Monotype Project by Lauren Lin

MONOTYPE DE7 301

裊裊

MONOTYPE PROJECT Ying-I Lin

niao-niao

(k1620181)

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Concept

The concept of this project is to preserve Chinese incense culture, and promote to young generation as a new life style. In ancient times, brsides religion use incense were also used in vaious way such as luxury scent for emperor and medicien. Incense in the past times were a kind of noble products, many nobles and famous poet see burning incense as an elegant life style.

Incense culture is gradually disapearing, many chinese young people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what does incense use for but only for religion use. Nowadays, with awareness of environmental issues, people begin to stop burning incense. Although the advantage is reducing harmful smokes, it's undeniable that also lead to declining the incense culture. Incense burns out thousand years of Chinese culture and history, it should not disappear. We can improve the way of burning incense and replace by eco-friendly materials to protect this culture

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Typeface

The typeface is inspired by the visual of smoke curling up slowly. The purpose of this typo is to conduct the poetry and calm of incense smoke. I observed how smoke move on the air and mimic their shape to make a typeface of incense smoke. There are similar ways of illustrating the air, smoke and even cloud and fog. That's because they are visible combination of a collection of airborne solid and liquid particulates and gases. (Wikipediaorg, 2017) Although many things in common, I think incense smoke

convey a calm feeling compared to to the other elements. I chose use white color as major color because if black, some people would be misled to Chinese calligraphy.

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Campaingn naming & Slogans

niao-niao 裊裊 (niao-niao) is a poetry word in Chinese describing the visual view of smoke slowly curling to the sky, People clam dowin there mind and stay in peace while looking at the scene. This is also the purpose of the campaign: calm down and new life style.

In the ancient time, the purpose of nobel burning incense is want to have a peaceful and calm minds. The shape of smoke and scent help them create better artworks or litteratures. This slogan is want to encourage people have a quality life. Doing positive activities and using scents help them have a more healthy minds.

Chinese believe the smoke of incense visualize our hope, hope convey to the God on the sky with the smoke curling up. On the other word, smoke is equal to the hope and wishes of prayers. If there are many people pray by burning incense in a same time, a plume of smoke would surround the prayers and temple, which means their hope and wishes all around the area. It’s such a poetry and calm scene. The other meaning of this slogan is to ask people "What your dream?". When people tell the God their wishes, it also remind them again of dream and goals. Go achieve your dream and have a new life!

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Posters The posters are aimed to convey a calm and Zen life style. The two slogans are tried to raise people's dream and desire in their minds, convince them they can have a better quality of life and encourage them to achieve their goals/ dreams while burning incense. Ancient chinese people feel calm and peaceful while looking at the smoke curling up slowly, they also make wishes to the God as they burn incense for workship. On the bottom is the campaign name " čŁ&#x160; čŁ&#x160; (niao-niao)", which looks like a dictionay definition of a chinese word. It adds chinese elements on the whole posters.

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Touch point: Posters in busy area

The campaign is aimed to promote incense culture in daily life. My target audience is young generation (18-35), they are enthuastic to try new things and willing to purchase something lift their living quality if they have financial ability. Therefore, this campaign will be belonging to an incense company which want to promote their products.

The posters will be set in the shopping center and underground stations in bust district and shopping area. We want to catch young people who is stressful and busy for works. The image is to make them link with a quality life, calm minds and think of their dream and goals. In the sopping center, they may like to enter the boutiques and try their products.

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Touch point: Magazine advertising We'll purchase some adverstisements on life style magazines, we will introduce incense as a new life style and the culture. This may attract our audience to know more about incense culture.

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Digital element: Instagram adversing

Next step, Ill purchase ads on instagram, my target audience is young people who have visited life style online magazines searched for scent products. Many young people are addicted to social networks, and some of them like to follow life style bloggers, so we'll invite famous bloggers to introduce our products and take photos. This is to catch audience eyes and convince them incense is a products which improve quality of life.

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Digital Elements

The webiste is belonging to one incense company, niao-niao is their compaign to promote incense culture. In this website, besides their own products, there are many knowledges and information about incense, and articles about living style such as tips to calm down our mind and relieve stress. The purpose is to catch young generation's eye, burning incense can be a chilling activities.

裊裊 niao-niao

MONOTYPE PROJECT Visual Summary

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Concept The concept of this project is to preserve Chinese incense culture, and promote to young generation as a new life style. In ancient times, brsides religion use incense were also used in vaious way such as luxury scent for emperor and medicien. Incense in the past times were a kind of noble products, many nobles and famous poet see burning incense as an elegant life style.

Stereotype Incense has clichĂŠ of riligions use and old school. Incense culture is gradually disapearing, many chinese young people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what does incense use for but only for religion use. Nowadays, with awareness of environmental issues, people begin to stop burning incense. Although the advantage is reducing harmful smokes, it's undeniable that also lead to declining the incense culture. Incense burns out thousand years of Chinese culture and history, it should not disappear. We can improve the way of burning incense and replace by eco-friendly materials to protect this culture.

