Death is a universal forbidden topic that appears all over the world. In western developed countries society, such as Americans also views death as a denial culture (Aries, 1974). This denial phenomenon seems to affect Chinese society as well. Negative emotions and horror are easily spread among people's thoughts because of the mystery of death. The influence of communication about death maybe underestimates by people.
“Hello, Death” is a project that invites the public to know more and investigate the “taboo” topic Death. The project aims to raise awareness and rediscover the value of death. To reduce the misleading concept which is caused by the traditional culture. Through this project, readers may view death from another perspective. A variety of presentation methods such as illustration, publication, and web design will be applied within the project. Illustrations are used to present the afterlife imagination of different people.
Hong Kong can be a stressful place to live in, especially for our youth. Young people of today have firm beliefs in values that they cherish and are constantly caught in a struggle between the values of the previous generation and the values of popular culture.
Young Protestants, just like average young people, face the same struggles in contemporary society. The distinction between Protestants and average young people is the faith they carry in God and the application of faith in their daily lives.
This project (Stories of faith) aims to open the eyes of the public on the journey of faith by the Protestant youth of Hong Kong. Through their testimony in school, work and daily life, these stories testify their dreams and vision. Everyone’s story is special, yet collectively located in the same home known as Hong Kong. I hope these stories will be a light of inspiration and comfort to you, the audience.
Have you ever experience your parent's death or divorce when you are studying in middle school? More than half of the teenagers that are living in a public house or rental house as a single-parent family in Hong Kong. These family are also the second big poverty group through the research.
These teenagers might need to face lots of challenges such as studying, family argument and peer pressure. However, most of them might not share their mental suffering with others in the first few months. These might affect their future with deviant behaviour such as taking drugs, participating in Triad as some extreme cases.
We hope the design with the school promotion, social media and souvenirs can help the teenagers relieving their negative emotion and trigging their thoughts through the concepts of “searching help”, “sharing thoughts” as well as ""separating the attention"" after becoming the teenagers in a single-parent family.
This project probes what connects the imagined community of Hong Kong’s young generations. It takes stock of experiences of shared suffering. Any imagined community is shaped by a common context and by shared experiences, and this project involves a series of documents that capture and display those of Hong Kong.
Under the advancement of technology, transitional designs are replacing by technology. We pay bills by using an e-wallet. We listen to music by using an app. Communication design gradually becomes homogeneous and emotionless.
However, graphics are like a container of emotion, giving people an enrichment of the inner mind and connecting each other in society. So, this project aims to explore the possibility of how graphics can take a stake in a technology-driven society.
Emo-flow is an interactive graphic design approach combined emotion and data. Based on audiences’ data, 25 emotions visualised into graphics for designers as a reference to create graphics. This design project takes an art project (to promote artists who in the field of music, writing and drama) as a background. The design approach would be applied to the promotional items (e.g. tickets, posters and leaflets) for the project’s activities.
We are the Generation Y, as we born and grow up with the Hong Kong Administrative Era, we are the creature of the era without experiencing any era shifting. It is no doubt that we have the sharpness vision on elaborating our current era and values in Hong Kong. “2020” is an authorship project to represent our vision, aims to provide an alternative vision for Hong Kong citizens to coexist in current Hong Kong. Substitutes into the young generation's vision to elaborate on the Hong Kong values in Hong Kong Administration Era (1997-2047). “2020” is a project through 22 Hong Kong individual values, to create 22 conceptual explorations, to clarify people could base on individual values to influence Hong Kong society, to figure out G(Y) imagination to Hong Kong values and future.
“Aesthetic” is an abstract word seems can be understood by visual or other senses. With the culture of Hong Kong, “Aesthetic” seems only to have a connection with art and design, this word is hard to realize by the people who without the fundamental knowledge of art and design, they believe there are distant with “Aesthetic”. In fact, aesthetic is a sensation of human, we can use aesthetic by any sensory organs, even emotion. This is a kind of unique sensation stimulation in our daily life, and the pleasure is the proof of aesthetic that exists in our life.
In order to investigate how people generate aesthetic in life, this project invited a group of interviewees to do the daily aesthetic test. After the test and literature review, there are three insights were found: nature, memories and stimulation, moreover, the main inspiration of aesthetic comes from daily life.The project is about creating a holistic experience based on sensorial identity, flexible identity, emotional dimension, interaction, and storytellings. The best way to experiment with these elements was to create a fictitious country. The country called, ‘Republic of GaOn’, which means the center of the world, and created city identity along with the characteristic of the country. The core value is to understand and respect cultural, historical, and environmental aspects and embrace the diversities. Additionally, Storytelling must contain a connection with the real world. Therefore, storytellings and the architectures are all influenced by existing countries, yet including fiction, to let people sympathized and believe it is actually the existing world and city. Project is not only to discover the importance of how to execute the communication methods, but also it is important how much designers understand and well project the city’s life, and people’s life.
