HAN-CHUN CHEN EDUCATION AIC Product Design Pre-Master
BBA: International Business
Diploma Program
2012 to 2016
2017 to 2019
National Taiwan University ‑ Taipei, Taiwan
EC Design School AIC ‑ Taipei, Taiwan
CONTACT Phone Address E-mail
+886970428421 4F., No.13, Ln. 193, Sec. 2, Fuxing S. Rd., Da’an Dist., Taipei City 106, Taiwan (R.O.C.) louanachenhcc@gmail.com
Contents 8. 6. A FEMININE PORTRAIT 6.
AN ISLAND THAT FLOATS 8.
14. ABOUT TIME 14.
28. CIRCUS OF SKINS 28.
38. THE BREAKFAST CLUB 38.
42. Sculptures, Graphic Design, Photography and Paintings 42.
Sculptue: Self-portrait
A FEMININE PORTRAIT
“Being a woman is not a hobby or a pet interest of mine. You get to drop in…… But when you move on to your next thing, I’m still here.” —— Diane Nguyen, “Bojack Horseman” When I thought about doing a self-portrait, I listed down essential things and events I met in life. Subsequently, just as this quote from the popular Netflix animation series has described, I have found out that everything in my life — including choices I made and difficulties I encountered, are actually, in every way, gender-related.
Growing up in a christian family under a rather conservative asian cultural context, as a girl, I often experienced people constantly reminding me about this fact through direct or indirect ways. “A feminine portrait” was created from these complex feelings about being a woman. A state of being fluid In contrast to the fixed and rational ways of using language under traditional patriarchy rules, a new “fluid style” of conveying thoughts and feelings was proposed in order to tell women’s own stories.
I roughly sketched to express this “fluidity” in these photos below. Five words I chose five keywords (fluidity, void, gaze, fly, language) from the “Postmodern Feminist” chapter of the book “Feminist Theories and Genre”. These words are not a conclusion of me or gender issues I met, and there is no simple conclusion for that. They only represent some of the aspects, being attached to the sculpture in random order, which also reflects the fluidity and arbitrary character here.
Move with the air flow A bit like a wind chime, the sculpture turns and wiggles along with the air flow. In order to achieve the fluidity characteristic, I used iron wires as the backbone of my work and it allowed me to shape a space within the sculpture that continuously alters while looking from different directions. Moreover, all parts of the sculpture were only held together, not glued and fixed, hence remain movable just like fluid.
An Island That Floats created Feb, 2019 There are over 269 peaks above 3,000m in Taiwan, in fact, 70% of the island is composed of mountains. As a person who was born and raised in Taiwan, life is deeply related to mountains and sea. Even if you don’t visit them often, you can still sense their present through the humid weather, frequent earthquake, typhoon attacks, and the winding roads you take while heading to eastern Taiwan. On the other hand, the different perspectives about Taiwanese national identity and the political suppression of Taiwan’s international space have brought potential instability, which to me is a state of floating.
Mt. Jade Photography by Wen Qu Ke
One of the ispiration images was a topograph‑ ic map — which was the first impression of mountains while I learned about them back in
An island made of mountains while floats on the water — it’s a combination of two contradicting concepts: the quiet, stable mountains and the active, moving water. I try to translate this floating status into a set of sofa. The form was inspired by Mt. Jade South Peak and I used soft clay during the forming process in order to catch the unique posture of ridge lines.
geography classes.
To paint the surface, at first I tried to use “paper mache” technique. I painted on xuan paper (rice paper) and tested the outcomes of 5 kinds of xuan paper. However, as I finished the first layer of paper mache on my mini model, it did not turn out as I thought. The pattern was fine, but the image of mountain and water was unclear. (paper mache process on the next page)
For another attempt, acrylic pouring technique was applied to give fluidity and color complexity. It went well and surprisingly displayed the original image of a topographic map. The chair in the front is mostly greenish, while the one in the back has a tint of blue and purple, as it naturally looks like from a far view. When sit and lie on the sofa, you are embraced by the unique landscape of an island that floats. The curvy surface gives users unlimited ways of lying, allowing them to rest their body in the hollow while soaking in the beauty and serenity of nature.
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ABOUT TIME created Jan, 2018
Before the sexagesimal time system was established, human sensed the passing of time through observing changes occurred in nature. In that time, the answer to the question �What time is it?� is vague and subjectively interpreted by individuals. In this design, I try to bring back the primitive way of measuring time, in order to pull users out of the rules of the existing civilization.
