The New Ugly & Case Studies

To discuss the New Ugly, we need to first look at what its prototype, the old ugly-or just ugly, is. The vernacular, ugly design has but is not limited to the following stylistic characteristics:

I. Message

A. Informal language

B. Sometimes not concise

II. Composition

A. Crude, simple composition

B. Compacted, full composition

III. Colour

A. Default, primary & secondary colours

IV. Typography

A. Default typefaces, such as Heiti, Songti, and Kaiti

B. Stretched type, often different degrees of stretch in one work

C. Multiple, different typographic rules

D. Justified, centred text

V. Images

A. Little to no use of photography or illustration

B. Generic, stock photos

VI. Production

A. Cheap materials, such as glossy paper and stickers

B. Mass-produced, usually overproduced and thus overcrowding whatever space it takes

A famous case of ugly design entering the public lens is the package design of Yeshuyezhi [椰树椰汁], a type of coconut milk drink and one of the most famous canned beverages amongst not only Mainlanders but also international Chinese diaspora. [Fig. 26] Yeshuyezhi is beloved not only for its flavour but also for its unique packaging. Allegedly, the company's CEO, Wang Guangxing, former Meigong [美工, applied art worker] in the 1960s, designed it himself in Microsoft Word.47 The large and bold, sometimes stretched type in combination with crude composition and the exclusive use of the primary colours indeed show traits of amateurism-at least according to a traditional, conservative sense of design discipline. As a result, this comedic and quirky lack of professionalism in the package design made the drink a hot topic among netizens.

In this respect, Yeshuyezhi is also a perfect example of the ordinary and the ugly: a simple and cheap design, possibly not cost anything since it was produced in-house by the company CEO, taking the form of mass-produced stickers on aluminium cans. Perhaps Wang Guangxing’s experience could provide an insight into where the aesthetics of the ugly design came from: the influence from CPC aesthetics and amateurist improvisation.

We can see a lot of overlap between the visual styles of U&O design and Dazibao from the Mao era: notably, strong contrast, bright, primary colours; brutal, straightforward compositions; stretched typefaces; generic photographic elements. Maybe the similarity could be attributed to the lack of systematic art and design education during the 50s-70s: without the influence

47. ‘椰树集团 1 号美工 王光兴：设计界的泥石 流、专注低俗文案30年 [Number 1 Meigong of the Yeshu Corporation: ‘Mudflow’ of a designer, vulgarly copywriting for 30 years]’, 资讯咖 iNews, accessed 8 June 2022, https://inf.news/zh-my/ design/1c23fdeaaf2e 055eb39ae77981af3c29. html of Western ideas, it is natural that the art workers responsible for propaganda could not produce designs up to the Western design standard, relying only on their intuition instead.

In the article ‘Megastructure, Repetition, and Uniformity-Rereading the “Communist Aesthetics” Around Us,’ Chinese Journalist Shell Long notes that many structures that followed the Communist aesthetic, whilst symbolising monumental expectations of China as a strong industrial country, almost only focused on their utilitarian and public aspect: structures were brutally simple with little to no decoration, and infrastructure like water taps were communal and not private. Long writes, ‘since when we were little, teachers and even parents constantly indoctrinate us with [the idea of utilitarianism], just as the fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper”-hardworking is the only way to life, and those who shamefully pursue art and beauty deserve to starve.’48 Elements of homogeneity, repetition and monumental aspirations manifest in graphic design in a similar way, and we can still see the influence of Maoist aesthetics and ideology in the daily life of Chinese people. This also corresponds with the contemporary resurgence of propaganda messages all over the country, especially those in rural and underdeveloped areas.

There are definitely other styles that inspired the U&O design, whether or not the amateur designers are aware or not, such as ‘POP’ hand lettering, or contemporary Chinese calligraphy. But the influence of CPC’s tight control during the second half of the twentieth century was immeasurable, both aesthetically and ideologically.

The New Ugly

So what is the New Ugly? And how is it different from all the aforementioned attempts to translate ugliness into something else? Chinese graphic designer Guang Yu addressed the following:

[The New Ugly] is derived from Pretty Ugly, a book published in ‘12 by gestalten. It documented works with bold forms, and also differed from the aesthetically pleasing, or rational design. After that, designers from many countries made a lot of formally brutal works, with ugly forms based on digital-brutalism, and we call these works the New Ugly...