Muse is an experimental design project studying the musical perception of human through three installation experiences. People are encouraged to interact with the installations and explore the music visually with their own perception. We try to understand how people understand music here.
The name ‘Muse’ is taken from the inspiration of Greek mythology. The Greek goddesses of art & music are the Muses. They are known as one entity, though there are actually 9 of them and each is unique in their own way. It resonances with the concept of perception as perception could be understood universally to some extent, though still unique among each of us.
‘Connection’ is a project to raise awareness on dynamics within youth romantic relationships, focusing on behaviours & conflicts between partners. It attempts to encourage youth to love better, as research identified that unhealthy, or abusive relationship behaviours persist among youth. Patterns formed continue into adulthood & so educating youth can help in healthy self development. The project’s purpose is to encourage self reflection on their own relationships to encourage positive changes.
There are three components to this project: interactive web-based game, postcards & stickers. The website would enable visitors to live out stories of relationships based on true experiences of their peers. Their decisions would determine the outcome of their relationship. Since love has been misinterpreted in relationships, the postcards and stickers will show a warped concept of this ‘love’ as well. They can be scanned through the Artivive app to reveal a hidden, more toxic message.
Human beings rely on plants for survival, which is an inseparable relationship. Nowadays, we don’t need to cultivate in a farmer anymore. However, as the business model changes, urban people are less motivated to interact with plants.
My project FLOWERY IN CITY is hoped that the plant-related knowledge and application can blend into different design approaches to promote human-plant interaction and plant motives. So that urban residents can feel and experience a variety of benefits that plants bring to us during our daily life, Besides, let user visually identify the varieties of local house-plants and wild plants, also encourage people respect plant diversity and raise awareness.
Ethnic inclusion has to be achieved cognitively, meaning one acquires cultural knowledge and awareness to include another ethnicity; and physically, meaning you have the skill to interact with another culture. This project, Cultural Run (文化快步), aims to minimize the problems of Pakistanis’ unaccepted local identity and misconception, provide a better alternative to existing cultural tours, and encourage Chinese-Pakistani interactions to enhance the target audience, Chinese secondary school students’ cultural competence and achieve the ultimate goal of ethnic inclusion.
The project is specified in Hong Kong comedy. It is a film festival showcase how food and taste create magical power in Hong Kong comedy, which includes comedy effects and how food used in comedy reflects daily life of different social classes. Why Hong Kong is being Hong Kong is how its own culture shape the city. Comedy has a undoubtable and undeniable effect in shaping Hong Kong’s image.
It is a film festival that aims to promote Hong Kong comedy and local food culture. The project cooperates with Broadway circuit which is located in Yau Ma Tei. Thus, to promote food culture in the Yau Ma Tei district.
Behind the laughter, there are always something more.
‘What we need to fear is fear itself’ said Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Though we may want to deny, a research on the September 11 attacks pointed out that, instead of the attack itself, the increase of death rate is more likely caused by the fear of flight - people try to replace flight by car, but overlooking that, the possibilities of car accidents is actually much higher.
Fear is subjective. Even things that not likely to happen, or not existing, still, they may cast a strong fear on us, and some even lead to phobias. While we commonly thought fear only related to negative feelings, Fear-sualise provides a solution to play with it, and, take back our control.
Hong Kong is a fast-paced city. This lifestyle leads to stress and pressure. Mindfulness is an essential tool to help identify the inner causes of suffering, and also profound peace of mind that is acquired with liberation.
The target audience of my project would be primary school students. The main reason is that it is better to learn mindfulness when they are young because children absorb knowledge better in their childhood, to improve their resilience.
The objective of my project is to create a campaign which can promote mindfulness for the primary school student and change the stereotype of mindfulness.
This project is inspired by the excessive use of disposable plastic nowadays. If we keep the lifestyle of relying on disposable plastic, the marine refuse will remain in a high amount. After that, the density of micro-plastics in the ocean will be getting higher and higher, seafood, including commercial fish, will be contaminated by micro-plastics. As a result, clean fishes from today with fewer amounts of micro-plastics will regard as valuable and rare in the future.
