A Brief History Of Chinese Graphic Design

Little is written about Chinese graphic design compared to the profound history and discourse of Chinese art that it closely approximates. According to Chinese graphic design historian Dr Wendy Siuyi Wong, this could be attributed to a few reasons such as the lack of foundation studies, the overlook of the significance of design history, and methodological challenges.13 Additionally, the conventional idea of graphic design as a profession entered China during the beginning of the 20th century, a time of political and social instability. Since then, China has been caught in the painful turbulence of Colonialism, civil and interstate war, natural and artificial catastrophes, and political and ideological upheavals, putting limitations on both the development and documentation of graphic design.

Perhaps the most notable material on this matter in the Anglophone world is Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century by designer and scholar duo Scott Minick and Jiao Ping, published in London. Unfortunately, even less writing is dedicated to the subsequent development of Chinese graphic design, shamefully, in both Sinophone and Anglophone discussion, even though the climate both inside and outside of the design world has changed drastically since. This chapter will hopefully summarise and contextualise how graphic design situates in the history of China under a limited word count.

The famous Meggs’ History of Graphic Design and many other graphic design history books written by Westerners alike, often mention China for one reason only: it is the birthplace of some of the first variations of paper making, woodblock printing and movable type printing. Yet, despite China’s potential contribution to the industry's hardware, influence from China and other regions of the world is barely recognised in the Anglophone discourse. In Meggs’ specifically, there are two chapters dedicated to pre-modern writing and printing traditions around the world, the rest are mostly about Euro-American graphic design history. Such textbooks tend to have a limited definition of graphic design as a practice highly entangled with modernism and the Industrial Revolution, and overlook the fact that people all over the world had been ordering, marking, writing, and making for millennia.

In his recent Caps Lock: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design and How to Escape from It, Dutch designer Ruben Pater examined the relationship between graphic design and capitalism throughout the history of humankind, and stated that ‘financial records are clear examples of early graphic design.’ According to Pater’s research, the oldest message ever found are financial records written on clay tablets by scribes, whom he recognised as one of the earliest forms of graphic designers:

Scribes had to master skills such as consistent mark making and the ordering of information on small surfaces [...] for thousands of years scribes were responsible for creating trustworthy documents that guaranteed authenticity and authority in large societies [...] Until the invention of the printing press, scribes and clerks were the only source of written communication, being typographers, lay-out specialists, and printers combined.14

Indeed, what does the job of a graphic designer entail if not organising information, formulating the message, presenting it in an appropriate manner with the material available, and then redistributing the outcome to the target audience? According to Pater’s definition, it can be easily concluded that many

13. Wendy Siuyi Wong, ‘Design History and Study in East Asia: Part 2 Greater China: People’s Republic of China/Hong Kong/Taiwan’, Journal of Design History 24, no. 4 (1 December 2011): 375l95, https://doi. org/10.1093/jdh/epr034 artefacts or ephemera, although made premodern and long before the concept of graphic design was formed (certainly before William Dwiggins coined the term), could and should be included in the discussion of graphic design The practices of printing, calligraphy, type design, book design, pattern and ornament design, have existed for a long time-not only in pre-modern China but in most other civilisations before industrialisation-and these practices have a tremendous influence on how designers visualise ideas.

Methodological challenge refers to the specific difficulty scholars face as they are required to have an extensive knowledge on both Chinese art and culture and Western theories to participate in the discourse.

14. Ruben Pater, Caps Lock: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design and How to Escape from It (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021).

However, this is not to eliminate the significance of graphic design entering China as an alien concept. As we can see throughout the following sections, Chinese designers are constantly pursuing an ideal equilibrium between foreign and local ideas, no matter what time and space they reside in. We should also understand that Chinese culture is not a homogeneous whole, as the illusion of it was caused by the incomplete documentation of history and artefacts.