ABOUT TIME
People nowadays are used to organizing their daily lives within the 24-hour system, constantly chased by deadlines, mourning the past and worrying about the future. However, neither the past nor the future belong to us, as the present is the only thing we truly own.
Product design
How do we deal with the endless sense of anxiety in time?
Product design
ABOUT TIME
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“blurring the definition of time”
How to release the anxiety towards time?
To explore the possibilities of the issue, I conducted a brainstorm with my classmates. We started from “How to release the anxiety towards time?” ,and then narrowed down to “blurring the definition of time”.
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The next thing was to list ways to “blur the definition of time”.
ABOUT TIME
While digging down to the essence, time is just a simple term to describe changes, which we don’t have to be anxious about.
Product design
Several interesting ideas came up, but I personally preferred the idea of knowing time through observing nature, which brought out a reflection of the essence of time.
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sketches: idea development With the rough idea of redefining time through natural objects in mind, I started to draw.
Product design
ABOUT TIME
I also listed factors that might indicate the changes of time in nature: color temperature of sunlight sound of wind blowing through trees sound of waves length of shadows in a day the moon color of sky shapes of clouds sound of rivers ‌
Product design
Through pages of sketches, I formulated the concept of a piece of driftwood with moss on it. Also, because the driftwood and the moss are a classic picture that reminds people of the coast, the sound of waves was also added to the design, as an auditory memory of ocean.
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“driftwood, waves, moss, and...�
ABOUT TIME
I sketched to study trunks and branches in different positions.
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sketches: forming
Product design
ABOUT TIME
To decide a suitable form to display ideas, I tried to simplify the shapes of branches and abstract the figures.
21 Product design
ABOUT TIME
I also used watercolor to demonstrate the atmosphere I hoped to create in the final design.
22 ABOUT TIME Product design
Final Design: Prototype
Few attempts to explore the form And for deeper explorations of the form, I handmade models with clay. In the first model(above), scales made of paper were used to represent the moss, which did not look as eye-catching as I thought. The branches at the right side made it looked a bit like an alien creature. In the second model(below), I wanted to make the moss look more delicate, so I used glitter powder and color sand, and the driftwood was reformed into a simpler shape. Glitter powder did not transfer the texture of moss well either, so I came up with another idea later.
23 Product design
The final prototype
As light being an important factor for moss to grow, cellophane was used to alter colors of light while photographing.
ABOUT TIME
For the final 1:1 prototype, I used aluminum wire and paper in the core to build the structure, then covered it with clay and shaped it. As for the moss, I cut plastic clothing and synthetic leather (both waste materials) into shape of leaves and sewed them together. After the clay dried off, the �moss� was attached onto it, scattered in a irregular pattern. I spread color sands and a little glitter powder to add on another texture.
24 Product design
ABOUT TIME
The design serves as a reminder of time defined by nature. We all are taught to make good use of time, which, in other words, meant filling your time with useful things. However, the truth is that we all have our own pace of living, and it can be tiring to follow others’ all the time.
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Scales are designed to imitate moss on driftwoods. In the final design, they will all be black at midnight, then gradually turning green at dawn. (In order to see the transformation , the product should be connected to electricity.) The product will be able to link on wifi and receive information about wind speeds at the nearest coast, so that it can generate sound of waves according to it.
ABOUT TIME
As a piece of driftwood lying on the beach, changes occur around it every moment— waves, wind, humidity and sunlight make it look different every instant.
Product design
Sound of waves is played to replace the tick-tock sounds of regular clocks. The colors and directions of each flake will vary with time in a day. Users can get a rough idea of time but will not know the exact hour and minute.
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ABOUT TIME
More about the thoughts behind the work: We learn to perceive the concept of time through observing changes. The observation starts when we are born and stops only as we die, and the concept of time will no longer exist as observation stops. Driftwoods are dead parts of trees, an ending of a long-lived life. Moss is short-lived yet continuously reborn in a life cycle. Together they perform the instability of time.
The prototype under 4 different combinations of 6 colors of cellophane.
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CIRCUS OF SKINS created Jan, 2018
CIRCUS OF SKINS
We could surely get a larger closet for storage, but as we keep shopping, there will never be enough space. The ultimate solution is simple: buy less, and get rid of those we don’t really need. This can be hard to achieve under the recent trend of fast fashion, in which clothes nearly become disposal, while our lust is never fulfilled. A series of clothes storage furnitures were created under the rethinking to fast fashion, along with a protest against fur—the unnecessity of stripping animal skins to decorate ourselves.
Product design
We buy new clothes and accessories every month, and storage has become a serious problem for most of us. Is there a perfect way to solve this?
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Where do we put our clothes?