[The New Ugly] originated from those [designs] made by nonprofessional designers, and that formal quality is then again consumed by professional graphic designers [...] like the ugly stretched text on the signs we see alongside roads or the cramped texts on those small flyer cards scattered through the streets. The ones who designed those are not necessarily trained professionals; they make the text as big as possible and everything as clear as possible solely as their clients instruct. However, it is in those ugly works that we experience an unexpectedly unique visual effect. These ‘new’ and ‘ugly’ experiences immediately caught the eyes of some professional designers. They imitate these works, going against the ‘disciplines of design’ to create something more expressive. I am unsure of their intentions for doing so. It might be a rebellion against authority; it might be mockery or satire; it could be just for fun. The only thing I am sure of is that [The New Ugly] has become a trend consumed by a lot of people.49

The book Pretty Ugly mentioned by Guang mostly consists of selected design works that utilise unusual visual forms and presents the unique visual identity of the designers. The book was published a decade ago in 2012. Just as the editors had expected, much of the ‘aesthetic rampage’ discussed in the book had since entered the mainstream with widespread public acceptance. Throughout the book, the editors categorised the design they included in the publication, which included: deviant, mundane, de-constructed, impure, mishmash, deformed, and neo-artisanal. Each category comes with manifestolike short writings of their explanation of the keyword. The following three are especially applicable and important to the discussion of the New Ugly:

Deviant - Against established criteria of what good design is. Embracing what is disliked and considered incorrect. Mistakes become virtues. Create authenticity and humanity.

Mundane - Converting ordinary into extra-ordinary, old into new. Elevating ugliness to a new kind of beauty by changing its function or message. The mundane attracts the attention of those who find perfection boring.

De-constructed - De-constructing our cultural heritage: Breaking it down to its basic elements until it can be constructed as something new. Authorship as a process of deconstruction and construction.50

While the aforementioned qualities can be all seen in many of the works related to the New Ugly, the style embodies more than just visual innovation.

48. Shell Long, ‘巨大 化、重复、统一——重 读身边的“共产主义美学”’ [Megastructure, Repetition, and UniformitylRereading the ‘Communist Aesthetics’ Around Us], 歪脑 WHYNOT, accessed 8 June 2022, https://www.wainao.me/ wainao-reads/aesthetics-ofcommunism-04222022

49. Yu Guang, ‘新不新，丑 不丑，又如何 [New or not, ugly or not, so what?]’, Social Media, Weibo, accessed 8 June 2022, https:// weibo.com/1871658703/ HwTJMigK3?type=repost

50. Twopoints.net, ed., Pretty Ugly: Visual Rebellion in Design (Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag, 2012).

Affirmation

In an interview with British new media It’s Nice That, designer Ivy Yixue Li explained the what she finds attractive in the ugliness of amateur designs:

I am fascinated by how the visual culture truthfully depicts the living needs, desire and daily activities [...] and how stretching and squashing fonts is not a type crime but a reasonable choice to use space economically.51

The trend of breaking the rules of design conventions has become increasingly common since the postmodern movement. Designers are no longer satisfied with the arbitrarily limited toolbox they inherited which tells them what is wrong and what is right, abandoning an arborescent top-down model of design in favour of rhizomatic expressions.52 They relinquish their preconception of everyday objects and vernacular visuals, in order to see a new possibility than what is culturally imprinted on them.

Japanese designer Takada Yui made perhaps some of the most prominent translations of ugly ephemeral design into experimental graphic design work. Famous for his brutal use of vibrant but jarring colours, simple geometric shapes, and fluctuating sizes, Takada has been obsessed with busy composition and compacted information such as those on supermarket promotion flyers. For his 2018 solo exhibition in China, Takada designed the flyers to resemble the waterproof mud shield hanging over the back wheel of a motorcycle or moped. [Fig. 27-28] This is a utilitarian object seen everywhere in China and Taiwan where the use of such vehicles is common, but for Takada, it is an unusual spectacle he finds new. He wrote on his website, ‘This might not seem curious for [a Chinese audience], but I found it refreshing. ‘This is it!’ I thought so as I happily finished the design.’53

