction affects it industrialized machine into tools that allow them to see their talents we are still in touch these days and they keep showing me the new work creation seems to have really become their way of fighting loneliness in the factory the past few year has been crazy years tensions between countries peoples Grace and fear the world seems to be in a bad mood I think if design can be used to diffuse misunderstandings and haters at such a time and and use as a tool for expression and connection this might be what I want to do with design last year I moved to Germany to work and live I feel that the shock and mixing of culture still affecting and shaping me as environment change and would continue to shape and influence my design maybe that's my way of design approach to throw myself into a new environment and be changed fully unconsciously at the end I want to share a little story when I live in Germany for about half year once I went to a supermarket to check out my mind wanted to say thank you to the cashier but my mouth wanted to say danker so I say thank you.

15:14 This is my thought today thank you for listening and this thanks again for it's not that for the invitation [Applause]