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Research: Incense Uses in Ancient Times There are many ways of using incense in the ancient China (Incense in China, 2017):

Medicine

Time-keeping

Religion

Similar ingredients and processing techniques are involved in production of both incense and Traditional Chinese medicines. For example, take jiu ( 灸 "moxibustion"). Incense is believed to have physiological and psychological benefits. For instance, according to the Bencao Gangmu pharmacopoeia, "camphor cured evil vapors in heart and belly, and was especially recommended for eye troubles, including cataract."

Along with the introduction of Buddhism in China came calibrated incense sticks and incense clocks ( 香鐘 xiangzhong "incense clock" or xiangyin"incense seal").The poet Yu Jianwu first recorded them: "By burning incense we know the o'clock of the night, With graduated candles we confirm the tally of the watches." The use of these incense timekeeping devices spread from Buddhist monasteries into secular society.

Burning incense at a Chinese temple. Xiangbang ( 香棒 with "stick; club") means "incense stick; joss stick". Two "incense" synonyms specifying religious offerings to ancestors or deities are gāoxiāng ( 高香 "high incense") and gōngxiāng ( 供香 "offering incense"). The Sunni Muslim Hui Gedimu and the Yihewani burned incense during worship. This was viewed as Daoist or Buddhist influence. The Hui, also known as "White-capped HuiHui", used incense during worship, while the Salar, also known as "black-capped HuiHui" considered this to be a heathen ritual and denounced it.

As an art form

The Chinese developed a sophisticated art form with incense burning like with tea and calligraphy called xiangdao( 香道 ). It involves various paraphernalia and utensils in various ceramic containers utilised to burn incense. Examples include tongs, spatulas, special moulds to create ideograms with incense powder, etc. all placed on a special small table. It is most often used as an enhancement to a personal space to accompany other arts such as tea drinking and guqin playing.

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Research: Culture & Religious Meaning

There are many meaning of burning incense (Read01com, 2017): Pray and Blessing Chinese people pray to the God by burning incense. They believe that smoke of incense can convey their intentions to the God. Get Rid of Evil In the ancient times of China, people used incenses for refreshing the air and sterilizing. While a pestilence was raging in that area, ancient people used it to arrest the spread of disease. Meditation Some people like to burn incense at home because the materials and fragrance of the incense help them clam down their minds and stay in peace. Call back the Spirits People believe that smoke of incense can let spirits notice that their family or friends are looking for them, and avoid them from drifting and getting lost in the world.

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Case study: Candles & Neom General History Candles in western countries are just like the incenses in occitential countries. The first wick candles were made by the Romans from tallow. In the Middle Ages, beeswax was popular, but its high cost ensured that only the clergy and the upper classes used it. (Judith woods, 2017)

(Neomorganicscom, 2017), they claims their products are 100% NATURAL with true wellbeing benefits: to help relieve stress, aid sleep, boost your energy or lift your mood.

Surprisingly, Scented candles make their debut in A.D. 200 - around the same time that candles were invented.(Overstock™, 2017) With the improvement of techniques and large economical production in 1834, the price of candles has gone down considerably. (Overstock™, 2017) In the mid-1980s, the puplarity of candles became steable, candles become gifts and decorative items. People started to interest on the shape, scent and quality of candles.(Candlesorg, 2017)

I think it's a good idea to combine scents and physical function. In the ancient times, incense were also used as medicine and luxury scents. The scent also calm people's mind and relieve stress.

Neom Neom is a new candles brand established on 2015, and it becomes more and more popular in the worldwide recently. The founder Nicola was an editor for Glamour magazine. Spending the majority of times on her work forced her to notice her own wellbeing, and her friends affected by the stress and demands of a modern day busy life. (Neomorganicscom, 2017) Neom is engaging to develop 100% organic scented products which helps people relax, calm down and feel happy. There are four major catagories of their products: SCENT TO SLEEP™, SCENT TO INSTANTLY DE-STRESS™, SCENT TO BOOST YOUR ENERGY™, SCENT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY™, and SCENT TO CALM & RELAX™.(Neomorganicscom, 2017) The main purpose of their products become functional, not just a decoration and scent. According to their introduction

Compared to incense

Traditionally, people in christian society like to make a wish to the candles and then blow them out. Candles symbolize celebration, mark romance, soothe the senses, define ceremony. (Candlesorg, 2017) Compared to incense, chinese people only use it to make wishes to the God. There are not that various and wide use nowadays. If I can promote this culture by telling there are more advantages of using incense., this culture may become polpuar again.

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Tutorial note The note in each class made my project more clear. In the middle-term of this project, I was confused to my outcome because I thought the outcomes do not met my point of view. I was not no the right way to promote this culture. Therefore based on this note, I developped a new serie of typeface and slogans. Although texts became in English, the original core value of my idea stayed same.

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Previous Typeface

At firstly, I want to use chinese handwriting words to convey the poetry and dynamic of smoke. So I chose five different words describing smoke. They describes different views of moving smoke, I want to use them in my posters and relative outcomes.

Words Type

Campaign Type

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Development Practicing and testing chinese words. I wrote these words many and many times to have one proper word from each paper and used in the posters.