Chinese designer Bofeng Liao made a similar statement with his advertising flyers. He included his name, work, achievements, and contact in a compacted space with a whimsical tone. [Fig. 29-30] Liao’s appreciation for the ugly design is also evident in his Name Card for AGI in China [Fig. 31-33] Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), based in Europe, is one of the most prestigious clubs for graphic designers. In his work, he made a business card for each one of the 32 Chinese members of AGI. Rather than do it completely by himself, he commissioned a local print shop in the capital city of each of the Chinese provinces. Liao brought together the elite and intellectual side of graphic design with the perceived lower-end printer shop design. He did not execute it in a pejorative manner, but rather with a 6-metre-long careful analysis dissecting all the cards in an anthropological sense to objectively present ‘the status quo of Chinese folk design,’ in his own words.54

For some, this might seem problematic because of the different power dynamics between the appropriated and the appropriator. A formally trained graphic designer certainly has more resources, industry backing, and academic knowledge. They can potentially profit off using the style, whereas the amateur designer might have always worked with the style, or might simply take it for granted. Guang Yu addressed this issue as well: ‘The New Ugly is different from true ugly. A real intriguing visual is different from the actual design on the streets. Not everyone could choose what to left out and what not to, to achieve an effective image.’55

For others, these works might seem like pure replicas of the kitsch design that already saturates everyday life. However, the New Ugly as well as its origins should not be rendered kitsch with unconsidered prejudice. Let us take a look at art historian Gustav E. Pazaurek’s definition of Kitsch in his ‘Good and Bad Taste in Applied Arts’:

The absolute antithesis of artistically inspired work of quality is tasteless mass rubbish, or kitsch: it disregards all the demands of ethics, logic, and aesthetics; it is indifferent to all crimes and offences against material, technique, and functional or artistic form; it knows only one commandment: the object must be cheap and yet still attempt to create at least some impression of a higher value.56

Pazaurek’s idea of Kitsch is simple and almost analogous to the ugly and ordinary by Venturi, et al, which states that a U&O object is cheap and presents itself as low value. In this sense, it is clear that the original ugly design certainly does not fall in the category of Kitsch, since they neither hide the reality of their material value nor allude nostalgically to the past.

One can argue that those aforementioned works by Takada and Liao took an already existing style or object, and attempted to make them appear ‘better’ or ‘avant-garde,’ inadvertently hollowing their intrinsic significance into Kitsch. Like Greenberg argued, Kitsch uses ‘the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture,’ ‘vicarious experience and faked sensations,’ as well as ‘pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money.’57

51. ‘Who Made the Objects in Your House? Ivy Li Explores the Vernacular Visual Language of Chinese Migrant Workers’, accessed 20 May 2022, https://www. itsnicethat.com/articles/ivyli-on-being-a-factory-workergraphic-design-280820.

52. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, ‘Introduction: Rhizome’, in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

53. Yui Takada, ‘Diving Graphic’, accessed 23 May 2022, https://takadayui.com/ Diving-Graphic

54. Bofeng Liao, ‘Name Card for AGI in China’, GDC Awards, accessed 23 May 2022, http://gdc. sgda.cc/op/before_works/ detail?id=258&bo=6&backurl =http%3A%2F%2Fgdc.sgda. cc%2Fbefore-works%3Flang% 3Dcn%26bo%3D6%26 pagenum%3D5&lang=en

55. Guang, ‘新不新，丑不丑， 又如何 [New or not, ugly or not, so what?]’.

56. Stephen Bayley, Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything (London: Goodman Fiell, 2012). 136-137.

57. Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, in Perceptions and Judgements: 1939-1944, ed. John O’Brien, The Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1988), 5l22. 12.

But the works discussed above differ from this definition. Kitsch always finds its way of recreating beauty, but Diving flyer, Name Card for AGI in China, or the New Ugly to a large extent do not simulate something of more beauty or cultural significance, but rather that which is overlooked and regarded as ‘lower tier’ aesthetics. They are not deceptive about their origins-conversely, the significance of these works lies within the genuine usage of the ‘ugly’ aesthetics. Both Takada and Liao studied at art and design academies, and their institutional identity highlights the discrepancy between the aesthetics of the Chinese masses and those being taught at design schools, which are predominantly of a Western origin. Their works are stylistically and historically demanding: it is challenging to learn how to use grids, hierarchy, and colour theory among other principles, only to see prominent designers conspicuously abandon conventional discipline in favour of a textbook ‘bad design.’