Chinese Traditions

All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing so they have the idea of ugliness; they all know the good, and in doing so they have the idea of what is the bad.-Lao Zi, Dao De Jing

It is certainly impossible to cover the entirety of all premodern Chinese design practices in one section. Instead I will briefly explain one of the key concepts of Chinese fine art, which is most relevant to the theme of this dissertation.

Books written on Chinese art often have a central idea: that Chinese art traditions are based on the concept of harmony. Chinese art and design focus on the negatives of shapes and form just as much as Western design traditions focus on the positives.15 Heavily influenced by interwoven ideas of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, Chinese art-for the most part-is abstract, symbolic, and conservative. Many noticed that Chinese art tends not to depict graphic horror and violence, unlike the art of Medieval Europe and onwards.16 Chinese traditional art principles such as harmony of elements can be seen as an expression of complacency in the formal realm, a sign of conservative and reactionary ideology. Note that this pattern does not encompass all of Chinese art, but is a dominant phenomena nonetheless which affects Chinese art production to this day. Nevertheless, I decided to emphasise this idea, since one of the most important characteristics of the New Ugly is that it is deliberately dissonant, which when examined side-by-side with the pattern of harmony, is indicative of the revolutionary essence of the New Ugly. This concept of harmony can be seen manifested in all forms of Chinese art and design: delicate handscroll ink paintings, calligraphy, name seals, intricate woodcut prints, to mention a few. [Fig. 10-12] This is not to say that harmony is an intrinsically bad artistic quality, but rather that the long history of harmonious tendency makes the New Ugly even more significant as a rule-breaking innovation and political enunciation, which will be discussed in the next section.

The Shanghai Modernists

Art represents the thoughts of a period and the ideas of the nation. In other words, it is the outlook of a nation’s spirit. If the spirit changes direction then art will follow the change as well.-Lu

15. Scott Minick and Ping Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1990). 11.

16. Lorraine Justice, China’s Design Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: The MIT Press, 2012). 17.

17. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 26. This is a very figurative translation, however Minick and Jiao did not provide the original quote in their book. I believe the original to be ‘文艺是国民精神 所发的火光，同时也是引导国 民精神的前途的灯火’, literally translates to ‘Art is the flare of the national spirit, and also the torch leading it forward.’

18. Haruhiko Fujita and Christine Guth, eds., Encyclopedia of East Asian Design (London: Bloomsbury visual arts, 2020). 78.

19. The translation of Asian names used in this dissertation will prioritise the individual’s preferred format (e.g. they have published work with it, or they identity themself on their portfolio with it). If there is no known preferred format, it will be based on the Chinese system in which the family name goes before the given name. The Romanisation of the names will be based on the conventions of the region where the individual is from.

20. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 26.

Xun,

On Opening Our Eyes And Seeing17

Following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government and later Republican China began a modernisation process that included sending its best art and design talents to receive Western or Japanese education. It was during and after the New Cultural Movement, where students criticised traditional Chinese values and proposed a progressive reform of culture with a combination of Western ideas, that the Shanghai Modernists emerged in an attempt to form the young country’s new identity.18

Lu Xun, a medical student turned writer and designer, is one of the founding figures of the movement.19 As a great admirer of Western printmaking techniques and a believer in traditional Chinese aesthetics, Lu encouraged his peers and younger generations of designers to look for inspiration from Chinese folk art patterns in order to incorporate them with Western techniques.20 Many of the first design organisations and schools established during these formative years followed this idea of not blindly imitating Western styles but focusing on reflecting a modernised China.21

Following Lu’s idea of assimilation, young practitioners such as Qian Juntao, Tao Yuanqing, and Chen Zhifo revolutionised Chinese book cover design Before the Republic, books were simply stitch-bound with the title written calligraphically on a plain cover. In contrast, the Shanghai Modernists created naturalistic and organic patterns and illustrations for the covers. Mentors of these designers are either of Japanese or Western origins or have received education overseas and had similar beliefs as Lu. And indeed, the Shanghai Modernists’ works usually show a combination of Chinese heritage such as ancient cave drawings, bronze patterns, seal carving, calligraphy and Western stylistic influences such as formal characteristics of Dada, Constructivism, and Art Deco.22 A diversity of magazines were established during this time, appearing in the new Shanghai style while embracing a mix of literature, art, philosophy, education, politics and culture, such as La Jeunesse, Modern Student, and The Ark [Fig. 13-15]

21. Fujita and Guth, Encyclopedia of East Asian Design. 78.

22. D.J. Huppatz, Modern Asian Design (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). 89.

23. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 44.