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Prototype

In the last class of monotype, we have to show the prototype. This is the prototypes I showed last time. I was inspired a poster on internet. It's a japanese poster which compose many chinese words to form images, ex: he uses ćŁŽ (forest) and ć š (root) to form a shape of mountain. I therefore thought I can do the same thing. I can use my fonts to form the shape of smoke. The poster should look calm and a litte bit occitental minimalism style.

Tao said the visual I made is stereotype, many people did the same thing in the past. I've to have new idea. In my opinion, sometimes we don't need to break down this stereotype if it's good. But I still have to think of new visual because they are not new...

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Feedback

I received many feedback from classmates.The majority of feebacks are about elegant color and the handwriting which convey a poetry and calm feeling to them. I think it's a good start.

with the computer fonts on the bottom of posters either.I think it's one problem. I've to think about how to prmote to foreigners sucessfully.

Secondly, some don't know what culture I want to promote from the posters, I've to think about how to link them with incense culture.

Finally, Tao sugessted me I've to observe the shape of smoke so that I can come out more ideas about the outcome. I started thinkning whether I was on the right way to promote this culture.

Thirdly, people who don't speak chinese can not understanding the meaning and they don't know the handwriting words is same

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Reflection & New idea

Thinking of Tao's sugesstion. I have to do more research and have more ideas on this project. I started to observe the shape and floating of incense smoke, tring to have new idea on typeface. Morever, I need to think how to promote the culture. Previous idea is to promote incense in the yoga class or place people like to do meditation. Now, I changed my mind, I need to collabrate with incense company that they have online shopping website and

boutique in busty area. We need catch young people's attention. The social network advertising becomes necesserary. The whole campaign need to be young and stylish so that young people would like to try them.

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Developpment

At the scond stage of prototyping, I tried to use smoke brushes to illustrate the smoke shape typefaces. I'd like to create a font which is like floating on the air and calm and silence. My friend said he think it chinese calligraphy art from his first sight. It's to be misled by the color, so I turned them to white.

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Typeface

convey a calm feeling compared to to the other elements. I chose use white color as major color because if black, some people would be misled to Chinese calligraphy.

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Campaingn naming & Slogans

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Touch point: Posters in busy area

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Digital elements: Instagram Advertising

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Digital Elements

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Reflection This is a practical project and also a first competition to me. At first I found this is a simple project, but it became complex when I researched deeper. Too wide to foucus on one point to promote. Moreover, we have to come up branding new idea compared to the old ideas which have already been use many time. It's also a big challenge to me. Tao said we have to do more researches so that we can find a good start point to open this project. It's totally true. Only if we do more researches, we'll know more knowledge about the topic,and know how to promote it in a creative way. How to break steretype is an interessting question. If the sterotype is good, why should we ruin it? For example, people often think Paris is a romantic and pretty city. This sterotype attracts over 16,000,000 tourists visiting here every year, it becomes the most popular tourist city on the world. Paris benefits from it a lot, perhaps they don't want to break it down. However, this sterotype also ruined someone's dream. According to the report, some of japanese have feel dizzy and nausea when they firstly visit Paris because the real Paris is totally different to the imagined Paris,they called it "Paris Syndrome". In this case, people may want to break it to Japanese. Only four courses is too short but also give me a long time to remove all ideas and come up new thing in my brain. I'm happy to have this course because it's real and practical. I'll have more similar challenges in the future career life. I learned how to do a research on a project ,how to conduct it visually and how to promote it in advertising.

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Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke

Books •

Lupton, E (2011). Graphic design thinking: beyond brainstorming. (1st ed.). New York: Princeton

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Ambrose, G & Harris, P (2008). Grids. (2 ed.). Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA

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Elam, K, (2004). Grid systems. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

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Lupton, E (2010). Thinking with type. (2 ed.). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

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Cheng, K (2005). designing type. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

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Cano, P & Serrats, M (2007). Typosphere. (1st.). Spain: Collins Design.

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Incense in China. 2017. Wikipedia. [Online]. [22 March 2017]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.

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Botanwangcom. 2017. 过风雅生活，像宋人一样焚香 . no-date. Botanwangcom. [Online]. [22

Architectural Press.

Websites •

Judith woods. 2017. Lighten up and join the candle culture. no-date. Telegraphcouk. [Online]. [22

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Overstock™. 2017. History of Scented Candles. no-date. Overstockcom. [Online]. [22 March 2017].

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Candlesorg. 2017. National Candle Association. [Online]. [22 March 2017]. Available from: http://

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Neomorganicscom. 2017. Neom Organics London. [Online]. [22 March 2017]. Available from:

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Read01com. 2017. 燒香的意義 . no-date. Read01com. [Online]. [22 March 2017]. Available from:

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Wikipediaorg. 2017. Smoke. no-date. Wikipediaorg. [Online]. [22 March 2017]. Available from:

March 2017]. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3657238/Lighten-up-and-jointhe-candle-culture.html

Available from: https://www.overstock.com/guides/history-of-scented-candles

candles.org/history/

https://www.neomorganics.com/

https://read01.com/gRxAKg.html

org/wiki/Incense_in_China March 2017]. Available from: https://botanwang.com/articles/201611/过风雅生活，像宋人一样焚香 .html