For this 8 week assignment, we were given 4 routes to choose from:
International Competion (Live) : A competition hosted by Creative Conscience to come up with a creative solution in aid of those with mental issues.
I’ve participated in some competitions in the past, and I think the most effective way is to look at past winners in seeing what the judges favor, and in what sort of a creative range competitors tackle subjects.
This one example really caught my eye, it was a campaign done against the possession of guns and related violence by Leli Stella Leitner and CoCo Shellim. https://www.creative-conscience.org.uk/winners/leli-stella-leitner-coco-shellim/
The first thought which came to mind was the issue they uncovered : That the popular shooting game Call of Duty has been paying gun manufacturers directly in order to license the weapon’s selection within the game, which pretty much means Call of Duty has been fueling a lot of real life violence directly. Leli and CoCo took the issue and came up with the solution of directly replicating the Call of Duty game covers with photos of school shooting & war zones. The graphics themselves I think are not the most outstanding of designs to be seen in the list of prize winners on the Creative Conscience website, BUT the action of selling this “game” on Ebay has completed the whole thing! Sometimes its not about what people did, but I think the creativity and genius could be seen in how it’s distributed. SO cool.
YET for the brief we were provided with we are asked to tackle the issue of mental illness. I wish there were more issues to choose from, not that I don’t care about mental health issues, but as a person who have experienced a deep depression and dementia on a personal level there are things Id rather not re-live, and thinking back I have gotten better with the support of family and friends around me, but MOST important is to be conscious of oneself.
At a very initial do or not-do stage, I think it’s rather a complicated issue to tackle : I think there are too many reasons one could result in bearing mental illness, it could be background/family related, relationship, sex, finance, losing someone, and in my past case my doctor concluded it was a hormone spike at a certain age. Then secondly, I do not think there is an ultimate solution aside from encouraging people to just spend more time and patience if the issue happens to someone close to you, to get over a rough patch takes time and a lot of thinking done individually…so those are the reasons I started digging in to the other briefs.
International Competition (Concluded) : Hosted by D&AD, the brief is that Adidas wants a creative solution to see sports as a catalyst for change in 1 or multiple targeted cities : Paris, London, Berlin, LA, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Moscow
The first reason is simple : the competition is concluded and I just don’t think it’s exciting…I want a project that could make an effort in changing something real time. The second reason is also VERY VERY simple : I am a Nike head (period).
I think its funny that I got turned off that the brief was not Nike, but then I did consider this brief because it does fit my personality and my love of sports, then the other concern solidified my choice in the fact that the closest city I could relate to is probably Shanghai, but even having said that a boy from Hong Kong will never fully understand the ways of the Shanghainese. As a part of China, Shanghai is truely themselves, they have their own language which roots back hundreds of years ago, they are known for having their own characteristics or may I say temper…but not even Shanghai, all these other cities one could do all the reading in the world to understand them (which I think could be super interesting), I am stuck at the point in which I don’t believe my outcome would be authentic enough, and again I am a Nike head.
Research & Development (The Science Museum Group) : The brief is in search of creative ways of helping visitors source or locate a MASSIVE number of artifacts.
As you can see, I am blogging a week late (and there are good reasons for this, will further explain later). But for week 6, Mr. John Stack, Digital Director at the Science Museum was kind enough to host our weekly webinar which was super fascinating to see the different ways in tackling the sourcing and categorizing of 425,000 mind boggling artifacts! Never expected there to be a whole nuclear plant control room either…
Despite how interesting the whole webinar is, seeing how UX designers play around with keywords, timelines and even colors, I am personally more of a image person…I think as a designer I get my “high” off of building from scratch, tackling and resolving problems is another thing, but when given a choice I would rather prefer being able to brand something or even to illustrate or hands-on graphics.
Live Collaboration : To find an existing contact, client, industry partner or professional body, understand their needs and come up with a solution/ project.
Now this is what I selected, the range! Woopie!
So the reason why I am blogging a week later is that I am working as a graphic designer for a clothing store named Still House and I was waiting for the weekend when he would bring me along to one of the few clothing factories left in Hong Kong.
Now story time first, how I knew owner Howard Chan (we call him Miu), is that when me and my girlfriend first decided to move out, he rented us a small room behind his shop, and at a time of financial despair he and another friend Gwai taught me how to make handdrip coffee, and there : I paid the cheap rent by serving coffee and took on freelance design jobs, that lasted for a year until the cafe side of Miu’s business had to shut down. Now Miu is left with his clothing store selling pieces of his own designs and also brands that are owned by some of his friends, and most recently, after taking the initiative in approaching a local clothing manufacturer, Miu is taking orders and projects for the factory, to source materials and enter the production line as “Hong Kong” as possible.
Made In Hong Kong & Small Local Businesses
First off: I was not tryig to jump ahead to conclude that I am to take on the Live Collaboration route, but that I knew I was going to tag along with Miu to visit the clothing factory on Saturday, I wanted observe and see if I am able to pick up a few things through sitting through a meeting with Miu and the manufacturer, to further discuss the possibility of taking the opportunity of the assignment + work on a project with Still House.
