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The throe of nightfall River Li This project is about artistic impulses caused by two kinds of relatively opposing states. Furthermore, I wish it to be an exploration of image techniques about expression. One is the original darkness brought about by ecstasy and release. The second state is unmitigated reason like a calm sea. They are secluded by an illusion of our daily life. When we accidentally catch a glimpse of them, they are obscure and misted. They are representative of the battle between water and oil, which will never mix if you don’t shake them. They are like an endless wind and the burning sun of high noon. This moment, the instability of the world leads people towards an unforgettable native contemplation.
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‘Love Marriage’ CunFang Liu LGBT awareness, tolerance and acceptance is generally lower in the Eastern part of the world when compared to the West. This is especially the case, as far as China is concerned. However, both politically and socially it remains difficult to promote LGBT awareness and address this sensitive issue directly. In conservative Chinese society marriage is considered the only way for a continuation of a family bloodline. With this backdrop, I have chosen to approach it from a different angle: love and marriage. ‘Love Marriage’ is a brand that can appeal to anyone, without distinction of nationality, age, race, gender or sexual orientation, and aims to promote LGBT awareness and acceptance in China. People celebrate love on Valentine’s day in both London and Beijing. Taking such an opportunity, a set of promotional materials have been created. The logo combines the words ‘I love you’ in Chinese and English characters. The pattern is inspired from the structure of a traditional Chinese window. The red and blue colours are co-existing in harmony but still form a strong contrast. The posters use classic blue romantic stories which are easily understandable to the general public: Romeo and Juliet for Beijing and Butterfly Lovers for London. I am convinced that with efforts of conscience, the public will acquire more information and a better understanding of LGBT love. Through these soft communication channels, I do hope to improve social awareness and acceptance of LGBT love and life.
Fate transformation May Wu If I can make a wish come true, I would want world peace. It may mean that the gap between the rich and the poor is no longer cavernous. Moreover, resources and assets will no longer be monopolised by relatively few people. People’s personality as well as education could be improved, and people can overcome the negativity of human nature. However, it is almost impossible to achieve, even though I always think that everything is possible. Struggling in the chaos of the real world, I sometimes try to pull myself away from the illimitable black whirlpool, to be more than just a participant but also an observer. I am looking at the chaos intertwined with the good and evil of human nature, sharing my views on everything through art and design with mixed media. The frame of society, the general situation of the reality, and personal conditions may oppress and limit the width and flexibility of the future of a person. Undoubtedly, some challenges can be tackled during the process of enhancing personal abilities. On the other hand, we are facing the high walls blocking our dreams that are difficult to pull down. Maybe we will walk along with the obstacles and even step on the walls, utilising them, to achieve other accomplishments.
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Caffeinating people with creativity Mustafa Al Juaidi In a constantly evolving world where technology’s development has changed our perspectives on almost everything in our lives, especially the way we communicate with each other, one thing remains unchanged. Verbal and face-to-face communication remains most effective and mutually beneficial even though technology has made it possible with so little effort. As a result, in the Middle-East, as well as internationally, coffee is the immediate option in mind when it comes to meeting people for work purposes, friends catching up, or even strangers meeting to form new connections. It has been researched for years that coffee is the largest traded commodity globally, and it is only going to grow larger, as statistics prove, specifically in the United Arab Emirates – where I reside. As a designer and consumer, my passion for design and my loyalty for coffee, combined, have sparked a new business idea as my final project. A creative café brand that stands as a destination for designers and people to get together, connect, and engage sharing inspirations. Different from co-working spaces or normal coffee shops, the idea of my creative café will cover a community for people to get involved in. Regular talks and seminars, workshops of varying length, use of a mini library, exhibiting individual work within the space, or by simply using the space to catch up with friends over coffee, will all be options for customers. A community-driven café created to inspire and cultivate the Dubai design community. As a result, the brand Wahhaj Café was born.
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Taiwanese cultural identity CheHao Liu
In every country, there are some icons that represent their retrospective culture. There also some images that make you think of a particular ethnicity. However different generations and different ethnicities would have had different life experiences although they grew up in the same land. My home country Taiwan actually consists of multiple cultures. Each group has their own dialect, art, and lifestyle. Nowadays we are like a melting pot, with some aspects of different cultures blended together. We are like a family who live together but remain different. I chose four main groups in Taiwan. These are Hoklo Han, Hakka Han, Aborigines, and new immigrants from countries in Southeast Asia. I would like to decorate a room with objects, which could be crafts, tools and furniture. Objects are chosen from cultural icons of different ethnic groups. They played retrospective roles in people’s lives. Objects in the same space can have relationships like people do. For instance, a table and chair have different functions but work together and share the same working space. Bowls and plates are similar in function but actually remain different. Sometimes a sofa can steal a bed’s job. Objects will reflect relationships like symbiosis, conflict and merged elements among cultures in Taiwan. When people in this room interact with the objects, it’s also subliminally telling a story.
Reflect myself Rachel Zhan In every country, there are some icons that represent their retrospective culture. There also some images that make you think of a particular ethnicity. However different generations and different ethnicities would have had different life experiences although they grew up in the same land. My home country Taiwan actually consists of multiple cultures. Each group has their own dialect, art, and lifestyle. Nowadays we are like a melting pot, with some aspects of different cultures blended together. We are like a family who live together but remain different. I chose four main groups in Taiwan. These are Hoklo Han, Hakka Han, Aborigines, and new immigrants from countries in Southeast Asia. I would like to decorate a room with objects, which could be crafts, tools and furniture. Objects are chosen from cultural icons of different ethnic groups. They played retrospective roles in people’s lives. Objects in the same space can have relationships like people do. For instance, a table and chair have different functions but work together and share the same working space. Bowls and plates are similar in function but actually remain different. Sometimes a sofa can steal a bed’s job. Objects will reflect relationships like symbiosis, conflict and merged elements among cultures in Taiwan. When people in this room interact with the objects, it’s also subliminally telling a story.