Their affirmation of ugly design also suggests a postmodernist approach to embracing new and unexplored visual styles: Why couldn't these amateur attempts be part of the discourse, especially if graphic design existed way before the profession was formed? Why should there exist this hierarchy between ‘Western’ and ‘Chinese’ design? What would ‘Chinese'' graphic design look like free from those influences? If the Cranbrook aesthetic represented postmodern graphic design that illustrated new possibilities in design language, then the New Ugly goes one step further in exemplifying a contemporary and critical graphic design practice which simultaneously explores new approaches to visual styles while questioning and revealing aspects of their material, spatial, and political origins. The stakes are higher in the cultural context of China, as such a graphic design style is immanently critical and holds a sociopolitical significance, and those will be further discussed in the next section.

Critical Commentary

Repeating texts in stretched and angled typefaces and jarring colours, advertisements for internet cafes, lottery tickets, prostitution, and pawn shops, disproportionate price tags that show a low cost of living contrasted with giant iPhone barcode labels are all pasted on a crowded wall for Li’s thesis work, On Being a Factory Worker. [Fig. 34] She emphasised the huge disparity between labour and product, the producer and the consumer, and the exploited and the privileged through her ‘unconsciously anti-designed visual outputs of migrant workers in China.’ Migrant workers, or Mingong [民工] in China face a twofold abuse: On one hand, companies from the global north take advantage of the cheap manual labour in China by overproducing in a country with poor labour laws. On the other hand, coming from mostly rural and underdeveloped areas, migrant workers lack access to many rights-including medical care, education rights, and pension-like locals of the area, due to China’s outdated Hukou system.58 On Being a Factory Worker is a fierce critique of China’s modernisation process that values capital over capita, but it also reminds designers to acknowledge their source of inspirations and financial privilege.

Likewise, in his collaboration with a few Taiwanese NGOs, Ken-Tsai Lee art-directed Celestial Dragons House to protest the high housing price in Taiwan that disproportionately affected young and marginalised groups due to housing agencies' hoarding and selling tactics. [Fig. 35] Accompanying the critique was the demand for the Taiwanese government to fix this issue.59 The campaign had a similar approach as Li’s work: taking the formal qualities of ugly design, while executing on a larger scale. The team rented an actual store front as a faux housing agency, to further present the irony of using a hyper commercialised form for a problem caused by the agencies in Taiwan. The text content of the posters mostly came from the negative experiences of buyers and renters that the team collected. The campaign also featured one-day lectures on civil justice, and local politicians were invited to be oneday managers as an attempt for them to interact with and better understand citizens.60 ‘The artwork is not only the echo of the suffering, it diminishes it; form, the organon of its seriousness, is at the same time the organon of the neutralization of the suffering.’ Li and Lee’s works, although impossible to offset all the difficulties that they mentioned, are at least firm and bold echoes of those in need, and in Adorno’s sense, art.61

The critique of capitalism is a common theme in works related to the New Ugly, understandably because of the intrinsic, commercial qualities of the ordinary and the ugly. Designers aim for the hyper-economic attribute of the style, and take advantage of it with satire and irony to criticise the commercialisation and the detriment of capitalism. In his poster for Foudertype Beijing, Jianping He discussed a multitude of topics with a simple technique. He made a collage of Chinese calligraphic writing, ‘The East Wind Prevails Over the West Wind,’ with irregular, black and white rectangles. [Fig. 36] Zoomed in, the shapes appear to be almost microscopic advertisements of loan sharks, pawn shops, job openings, and property selling which he gathered and possibly reformatted from Chinese newspapers. The hypocrisy of the Chinese government's performance of communism through state capitalism in a capitalist world reveals itself through the crippling debt crisis of Chinese citizens. Alternatively, in He’s own words, ‘Eastwind wins against Westwind. Communism against Capitalism’.62

58. The Hukou system is a household registration system that officiates an individual as a permanent resident of a certain area. Migrant workers, usually coming from rural areas that already have less resources allocated to them, have very little access to health care, ethical contract, and education rights for their children in the new city they settle in.