Because of increased cultural movements locally and globally, Chinese people's need for political self-determination and technological modernisation upsurged during the 1930s. Designers aspired to Western mathematics and geometry, the idea of rationality and logic they embodied, as well as Russian Constructivism and the progressiveness it represented. [Fig. 16-17] Graphic design from this era, termed the Progressive Movement, is formally characterised by geometric shapes, abstract symbols, flat colour planes, mechanical and industrial motifs, and most notably, modern typographic experimentations and the use of dynamic photography.23

Unfortunately, many design activities were halted, and the Shanghai Modernist and Progressive movement scenes were cut off in 1937 due to the Japanese invasion. The invasion led to the Second Sino-Japanese War, after which the post-war effect and communist disfavour of ‘capitalist print culture’ set back the development of graphic design as a profession in mainland China for years.24 However, the commercial Shanghai-style design continued to thrive under British-Colonial Hong Kong’s capitalist economic system.25

The Revolutionary Style

There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent from politics.

Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art

After the Communist Party of China (CPC) took over the country in 1949, leader Mao Zedong recognised the instrumental value of art, craft, and design in economic development and ideological formation. In his ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’ in May 1942, he criticised the art of the past for only serving the ruling class and bourgeois. In Mao's vision, the new revolutionary art and design should be by and for the proletariat and should prioritise serving political purposes. The idea of political art is nothing new. However, Mao’s extremely progressive attitude meant that those not up to his standard were doomed:

[Marxism-Leninism] will definitely destroy feudal, bourgeois, pettybourgeois, literalistic, individualist, nihilist, art-for-art’s sake, aristocratic, decadent, pessimistic, and other kinds of creativity that are alien to the popular masses and the proletariat. Should mentalities like these be destroyed among proletarian writers and artists? Yes, I think so, they should be thoroughly destroyed, and as they are being destroyed, something new can be established.26

The first generation of workers of the People’s Republic of China, around their thirties or forties during this time, experienced the hardship in the past and therefore excitement of the formation of a new nation.27 However, the new regime did not allow too much enthusiasm of the workers to be imputed: the only valid forms of graphic design were publication and advertising, which both served mainly propaganda purposes, and some form of packaging design.28 Former art workers, designers or managers of design agencies noted that 70% of their work from the 1950s to 1960s was political, and a striking 100% during the Cultural Revolution, many of which did not allow creative freedom at all, since the posters were already finalised by official publishing houses, and the job of the agencies was to merely copy the design onto billboards. [Fig. 18] Commercial graphics were considered part of ‘Western lifestyle’ and encouraged ‘unnecessary purchasing and waste of national resources.’ Packaging also remained very simple, since the tradition of premodern packaging in China was to merely wrap the product in paper and strings.29

Whilst early USSR propaganda was heavily influenced by Russian Avant-Garde designers like Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, propaganda art under CPC steered towards the later visual Socialist Realism as its predecessor meanwhile seeking references from other origins. In order to reach a less literate rural population that mainly worked in agriculture, the formal aesthetic of the revolutionary style drew inspiration from Chinese folk art, such as papercuts and painting techniques of non-Han, ethnic minority art. [Fig. 19] Thematically, the images focused on the struggle and plight of the Chinese proletariat in rural settings in hopes of inspiring them to fight for change. Mao also endorsed Lu Xun’s idea of vernacularism and preference for woodcut printing. Woodblock was affordable, portable, easily concealed during the Japanese invasion, and made mass production easy. Its production process also led to bold and rough textures, which highlighted the laborious hardship of the working class.30

24. Huppatz, Modern Asian Design. 93.

25. Wong, ‘Detachment and Unification: A Chinese Graphic Design History in Greater China Since 1979’. 52.

26. Zedong Mao, Mao Zedong’s ‘Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art’: A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary, trans. Bonnie S. McDougall, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no. 39 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies; University of Michigan, 1980). 83.