Miu has hired me as graphic designer for Still House about a month ago and that he has been talking about 2 things: to promote “made in Hong Kong” and buying local, also a map in locating small local businesses in the Causeway Bay shopping district.
We had a nice long chat on a 45 minute bus ride to Sham Shui Po, Miu needed to get some buttons and fabric before we head over to the factory. Sham Shui Po is known for being the lowest income area in Hong Kong, yet home to over 50 fashion materials and trinkets such as : Roles of fabrics, buttons, zippers and other related items such as feathers and silver decoratives.
The political clash of 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has shut off a big portion of foreign trade of raw materials, I came to realise this when later on Miu was told that certain linen fabrics he has been using will cease production due to atleast 3 times the regular production cost ; which is the reasoning behind why Miu wants to help ignite the local small scale production units and businesses, he thinks that it is vital for the future of Hong Kong on a cultural and general survival of this city. One of the main reasons behind the 2019 rebelling of teenagers could be pointed towards the many years of big corporations aggressiveness, bumping up Hong Kong’s rent to an unaffordable world leading rate, making home purchasing or simply running a small business almost impossible for the Gen Y and Z.
Defining Small Businesses
On our bus ride, we focused on the idea of a “map” to promote small busniesses, but first our conversation landed on how we are to define small businesses. There is this barber shop named Handsome Factory which happens to be right next door from Still House, but in the past year there is word that they have connected with a rather wealthy backer and the original 5 person shop has opened up 5 more shops around Hong Kong…small? Miu might not think so. Miu being good friends of Handsome Factory, I raised the question of : ” If you are to not include them in our map…wouldn’t that be sort of awkwards as a pal?”.
So we started coming up with a systematic approach, Miu started by suggesting listing out around 5 qualities of a small business, later on when we approach certain small businesses (which some of Miu’s shop owner friends are already excited about the idea of a joint effort or a leargue of some sort) they would only have to meet 3 of these criterias then we could include them in to our map, and they are:
- Scale : store size, number of staff, backing or funding
- Pricing : of items and products
- Own Branding : majority of products bearing a name which belongs to the owner
- Uniqueness : businesses that push’s the boundaries and adapts to the ever changing market
- Community Value : to have a positive impact towards the located area or HK in general
The Factory
We then called a delivery van, hopped on and went to the factory with 5,6 roles of fabric in the trunk.
Uniform Apparel LTD is located in Tsuen Wan, which includes one of the oldest factory districts that could date back to the 60s. They house around 100 staff including designers, tailors, floor workers and the owner which is this pleasant little ol’ lady named Carol.
Miu, Carol and her assistant first went on to talk over some jackets for Still House winter season and a hoodie for a local magazine. It’s really the first time ive seen Miu in a formal meeting, most the time we drink, laugh and playcards, but the technical terms and the composed mannerism in this meeting room setting made me realise his many years of know how and determination in building his definition of the perfect clothing brand.
I was only briefly introduced when I walked in as a partner, but has stayed quiet for around 10 minutes when sort of put my hand up like a grade school child and said ” do you mind if a snap some photos for a project I am working on please?”, there was a moment of silence before Carol asked “what for?”, so I announced that I want to collaberate with Miu in promoting Made in Hong Kong. With her mask on, her eyes turns from “what the heck” in to the friendliest smile and what she said was the moment I decided I am taking Live Collaboration, she said: “O so good of you young people to still care so much and wanting to promote Made in Hong Kong. After we are done here, would you like to take a look at the factory floor?”. I thanked her and nodded.
Carol told us that during the 80s, every factory owners and technicians flocked to Mainland China or South East Asia due to Hong Kong’s shift towards being a financial hub, rents went high, people were better educated and demanded a higher paycheck. She (and her family) has opened another factory in Malaysia, but has kept one factory here in Hong Kong, after she finished saying that she lowered her head and looked like she was thinking bout the good ol’ days, she didn’t say why but I think we all got the impression that she kept a factory in Hong Kong for being a Hong Kong company’s sake. She seemed real busy at the time and left us with her assistant to guide us through the factory.
Why?
Why did Carols’s family keep a factory here? why are the 100s of workers here? Why does Miu want to promote Made in Hong Kong?
I think we are all looking for some diversity. There is a reason why I am not sitting in an accountant firm tapping away on calculators like most others, there is a reason why Miu is trying his best at running his shop day by day with no great reward and why Carol and her family kept their factory : Hong Kong’s production was once great, and now we want to help build Hong Kong in to the diversed city it should be, the fine craft of our tailors, the creativity many of us recognize in Cantonese and the worksmanship we call the “Lion Rock Attitude” (made popular after a pop song by Roman Law : Under the Lion Rock).
For too long our city has been blindly serving and generating money for foreign brands and corporations, and within that time a lot of crafts, culture and art has been lost. After the handover of 97, many of us in Hong Kong sort of stood still and went “what now?”. That’s why it is so important to preserve and evolve Hong Kong’s talents in clothing, culinary, design and arts etc., as our status as a financial center gets replaced by Singapore and many fast rising cities in Mainland China, it is so important for us to better define ourselves, not with just by voicing out, but action.
This is what this trip to the factory has taught me.
ANDY WAS HERE
ANDY was here 🤓 