Product Design
CIRCUS OF SKINS
Interestingly, we often don’t use those furniture designed for clothes storage to store clothes, instead we put them on chairs, couches, beds and even on the floor. This often turns our room into a mess: piles of clothes everywhere. I started to think of ways to help people organize clothes quickly and easily.
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searching for possible solutions through mind-maping
a closet that meets the following needs might solve our problem:
And clearly it has to be large. But how large?
CIRCUS OF SKINS
Or, to think in a different way: The real reason that we never have enough space for storage is that we simply have too many clothes!
I once think of a all-purpose closet that comes in modular units. Users combine units in any ways they want to serve for their own needs.
Product design
-easy to classify different kinds of clothes -adjustable to meet personal needs -sufficient spaces for temporary storage
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A Deeper Problem After mind-mapping and conducting interviews, I realized that there will never be a perfect closet to achieve perfect storage.
Product Design
CIRCUS OF SKINS
Potential customer interviews “When I got home and took off my coat and jeans, I put them on the chair to let the moist dry off a bit.The next day I wore another coat, so I put it above the first one. A week later there were coats and jeans on all of my chairs and even my bed.” “I have piles of clothes that I don’t want anymore, but it’s a waste to throw them away.” “I need some sort of rack to store my bags...... accessories such as bags and scarf are hard to store.” “I wore some of my clothes only for a season then I threw them away, because the fabric was too weak to last longer.”
The real problem is that, we have too many clothes. As shopping become a hobby for killing time, it’s common that people buy way more than they really need. The fast-fashion trend makes the phenomenon grow, cheap mass-production clothes with low-quality fabrics were purchased and then became out of date after two weeks. This is not only a problem of messy rooms full of clothes, but also contributes to large amounts of pollution, including water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste. Another issue related to clothes is animal rights. Even though we have artificial fabrics that keep us perfectly warm, people are still obsessed with fur and leather products. In fur farms, most of animals were kept in small spaces and were slaughtered with cruel methods to limit the damage to fur. The ultimate solution to our messy closets seems to be simply buy less— through thinking more before purchasing. Once we manage our desire towards clothes, we can also protect environment and animals. I started to work on designing clothes storage furnitures to remind people of the issue.
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idea development I tried clothe hangers both in bedroom and in public places (for example: museum coat check counter).
Product design
For those designed to be put in bedrooms, I included the needs of hanging coats or jeans, which we don’t wash every time we take them off.
CIRCUS OF SKINS
This one is a camel rocking-clothe-hanger, which can only carry a certain amount of clothes. Once overloaded, it leans and falls down to remind users that they shop too much.
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Sketches: forming
Finally I chose the idea of a series of furnitures inspired by animals suffered from fur industry. An invisible camel came up at first. In the beginning I considered using transparent materials to build the frames, so its shape looks blurry and complex before clothes were hanged on it.
Product Design
CIRCUS OF SKINS
However, at the end I changed the material into painted metal, which strengthened the structure and gave a linear and rational feature to the design.
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FINAL DESIGN
The frames looks like an animal skeleton, and the humps pop up when clothes are hanged on it. This reflects how human deprive the liberty of defining an animal’s identity and value over its death.
CIRCUS OF SKINS
The Camel
Product design
Circus of Skins consists of 4 performers: the Camel, the Rabbit, the Crocodile and a Flaming Hoop that tigers usually jumped through in circus. The glamorous death of these animals together perform a circus show, in which the audience all dressed up with the remaining parts of their sacrifice.
Product Design
CIRCUS OF SKINS 36
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The Crocodile
The Flaming Hoop
The Rabbit is a storage basket with two leather handles in the shape of ears on its lid The lid is made of artificial fur.
The Crocodile is a rack designed to hang bags— the products often made from crocodiles’ skins.
The Flaming Hoop is designed to hang scarves or other clothes with light fabric.
The Rabbit: H0.5 W0.4 L0.4 (M) The Crocodile: H1.75 (M) The Flaming Hoop: H0.55 L0.55 W0.06 (M)
Thus the tiger itself will be absent in this design, while the flaming hoop stands as a symbol of the nearly extinct species.
CIRCUS OF SKINS
The Camel: H1.6 W0.4 L1.8 (M)
In the past, there are tigers jumping over flaming hoops in many circus shows, which is a kind of cruelty. Tigers are also hunted for their beautiful skins over centuries, and many of its subspecies are now extinct.
