This week we were to look in to trends and then establish a moodboard which is able to reflect my direction and the targeted audiences. There are 2 parts which I have looked in to: the first being the trends related to shopping, and secondly what are some trends in graphic design.
To start off, here is a recap of the ideas and plans I have for this project:
1: Branding of the “Haven Street association” (un-named).
2: P.O.P. at the front of the street to distribute reading material related to “Haven Street association”.
3: To set up lockers on Heaven Street or inside Heaven Court to able a comfortable day of shopping, this could also help encourage shoppers in CWB to drop by Heaven Street.
4: Increase the amount of seating outside of shops for people to enjoy a coffee and take a breather, to enjoy the peacefulness of Heaven Street.
5: Website with a “spendings calculator”, offering a combination of individual items or meals offered by Haven St.’s restaurants and shops at a desired and could help determine how much one will be spending. Listing out all shops that are part of the “Haven Street association”, mailbox etc.
6: Regular schedueled events : exhibitions, block parties/silent discos, markets, talks and seminars.
7: A coaching/advice programme for people interested in starting their own business or shop, as far as techniques of designing clothes or being a tattoo artist, appointments could be reserved with the talents of Haven Street to have a friendly chat in-shop or on the benches outside of Haven Street’s shops.
SHOPPING TRENDS
Having lived through 2019-2020, there was a certain something something in which I have totally ignored before I begun researching on shopping trends….THE PANDEMIC!
An article titled 10 Great Ways To Attract New Customers To Your Small Business on Criteo.com posted in April, 2020 has shed much light on some existing points I have made and are able to further these plans.
Indoors
I was a lil’ upset with myself not having picked up on this earlier. The year 2020 as decribed by some of my friends as “an experiment” in seeing how to maintain a normal life on the internet, still with no clear end in sight. With activities such as courses and live shows being carried out online, businesses have depended on these online activities to advertise and stimulate purchase, taking advangtage of the situation in further strengthening their brands and businesses during the pandemic.
To prove this point, I went over to check up on one of the most popular shopping centers in Hong Kong : K11 Art Mall.
K11 Art Mall & K11 Musea is known to be the first malls to use art and design as their main theme and attraction, they are the first to introduce Hong Kong to it’s first : MoMA store, Offwhite, Arc’teryx, Boy’ London etc.
What have the K11 group been doing when most Hong Kong citizens prefer to stay home? Webinars of course!
The Online Trend
I think this is such a smart and quick reaction by the K11 group, by carrying out online workshops, such as : ARMANI Makeup Workshop, Moss Terrarium Workshop, Creative toys for children, they are teaching participants in how to use the products they are selling, despite the times they have taken the form of friendly leisure courses online yet is still able to poke at that human desire to purchase.
In response to this trend,
6: Regular schedueled events : exhibitions, block parties/ silent discos, markets, talks and seminars.
&
7: A coaching/advice programme for people interested in starting their own business or shop, as far as techniques of designing clothes or being a tattoo artist, appointments could be reserved with the talents of Haven Street to have a friendly chat in-shop or on the benches outside of Haven Street’s shops.
These 2 shall have the flexibility of being held online. This will benefit people that might live further away from Haven Street and if a pandemic does hit Hong Kong again these conversations and workshops can still carry on, connecting “Haven Street Association” with it’s supporters no matter what happens. Content, is a vital part of any branding now-a-days.
The Haven Street Influencers
Based on 8 Innovative Retail Trends to Watch in 2021 on Tinuiti.com, the use of social networks like Faceook and Instagram is to be added to:
7: A coaching/advice programme for people interested in starting their own business or shop, as far as techniques of designing clothes or being a tattoo artist, appointments could be reserved with the talents of Haven Street to have a friendly chat in-shop or on the benches outside of Haven Street’s shops.
As Miu would like to highlight the many talents of Haven Street, a schedule could be set up for each shop owner in introducing and vlogging their own skill or craft. These short clips should not add extra work load to shop owners and would be set on a schedule, for example : Still House : week 1, Handsome Factory (barber shop) : week 2 Friday’s (tattoo shop) : week 3…
By setting up more content with social media platforms, the influence of “Haven Street Association” shall be able to be much greater.
Selective Shopping
As I mentioned in my slide presentation on week 6 , Haven Street has gained some momentum in recent years due to a shared belief in keeping things local (or yellow, Are You Blue or Yellow, The Colors Dividing Hong Kong by FCC). With that said, one of Haven Street’s best advantages is the fact that most shop owners think alike, falls into the age group of mid 20s-40s and has aligned values (political or not). The above trend mentioned by Tinuiti.com has solidified the core of “Haven Street Association”, although personally I do want to avoid the mentioning of political standpoint and views, as a design project though, IF shop owners & comers do feel that : being the most yellow street in Hong Kong is one of the main draws of this street, I guess there needs to be room for this trait of Haven Street to be expressed through the content within this project.