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The little yellow light! HsuanYin Chen The initial idea of my FMP is to launch a social campaign, which is related to my country, Taiwan. Through the campaign, I am going to produce a public information film, posters and build a social media platform. The issue which I have been through personally, that bothers the Taiwanese youth a lot, is the improper wage payment with regard to the young college graduates. I had my first job as an art-editor in an E-commerce company and my salary started from ‘22K’. Which in comparison to the average salary for a graduate in the year 2002, hasn’t increased but instead dropped down by 3%. The monthly wage of the Taiwanese didn’t increase by the social inflation because the right of salary rising has been controlled by government and employers for decades. So I want to make an animation to explore the serious social topic and also change people’s attitudes towards this issue. In order to approach my final outcome, it is necessary to do contextual research first. By collecting the materials and statistics, I can produce an effective animation. Then, start to build the assets (character design/ set design) of my animation. People should not compromise themselves to a harsh working environment and difficult working conditions. Through the campaign, I believe that the Taiwanese youth can protect their dignity and also their reasonable payment.
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AI-toys Raina Wu My final major project is about AI – Artificial Intelligence. The reason why I choose it as the subject of my final project, is because 2017 would be the beginning of the revolution of AI and in the next 10 years, it would develop fast and have an unprecedented impact on human life. A few months ago, my older sister had a new baby, which means I had a nephew. I planned to buy an interesting present for him. After searching from a website, I was attracted to an intelligent story machine, which is really smart and cool. But the problem is after finding this machine, I just want to see more intelligent machine toys but it is hard for me to search for the relevant products which could successfully attract me.
So finally, I decided to do something about intelligent machine toys. I think it would be more and more popular in the near future. Then combining with my major Graphic Design, my final outcome for my FMP is a magazine, a website and an app about recommending AI toys. I planned to finish my project through four stages which included collecting relevant information, then designing the magazine, website and app. Now I have finished the first two steps and am in the progress of adjusting the app design. Hopefully I can have some personal satisfaction from my final work and get some inspiration for my future throughout the process.
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Music x people Pasita Thongrungroj beginning until the end of our lives, music walks beside us harmoniously. Whether we know it or not, humans use music as a tool of communication. A mother sings a lullaby to send her baby to sweet dreams. Musicians play instruments at a wedding to celebrate the new love birds. On the other hand, a melancholy song at a funeral is the way we say goodbye to a person who passes away. Hence, my project is about music, people and how music can be utilised in a creative way. As music is no barrier, I want to use this communicative tool to create all the good feelings between people. Let music explain what we want to say, break the complexity of the conversation. Send a message from person to person. Moreover, mix this sense of hearing with other senses, design an experience to increase positive emotions which can lift up our lives.
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‘I’m Here’ Sirima Serirat The idea of my final project came from my experiences in the UK. After studying in the UK for awhile, I am more aware of some of my emotions and the feeling of living alone and having to do everything by myself. Sometimes I feel lonely, tired, sad, bored and so on. I ask myself, ‘what should I do when such feelings come in to my life?’. I decided to relate my final project to these emotions. The purpose is to make people feel happy and generally make people feel better. An application is a platform that I am interested to communicate with my audience. Because nowadays many people spend too long on social media and don’t notice the feelings of people around them. Almost all young people assume they have plenty of friends, even when they haven’t seen them for months. So I have addressed a solution to this issue with my application. ‘I’m Here’ is the name of the application. How does it work? The main aims of the application are encouraging people to cheer each other up and promoting time spent outside together by using the application. In a nutshell, the most important thing about cheering up people is just letting them know how important they are and that you are always ready to support them. So I hope my application can help people deal with bad feelings and be prepared for when they may come.
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Aesthetic education divide Samie Yu In today’s times people are complaining about how ugly the government’s propaganda is and why designers do not get equal pay and respect. As a matter of fact, Taiwan has many excellent designers and they are all influential in their different areas. So what is the reason this country lacks aesthetics and the designers are not paid what they deserve? I think the reason why this is the case, is because of the aesthetic education divide. Due to big differences between the new generation that is educated and the decision makers of the industry who are uneducated and do not have the ability to understand each other. This may lead to designers who cannot play to their strengths in cooperation and make our lives full of poor design. In this vicious circle, the part of designer becomes entirely nonessential and meaningless. Therefore, my project is about redesigning uPaper, which is the free newspaper people can easily pick up on the way to work in MRT stations. I believe, when people read the well-designed reading, it will influence people subconsciously and give them the ability to judge. The main goal of this project is to make people have the ability to appreciate the aesthetic. Benign competition and appropriate critique can inspire creativity and high quality design. There are lots of designers who are executing aesthetic education in different ways. As a graphic designer, I want to be a part of them, to make the future better and make Taiwan better.
May Wu
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This and that Abhrojit Boral Last winter I had this wild dream while sitting in a boring lecture in my MA course. A dream of creating magic with colours. I always knew I was good with creating textile prints. In this bizarre world of mine, prints are like those multicoloured ice-creams in a homemade cone which you can’t resist after coming out from the gym. So I created my brand called ‘Neah’. Why this name ‘Neah’? Lets just say I dreamt of this name and it means nothing. Or maybe it’s a secret and I don’t want to share it with you. Neah is a new young brand specialising in the design of printed crop tops with our own unique prints. Our prints originate for original artworks created by talented designers who understand you and the way you like to dress. One of the most interesting features gives you the opportunity to be the artist behind the prints. An artwork designed by you but made by us.