Product design
The Rabbit
The Breakfast Club created Feb, 2019 Fake news/information has become a major problem nowadays. The negative effects could be severe especially when they are related to public interest, or during elections and referendums. Efforts were made to ameliorate this situation. For example, fact checks and rumor clarifications from reliable sources/platform. However, stopping the proliferation of fake news isn’t just the responsibility of the platforms used to spread it. Those who consume news also need to find ways of determining if what they’re reading is true. The idea is that people should have a
Left: A typical meal from Taiwanese local breakfast shops Top: A very common beverage packing with jokes or riddles printed on it Right: Paper prototype for packing design
fundamental sense of media literacy Most people who lack this skill are the same group of people who don’t make much efforts to take in information actively. Therefore, this project targets this group of readers and intends to put correct information in their daily life, so they will consume without even notice. The inspiration came from a very common kind of beverage packing in Taiwan. These packings are usually offered in local breakfast shops, where residents of a wide range of ages and social status gather. It basically seals the drink with a single layer of plastic with jokes or riddles printed on it, and almost every-
one subconsciously reads them. These jokes and riddles are usually lame and boring, but they are read hundred times more than any well-written rumor clarifying articles on the web. These packings come with breakfast, a meal that people have to spend 15 minutes everyday. I believe this project is a way to better use this 15 minutes. The breakfast club extended the concept into a daily breakfast combo that can be ordered and delivered every morning. Short and essential texts are printed on all the packings, provides neutral views on news. The purpose is to help readers build their own
perspectives about fake and real infos, so there are also sections such as “how to vote” and “what are the 2018 referendum topics”. The more the audience are educated with media literacy ability, they are less likely to believe in those incorrect propaganda that intend to mislead them.
Sculpture: Devil-in-the-box
UGLY BEAUTY
Devil-in-the-box, a common prank that intends to scare children with a suddenly pop-up character hiding in the music box. Following the original context and adding with a twist, “Ugly Beauty� is a Devil-inthe-box toy yet inspired from the famous Japanese animation movie Spirited Away. Vivid and condensed colors of black, red, green and a spark of gold bring out the sense of luxury, while the object that pops up has a imperfect, flawed form.
MY SOLO LANTERN FESTIVAL This portrait is about me striking balances in everyday life: the curvy iron wires serve as a weighing scale, and the lantern that hung on it slides right and left in different positions. Should I be more independent or should I rely on others? Should I be more hard-working, or learn to release the anxiety? I admire loneliness but also need friends sometimes…… I have always been moving back and forth between the two extremes of these things, which is the classic movement of me in this work. I wove a vague face of myself on the lantern, which also constantly jiggles. The status of my life has been unsteady ever since I graduated from business school— unemployed, self-exploring, seeking for a chance to start in the field of design, yet it was also full of possibilities. I chose a lantern to portrait myself, because I like the way it glows slightly and calmly in the dark, which is the way I hope to live like. It was also a childhood memory of me, hand making lantern before the Lantern Festival (15 Jan. in luna calendar, which has just passed). Wool was used to build it, for the comfortable and soft texture it brings, and I used iron wires for structure. I dyed gauze for the “hair” part outside the main structure, attaching it to iron frames after drying.
The side face.
THE BITTER-SWEET TOTEM Ring tossing game is one of the classic things to do in a taiwanese night market— people pay for a bucket of wooden rings then throw them to rows of prizes, and get what ever the rings fall on to. Meeting people in life is a bit like that: mostly random, we don’t get to choose who should be our families, and can even hardly control who to make friends with. However, we all keep learning to love the uniqueness of these people. I combined the idea of ring tossing game with my interest in baking pastry, turning important people in my life into doughnuts with different flavors that represent their characteristics. For example: My friend Leila is the one at the bottom with high-contrast color. She seems to accept her dull job and busy life, while she actually hates them. I try to illustrate her contradictory character through intense pattern, and I gave her a hot chili filling, which might be courageous enough some day to bring her a new life. While stacking together on the ring tossing pole, these people are what I got in the tossing game, and has become part of me. I used poster paint and clay to make them. I wanted to inmitate the glaze on real desserts, so I mixed some paint, some white glue, water and sesame oil. It took a few times to find the right consistency, and I also tried to pour pattern on the glaze (like latte art).
IllUSTRATION AND PAINTING
charcoal practice/ still life Mountain Jade
illustration/ redesign of a local market
ceramic technique practice
illustration/ oil pastel and collage Illustration/ Watersoluble crayon
Illustration/ watercolor
Watercolor/ still object and landscape
Digital Illustration/ used Adobe Illustrator
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Ad & Branding/ Banners
Ad & Branding/ Posters
PHOTOGRAPHY
landscape/ studio photography practice