Written Paper

Written Paper

Jingfei Wang

MA Visual Arts (Graphic Design)

Camberwell College of Arts

August 2012

After doing the photography project, currently, I want to use the color of blue to be my personal symbol.  In other words, the blue oil color is like my personal logo.  Then I did my recent and final project, about ‘the value of discarded things’. This project tries to evolve, surprise and question the audience and the art world in this commercial society. To a large extent this project is about examining concepts of “value” in our culture and re-investing discarded, old, vintage things with meaning and use.   I’m trying to point viewers’ attention to specific objects and events in life that risk being overlooked as being too quotidian or too common.  I also think art making is less about the invention or construction of new things, but more about the close paying attention to existing things.  The abandoned things made by any human beings have witnessed the pass of time.  Giving these wasted old things a new life is a kind of return, as well as a kind of expectation to the nice time of the future.

In the final show I will set up a shop named ‘Brutality’ to sale these ‘redesigned products’ and randomly price them with very high price.  On the other hand, the shop will sell these things from 10% OFF to 100% OFF during the 9-day of final show in order to show the life-cycle of the product or the artwork.  And meanwhile, it will make viewers think about that what is the real value of packaged products and how do we value things.

After I finish the postgraduate course, I will return to China. As the cities are being reconstructed and newly built continuously in China, there will be a crying need for high-quality talents of art design, especially the designers with both the Chinese and Western ideas about design. The advanced design ideas and methods that I learnt in Camberwell College of Arts will definitely strengthen my competitiveness in the near future. I will engage myself in the field of design based on my expertise and make contribution to my motherland.  But as a new designer, I need several steps to achieve my ideal.

Commercialization of Art and Design

In China, understanding how to commercialize the idea of design by translating the idea to money is the first step to be a successful designer.  Because only solve the subsistence problem then can we achieve the ideal.

Brand Management of Commercial Design

Most of the primary designers when they graduate from the university just blindly access the design task without long-time aim and methods, which cannot truly improve the design ability of themselves.  Some of my friends try to change their occupation after doing the design several years.  They think, on one hand, they always do the similar design repeatedly and tediously that means there is no trace of achievement at all, on the other hand, there is no study room for improvement.  So I think it is very important that forming our own brand of design from the style of design to the long-time planning of development by picking out our own customers who are suitable to our style and making the feedback of our brand image to customers, and then achieving the expansion of the channel of customers.  Through which, more and more costumers will come to us and it will change the passive situation of the new designer.

Marketization of Brand

This step is according to the market demand to transform and progress the design. Thoroughly understanding the design intent of the market is beneficial for designers to break into the real market and improve the market influence of design.  Both the small design studio and big design company all rely on the brand market-oriented to survive.

Product Oriented Marketing

Product oriented first emerges in the field of industry and generally used in the utility industry, but in this day and age more and more ideologically oriented industries, such as the industry of design and Internet intend to adopt it.  In order to make the effectiveness of the amount of production, they use the reasonable production line planning based on the way of reproducibility and improvement and upgrading, which means making the design mass production.  Most artists and designers cannot understand it, because art and design is to create something unique and not replicable, and there is no so-called design pattern of mass production.  But too many resources have been developed and used in the present society, not excepting art and design.  Due to the refinement of the division of labor and job duplication, mass production is very necessary.  But the prerequisite is the effectiveness of the innovation.  If one idea of design can evolve more design creativity and make it through the product that can be accepted and used by people, then it will bring about huge income and obviously it will make designer mainly focus on mining the creativity and help them out of the repeated and tedious design.

Emotional Design

Actually, it is not a step of longer-term goal, it is the most important thinking of design, understanding the fundamental needs of the public, finding the breaking point of user emotion and making different surprise for the audience, and eventually letting them to psychologically dependent on the product.  Only through it, can impress people.  Making the perfect integration of design and emotion can not only bring about the sense of joy of design, but change the whole world by the advantage of design in a long run as well.