GRAPHIC DESIGN TRENDS
Graphic Design Trends 2020 : Breaking the Rules on Graphicmama.com have reviewed 13 commonly seen graphic design trends of this year.
For most of the shops on Haven Street (full list yet to be confirmed), some of these trends I think ill have to pass based on observation of these shops. To describe most shops being considered by comparing with the usual shopping in the Causeway Bay area, they tend to bare a middle high range price tag (classy so to say), they are owned by local owners but most of them are heavily influenced by foreign aesthetics.
With the above said, I am to eliminate certain graphic trends that don’t really align with this classy, mature yet energetic vibe which gives Haven Street it’s appeal.
In order to prove that the list by Graphicmama.com is relevant, I went to 2 other websites that are well known to the design industry to do some checking : 1 being dezeen.com and the other adsoftheworld.com , and came out with these results:
8 : Simplified Illustrations, 7 : Collages of Drawings and Photos, 9. Isometric Illustrations, 11 : Patterns & Textures, 4 :Typography craze
Regarding graphic trends, this cross checking has set my first steps in creating the branding for “Haven Street Associates”.
HONG KONG DESIGN
Before I begin my moodboards, I want to note certain design aspects I will try my best to avoid in desiging a local based brand.
Most commonly seen is that when designing for Hong Kong, it equals “old 60s-70s Hong Kong” : that specific shade of red and green, caligraphy, sail boats, trams and lamp shads. Many would place the problem to Hong Kong’s lack of culutral rooting and maybe to pull specific objects that are nostalgic Hong Kong is the easiest way to relate.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying these are not nice…but to local designers these are VERY Hong Kong in an offcial, government assigned way. Most commonly seen with government backed designer events, it is recognizable due to how flat they are and that conservative intent to make things look neutral and friendly. I think it’s easy to fall in to this when one is designing content for the public. The color selection are also worth a mention, is it the quality of sunlight we are getting? Is it the fact that we are surrounded by grey buildings and living in shadows all the time? Most of these palletes seem dull. Old and new, aside from the lack of texture, I think the use of opposite colors is always reoccuring.
Most of all, I think the impression of meaningful, quality graphic design was set by a legendary Hong Kong designer named Kan Tai Keung.
What could be reflected upon looking at master Kan’s work though is that he has done a lot of collaging and word play, most active in the 90s, he excels at geometric forms and structure, compositions often portrait a sense of proportion and that there is one important factor to draw Hong Kong people’s eyes : the play with Traditional Chinese characters.
WEEK 7 CHALLENGE : MOODBOARDS
Traditional Chinese is not used in Mainland China, in fact it is said to be slowly being replaced by Simplified Chinese. Aside from Hong Kong, there are still havens (no pun-intended) for use of Traditional Chinese, mainly in Taiwan and the seldom application seen in Japan and Korea.
As mentioned in the trends, Typography Craze is being widely applied in graphic design as of now, my intention of this first mood board is to explore how designers have broken up the Chinese charater’s form, often collages with graphics, and some neat twist and displacements in typography design in general. Mainly this is to be applied to the logo of “Haven Street Associates”.
These are also in sync with trends mentioned above, the application of this is intended to be applied on surfaces and graphics such as signage, printed material and web banners. I think this takes care of my concern with the flatness of “government designs” and is in line with the hand crafted, classy tones of Haven Street and it’s shop owners.
I was laying in bed trying to come up with a name to replace the temporary “Haven Street Associates”. Haven Union? Haven United? Safe Haven? No….then I started thinking of the habits of a shop keeper : Open shop, light switch, turn on the air-con….then I started remembering the times I go there when the clock strikes 9pm, shop owners at Haven Street rarely just lock their doors and leave, the chatting happens outside of their shops, on benches at 9 when they smoke or have a beer ; THAT is when a Haven Street shop owner’s union thing would gather and come up with ideas, hence Haven After 9.
Now back to the 3rd mood board, the background of concrete and tiles reperesent the setting one would see in Haven Street, the point of this final mood board is to identify textures and colors that would hold up against this aged concrete grey setting. The top half are pulled from traditional references (the red and green I was talking about), and the bottom is a route more modern.
Personally I find the old school orange and green against wood, the peach colors with metal working & that dirt blue working pretty well, it’s kind of what I want to see, but I guess that will be up to Miu and the shop keepers of Haven Street, maybe I can catch them at 9 tonight.
ANDY WAS HERE
ANDY was here 🤓 