27. Justice, China’s Design Revolution. 39.

28. Shou Zhi Wang, ‘Chinese Modern Design: A Retrospective’, Design Issues 6, no. 1 (1989): 49, https://doi. org/10.2307/1511577. 66.

29. Ibid, 67.

30. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 89l93.

31. Ibid, 101l107.

20

Criticize the old world and build a new world with Mao Zedong Thought as a weapon. The olive text at the top is a quote from Mao: ‘All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism, and must not spread freely.’

The new Yan’an artistic ideal differed significantly from the aforementioned Shanghai style, which was reasonably less popular amongst the art commissions under CPC. Suggestions were made to approve ‘a hybrid style which would merge the ideological strength of Yan’an with the technical and visual advances of the Shanghai-style.’ However, the 1950 Korean War put a stop to the hybrid proposal as all foreign materials and ideas were prohibited from entering China.31 Because of the absence of Western influence during the subsequent Great Leap Forward, propaganda art showed an increased inclination towards Soviet Socialist Realism, and they shared subject matters of unity, representation, production, and advancement in an optimistic light.32

During the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, schools and universities were closed and many professors were sent to the rural area to be reeducated, hindering the education of those who had just come of age at the beginning of the revolution. Students during this decade were thus known as the lost generation of PRC. Fearful, overwhelmed individuals had little freedom to produce art or design that was not pro-CCP.33 Propaganda art, or Dazibao [大字 报], ‘big-character posters,’ on the other hand, usually appeared in an optimistic tone, with happy and muscular workers looking into their bright future or surrounding Mao. The archetype of the Dazibao is one with a Socialist-Realistic illustration on the top, and underneath it, a black or bright red slogan set in a usually elongated typeface, either vertically or horizontally. [Fig. 20]

One of those typefaces is Yaoti [姚体]. Named after the designer as well as the technician who first used it in CPC’s official newspaper Liberation Daily, Yaoti is a condensed typeface compared to the conventional squared shape of Chinese characters.34 From an aesthetic aspect, the elongated silhouette stands out from the traditional ‘Square-Block Characters’ [方块字 Fangkuaizi]; from a utilitarian aspect, the condensed shape makes it possible to compact more information into a limited space. On top of the overall shape, Yaoti emphasises the vertical strokes by making them bolder than the horizontal ones. This stylisation sharpens and radicalises the characters since there are usually more vertical strokes than horizontal ones in each character. The typeface also retains the serif equivalent of Chinese characters, so it does not look overly avant-garde or Western Bourgeois, compared to other typographic experiments from earlier in the 20th century.

Mao’s life, along with the Cultural Revolution, ended abruptly in 1976. However, the overall idea of utility over beauty still affects the life of Chinese people generation after generation.

Open Doors and Beijing Spring

We want political democracy! We want artistic freedom!-The Stars Art Exhibition

In a 1982 Creative Review article, packaging designer Robert Williamson shared his experience of being invited to Shanghai to lecture local designers. He deemed Chinese packaging design to be ‘too fussy for [British] market with an obsession to red and gold.’35 This is an interesting insight into the early 80s design scene, since Williamson obviously had not taken into account the history of China. As stated in the last section, less than a decade before his visit, Chinese package designs were still minimal, archaic, and mostly existing for protection for exporting. The ‘obsession to red and gold’ is mostly probably remnants of Maoist aesthetics. Concepts like corporate identity design were ‘unheard of,’ since state media was the only thing accessible to the public.36