Nowadays, it's hard to help the world even if we try to. The act of charity can be said to be a complex struggle between the heart and the brain – we feel for the less fortunate and want to help the world improve, but we want to do it within our means and for our money to go to the most deserving organization. Every day, we are plagued with aggressive marketing tactics, an overload of information, and a lack of confidence as to how our money is being used.My proposed solution is a more comprehensive and functional charity-comparing platform, Clarity in Charity, that is engagingly informative while also providing a fair chance to every charity to advocate their respective causes without bias. Different than other charity comparing platforms currently on the market, I have integrated certain features into this platform that promotes critical thinking and encourages users to fully understand the background of charitable causes as well as their personal donation philosophies.
I am listening the people shouting; Sounds of falling debris; Bullets shot in the air.
I gather all these emotions, To evoke memories from the sounds, Triggering one’s imagination through these fragments.
This won’t be the whole picture of the events, Nobody knows the whole picture. It is only a piece of the puzzle among the many stories, collected into my recordings.
No matter how distressing or unpleasant, this is part of our story, and shapes who we are.
Listening to sound archives
閱界 means “reading border” and also sounds as “crossing border”. As the name implies, this work hopes to guide viewers to ponder the border and explore the stories it beholds.
To explore the meaning of the border, I visited the village that straddles China and Hong Kong: Sha Tau Kok. Here, I have come into contact with all kinds of residents that each had their unique experiences of the border, leading me to understand the impact of the border on people's culture, history, and even identity.
These works show the residents' thoughts on the border in the form of illustrations. They illustrate different perceptions of the border and attitudes of living in a border town. Those stories hope to nourish a sense of border, allowing Hong Kong people a new perspective not only on Sha Tau Kok, but on the experiences of living in Hong Kong.
BetterBuzz is a phone and life balance project that helps people build their own personal sense of digital wellbeing, focus on quality experiences, and improve their concentration. This project also helps the audiences to understand the cause behind through design solutions. Moreover, it encourages people to focus on important issues rather than phone. Ultimately, to promote phone and life balance.
Language is co-existing with the society, it will inevitably change with the community culturally, historically, socially, and politically. Hong Kong Cantonese witnesses rise and fall of the city, experiencing constant changes of words and phrases over time emotionally, from threatening, playful, sarcastic, to expressive. With the advancement of technology, trendy idioms produced frequently but subsequently replaced by new ones. The life cycle of the words and phrases is short, just like the lifetimes of disposable products.
The project “Can-tonese” adopting disposable can as identity symbolizes the short lifespan and constant emotional transformation regarding Hong Kong Cantonese words and phrases. Aims to provide a fresh perspective and experience in perceiving Hong Kong Cantonese. By highlighting the emotional changes, emphasizing the “fast dialect” phenomenon, to raise public awareness of Hong Kong language and cultural value.
Crescendo Imagery explores visual storytelling methods and experiential narratives, addressing the limitation of photography and embodying subtle sentiments of protest experience. The design project narrates the Anti-ELAB protests from diverse perspectives, outside of the scope of mass media, balancing the repetitive impression of sensational images and emphasising the value of personal documentation. Exploring the boundaries of traditional communication media and experimental narration, this project hopes to communicate to a broader audience, enriching their understanding of the Anti-ELAB protests, and to encourage others to explore forms of personal documentation.
For many years since the colonial government, the unlicensed hawkers have been facing struggles to survive as selling things on the street is illegal. The government’s rules and the monopoly of the shopping mall are the root problem causing the decline of the street market culture. People do not have much understanding of the livelihood and cultural value of those hawkers, some of people might even think that they should not sell things on the street which is an illegal activity.
A.M. market is a cultural promotional campaign that we want the general public to change the misunderstanding of unlicensed street market culture. The ultimate goal of the project is to encourage people to discover the attractiveness of midnight and dawn market through promoting Hong Kong tourism and improving the images and experience of street market culture.
Living in the hustle bustle in Hong Kong with the world's longest working hours, the creative industry has been developing creative output as relaxation therapy. Meanwhile, they have been signaling the pressing dilemma of their mental health issues due to the public’s lack of appropriate recognition of their value, irregular workload and working hours, and inadequate financial rewards, as they have always been neglected by the society and are not on their own initiatives to change. Proposing deep play relaxation tailored for the creative industries, d-66 project encourages to develop unique relaxation habits in 66 days to enhance mental wellbeing on their own initiatives. The project contains an app and 6 relaxation kits for different work natures. Users can find their 'oasis type' among 240 combinations with the app that suggests a specific plan with a kit of creative relaxation tools, track their daily tasks and transform from a fatigued d-66 to an energetic d-0.