59. 想要一个家－天龙房屋 [Just Want a HomelCelestial Dragons House]’, Facebook, accessed 8 June 2022, https://www.facebook.com/ justwantahome/

60. Ken-Tsai Lee, ‘Celestial Dragons House’, Behance, accessed 8 June 2022, https://www.behance.net/ gallery/123403581/CelestialDragons-House

61. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Situation’, in Aesthetic Theory, Paperback ed., repr, Bloomsbury Revelations (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

62. Jianping He, ‘The East Wind Prevails over the West Wind’, hesign, accessed 8 June 2022, http://hesign. com/projects/the-east-windprevails-over-the-west-wind

Appropriation

Some corporations see the success of the New Ugly and Tuku aesthetics as an opportunity to monetise the style, either directly or indirectly. Many luxury brands have attempted to do so, only to execute it in a manner that borders on caricature. Take Balenciaga’s 2020 Qixi [七夕, Chinese Valentine’s Day] campaign for example. [Fig. 37] The campaign photos feature models surrounded by tacky, saturated and dated imagery. These images-digital ‘found objects’ likely sourced from the 1990s to 2000s Chinese social media-represent the aesthetics of older rural populations and retro media in general. It is clear that this campaign is designed to appeal to the younger generation who identify with the TuKu trend. Because of its unique aesthetics, as well as the questionable design of the product itself, this campaign stirred controversies on the Chinese internet. Netizens pointed out that to release such images on a traditional Chinese holiday is a mockery of Chinese people’s judgement of beauty; some even called the brand racist.63

We should note that this campaign is not an anomaly. Different luxury brands have done campaigns or events that in some way combine the low-end of the common people and their high-end luxury products. In a similar attempt, Prada also held a special event: in a wet market in downtown Shanghai which operated as usual, the brand provided a Prada-branded packaging along with the produce. The microcosm of this tone-deaf event highlights an internal contradiction of China, the highly unequal distribution of wealth. While many still live in poverty, some are wealthy enough to incentivise a brand to aestheticise and commercialise the proletarian lifestyle.

Luxury brands’ entitled appropriation of these motifs is insidious. It is certain that Balenciaga’s creative direction misjudged its audience. No matter how well the sales of the actual products were, the aesthetic style that the brand borrowed was and continues to belong to the masses. While some wrote that Balenciaga stays true to itself by embracing ‘weird,’ ‘other,’ or ‘ugly’ styles, a deeper examination of Chinese graphic design history leads me to conclude that the brand attempts to appropriate a style that they have no history or connections to.64 The New Ugly and its predecessor were born from sociopolitical strife and economic chaos, and those who actually created and participated in the formation of style are unlikely to afford the product. It is deeply hypocritical and insincere for elite high-fashion brands to adopt proletarian imagery in order to promote their haute couture. While this does reflect the general capitalist tendency to incorporate any innovation into the market, it is even more exasperating when luxury brands attempt so.

It is fair to argue that what graphic designers did was also appropriation to an extent. To be able to afford an education in design and become a graphic designer is certainly a privilege inaccessible to most who live in more rural areas. Nevertheless, we must remember that designers are also individual workers, and the profits that luxury brands make are simply incomparable with the salary of an average designer anywhere in the world. Graphic designers mentioned in the previous sections all provided their unique insights into the special socio-economic situation that China is experiencing, while Western luxury brands and the corporations behind them do the exact opposite.

63. ‘Was Balenciaga’s Qixi Festival Handbag Campaign a Tasteless Insult to China?’, South China Morning Post, 15 August 2020, https:// www.scmp.com/magazines/ style/luxury/article/3097416/ was-balenciagas-qixi-festivalhandbag-campaign-tasteless 64. Ibid.

Conclusion

In this dissertation, I have defended the revolutionary potential of the New Ugly, a graphic design style which has gained popularity in recent years. First I established the complex meaning of ugliness in terms of the specific style, in relation to its Western counterparts-namely, the style associated with postmodernist graphic design. While the two models have certain similarities, the New Ugly came from an existing visual predecessor indigenous to China. I then provided a brief survey of Chinese graphic design history since the beginning of the twentieth century, and posited that the New Ugly takes its inspirations from Maoist and communist-era propaganda based on their overlapping visual elements. Having clarified what the New Ugly refers to, I explained its visual and political significance for the Greater China area through a few case studies. Through this essay, graphic design practitioners and artists should have a better understanding of Chinese design history, which in turn deepens the historical, cultural, and political significance of their work-regardless of where they create-for a more informed, critical practice.

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