After Mao’s death, then-Chairman Deng Xiaoping implemented his ‘Reform and Opening Up’ policy to reconstruct the economy. The policy aimed to shift China away from a state-dictated economy and allowed foreign businesses to invest in China, providing opportunities for designers to rehabilitate themselves from decades of centralised governmental media:

In order to understand the problems inherent in the rebuilding of Chinese design and visual communications during the Seventies, it is important to realise the immensity of China’s internal and external isolation. Publishing had fallen into a serious decline during the Cultural Revolution: editors were jailed and paper was diverted for the creation of propaganda posters. Aside from the radio, the communication links within the country immediately following the turbulent years were severely limited. The real use of modern mass-media techniques only came with the growth of individual television ownership during the midSeventies.37

The relative commercial and political freedom rippled across fields of fine art and design. Underground artist groups such as No Name Group and The Stars formed and held avant-garde art exhibits. These movements were grouped as the ‘85 New Wave Movement of China, signalling a new Chinese art that was ‘neither western modern nor historic Chinese.’38 However, Chinese people’s

32. Ibid.

33. Justice, China’s Design Revolution. 50

34. Guo Changxi, ‘姚志良与“ 姚体” [Yao Zhiliang and Yaoti]’, 国学网 guoxue.com (blog), 2015, http://www.guoxue. com/?p=32603 pursuit of freedom was met with much state oppression: many progressive art exhibitions were shut down by police, and the waves of student movement advocating for democracy concluded with the carnage of 1989. Universities and schools started to open up as well after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and students, especially those in art and design, were sent abroad to study again for the potential economic value.39 The sudden influx of new culture, ideas, and design theories created great confusion for the small number of designers of the late 70s, who resorted to copying any imported design despite its aesthetic quality.40

35. Robert Williamson, ‘A Slant on China’, Creative Review, 1982. 30.

36. Wang, ‘Chinese Modern Design’. 73.

37. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 131l132.

38. Justice, China’s Design Revolution. 54.

39. Ibid, 53.

40. Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. 134.

Fig. 21 Chen Shaohua, Graphic Design in China 1992 Thematic Poster. The intertwined legs with respective Western and Chinese traditional attire form a gestalt that resembles the Chinese character for people, ‘人.’It served as a metaphor for Chinese graphic design of its time: combining Eastern tradition and Western modernity.

Fig. 22 Henry Steiner, Poster for Morisawa Type Foundry. The capital letters ‘T’ and ‘E’ in the word ‘TYPE’ are replaced respectively by their Chinese ‘lookalike’ characters, ‘十’[ten] and ‘三’ [three].

With consumer market growth after ‘Opening Up’, the demand for advertising, corporate identity design, packaging design, design agencies and studios, as well as in-house design departments of big corporations, emerged accordingly. Posters surfaced as the most studied area of graphic design, possibly due to their commercial use before PRC and political significance during Mao’s era; the spotlight on posters remains today. Propaganda posters were still produced until the 90s, but by then they were no longer the main channel of political communication.41 The growth of the industry is also reflected in printed matters: magazines focused on design, such as Applied Arts, Chinese Journal of Design, and Design Exchange, were established. As political censorship declined, these magazines also allowed designers to access international art and design news.42

