After the cramming and racing to finishing things of week 1, I have temporarily established that I shall take Saturdays off, use Sundays to read and study course materials (which is today!) and balance finishing assignment and tasks over the weekdays with work, band practice and other stuff that goes on.
So I think the lecture this week with Susanna interviewing Maziar was a great reminder to us to not forget where our practice, techniques, graphic design in general have come from.
Ill be honest and say I am one of those Millennials that are caught in a time where all we need is at our fingertips, and that a lot of the historical context of what I do is rather ignored.
But I personally have a couple of things to thank that I think rather saved me from this “heads down smart phone” norm which is actually a very real problem with teenagers here in Hong Kong, I know from working in a school: This generation of teenagers that could be great at drawing, but they lack the brain to create something new, they don’t read and they could end up all cocky and think they know it all. The education system here in Hong Kong is set up to only pick up the ones with high grade, extremely discouraging from any creative practice.
First was that I have picked up my drawing and craft skills attending “art classes” at a young age consistently over weekends for about 8 years. During that time we built models, clayed, handled a cutter, sketched, painted with acrylic, oils, made messes big and small, and some how reflecting on it, we were a lil’ kiddie studio, led by our beloved art teacher Irene who assigned us projects to open our gaze and finding new craft techniques and tools for us to learn. All that have stuck with me til’ today and gave me the guts to turn something upside down and approach projects with different methods and tools.
The 2nd thing I have to thank are my parents.
Due to economic/political reasons, our Hong Kong based family of 4 immigrated in order to gain Canadian citizenship when I was around 2 years old (I having lived there for around 7 years in total), having set me the valuable base of English reading and writing, opening me to a different perspective towards the world and multiplying my ability to obtain a bigger variety of resources (of course there are its’ pros and cons, but I will blog about it some other time.).
We were not a super rich family, but some how my parents really valued the importance of travel, taking me and my elder sister to England, France, Italy, Venice, Greece, Japan, Egypt and a road trip in the US during our time in Canada. All those trips we took has affected me in a way I only came to realise now that i’m grown to be a big boy.
3rd of all, I have a low tolerance with mobile phones and find no interest in the 10 major identical shopping malls here in Hong Kong. I pride myself in the ability to get lost and walk as much as possible to where I need to go. I discover a lot and get inspired by happenings on the journey, new shops that randomly appear and disappear, the latest sports cars, dogs cats and birds etc. This I find gives me a big advantage, understanding and perspective of my city and helps me a lot when I work.
After having side tracked in to my childhood and teenage life a lil’, the thing i’m trying to express is not history, it’s not the context of graphic design, but what is important is a personal understanding of why everybody is different. A genuine realisation of everyone experiencing different lives living in different environments. I think the personal opinion of favouring or despising a creation, a cuisine or a culture is allowed, but not after one has grasped an understanding, a forgiveness if you will of WHY things are different in a different place, in a different time, in a different brain.
Why I Am Ranting
BECAUSE when I look at Hong Kong, there is nothing going on….I am honestly not looking forward to week 2s’ task, but much rather more excited to see what fellow classmates are going to be showing.
Hong Kong has been a cultural waste land since I was born. There were the local idols that I looked up to while growing up, action figure/ graphic designer/ artists Michael Lau and Eric So (late 90s early 2000s), Dr. Kan Tai-keung (a legendary pioneer of print and traditional Chinese typography and graphics, and was leading the industry in the 80s-90s), yet compared to what I am learning from week 1 and week 2 lectures, there were no significant passing of torches, no solid community of craftsmen and after the global economic crisis we have experienced in the lat 90s early 2000s, creativity in Hong Kong is as dry as can be. Now-a-days, there is a film director here, an animator here and illustrator there, whom I bet are having a hard time making enough and would have to financially put themselves at risk to publish a book or produce a film.
We are going through a political transition (o’boy the series of riots) while the overall direction is finance, tourism and shopping malls jammed with products from around the globe. Musicians, movie makers and graphic designers alike struggle to find any significant historical roots, and that anything we produce and do are always compared to the well developed and funded imports from Japan, Europe, England, the US and now Korea. The rent is freakin’ ridiculous and no one has the space, budget or mood to carry anything forward really. Another thing I don’t want to get too in to detail is the general temper of “Hong Kongers”: arrogant, close-minded, short-sighted, selfish (I shall stop here).
I am over the age of being angry or pissed off. Like honestly I have not earned and did enough to be sitting on a high stool to critique the creative industry here in HK, but what I tried to do is to lay out an observation while trying to stay as neutral as can be.
To end this, Hong Kong is a beautiful city and that I cannot say is all bad, living in a small international city like this things get done quickly, convenience (and the variety of food) is unmatched. I’m probably not the happiest person alive living here because the focus of this city has never set its’ sights on creativity in general, and i’m saying that i’m over the phase of being all angry about it is because being born here is just my luck (in a positive and negative way at the same time).
ANDY was here
ANDY was here 🤓 