Although the late 80s and early 90s bred many stylistic norms such as a Chinese derivative of the New Wave, interpretive illustrations, and the modern folk revival, the most prominent theme was still the mix between Chinese and foreign ideas. This time, the modern concept of graphic design finally arrived. Contemporary Chinese graphic design embarked mostly in Shenzhen because of its geographical and cultural proximity to Hong Kong, which had more access to knowledge of contemporary Western design. Proximity to Hong Kong also meant more access to business opportunities with the West at the time, benefiting as well from the territory's Special Economic Zone status. Famous Hong Kong designers like Kan Tai-Keung and Wucius Wong among others visited the Guangzhou Academy of Arts to teach Western design fundamentals such as Bauhaus theory. The first graphic design exhibition, Graphic Design in China 1992 (GDC) [Fig. 21], was also held in Shenzhen, settling down the official use of Pingmian Sheji [平面设计] as the official Chinese translation of ‘graphic design’, and leading to the founding of the Shenzhen Graphic Design Association (SGDA), the first non-profit professional organisation on graphic design in China.43 Organisations like the SDGA are crucial to stimulating the local design industry as well as building international connections, which is why cities in the south like Shanghai and Ningbo-both Open Coastal citiesparalleled this trajectory of hosting design exhibitions and establishing organisations in the industry.44 In 2001, Beijing was elected as the host city for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The iconic ‘Dancing Beijing’ emblem marked a climax of the dynamic of mixing Chinese and Western ideas.

This dichotomy of Eastern and Western ideas is especially compelling when it comes to the discussion of Hong Kong design. However, it is important to note that the cliched claim of ‘East meets West’ often ignores the effect of colonialism in its multitude of forms, especially in Hong Kong. Graphic design works by Western designers that fall into this category of juxtaposing elements from two cultures, although commercially successful, need to be examined and critiqued under a broader cultural context. [Fig. 22] Some of the juxtaposing analogies lack critical reasoning, historical consciousness, and cultural considerations. For example, the Shanghai Modernists and their aforementioned Hong Kong successors had already started exploring the idea of “East meets West” decades ago, but it was only given attention when Western designers joined the discourse. Additionally, many of these works are designed for corporations established by British traders during the 19th century.45 The influx of Western ideas and design is crucial to the Chinese and Hong Kong graphic design scene, but we should understand that ideas and culture no longer flow unidirectionally in our highly globalised world.

China Design Now

Everyone is a designer. Everyone can design. Let the masters be narcissistic!-Ou Ning, Get It Louder Manifesto

In 2008, Victoria and Albert Museum published China Design Now to coincide with its homonymous exhibition. The book acknowledged the profound economic, cultural, and creative impact China has achieved since Deng’s reform. It also emphasised Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, which were and still are the largest cities in the country. The V&A exhibition is certainly not the whole picture, but 2008 did mark Chinese designers’ international success.46

Today the design scene in China is a melting pot of many influences, alike many multicultural nations around the world. It is hard to rule out certain styles that Chinese designers exclusively follow, perhaps because the exponential technological advances which allow design to become a much more individualistic practice. But one thing is certain: Chinese designers never stopped exploring the potential of Chinese traditions as inspiration

41. Fujita and Guth, Encyclopedia of East Asian Design. 85.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Wong, ‘Detachment and Unification: A Chinese Graphic Design History in Greater China Since 1979’. 63.

45. D. J. Huppatz, ‘The Chameleon and the Pearl of the Orient’, Design Issues 22, no. 2 (2006): 64l76. 65l66.

46. Hongxing Zhang et al., eds., China Design Now (London : New York: V&A Pub. ; Distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams, 2008).

23 Jiang Jun. Magazine cover for Urban China 2005. It is a collage of the logotypes of other Chinese magazines, forming a cityscape.

Fig. 24 Jianping He, Poster, China Image. 2004.

Jianping He is known for his creative incorporation of materiality in the digital design age. He has done many posters that explored the idea of Chinese characters as both the theme and stylistic element. [Fig. 24] On the other hand, designers like Guang Yu and Nod Young have mastered a style that both explored the deviant qualities of postmodern design and retains a clean and orderly fashion for commercial possibilities. [Fig. 25]

Although China’s graphic design has gained international recognition, official government propaganda has never improved in terms of style or substance Maybe because the idea of utilitarianism from the Mao era still lingers; maybe a better art and design education still faces challenges from the immense population. Perhaps both are true, and the most disaffected rural population are simply the target demographic of traditional propaganda.