The Ephemeral Design Museum Collection Highlights

Ephemeral Design Museum

collection highlights 3

Ephemeral Design Museum collection highlights

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Foreword The Ephemeral Design Museum (EDM) is a new museum that just opened in fall 2020. As its name says, the EDM contains over 20 ephemeral design pieces. It looks deep into details of design that are often considered as mundane and are generally ignored or even forgotten.

As the museum is temporarily closed right now due to the unfortunate situation, I hope every visitor can still enjoy the curated artwork through this book.

Special thanks to Peter Cocking for the help and support.

— Yuyu Tse, Director

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The Bread Clip Series 8

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2014 – 2020

The Bread Clip Series #1 This is an ongoing collection that started ever since 2014 when the Tse family moved to Vancouver. They are all from different bags of bread and all have different designs on them, but because of the same shape, they are considered as one collective piece.

Text print on plastic, 2.3 cm × 2.5 cm Acquired from the Tse’ kitchen drawer

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Bread Clip

2017

(from the Bread Clip Series)

Text print on plastic, 2.3 cm × 2.5 cm Acquired from the Tse’ kitchen drawer

The Bread Clip is one of the most carefully preserved pieces of the Bread Clip Series; the text printed on it are all very clear with no chips or scratches. The monospaced typeface used here is probably for simpler printing on plastic and also for easier reading. Even though ink bleed occurred to the letter “B”, “R”, and “A”, they are still very legible.

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The month of the date is printed the biggest to emphasize its importance.

“Best Before” is printed the smallest as it is an expected given.

The day is printed the second largest beside the month with two digits.

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The Sign Sticker Series

2018 / 2018

The Sign Sticker Series This is a foreign collection from Taiwan. On the left shows two pieces from the large series of 28 pieces of sign stickers. The Sign Sticker Series is known for its popular messages includes many famous signs such as 自動門 (Automatic Door), 歡迎光臨 (Welcome), and 化妝室 (Washroom).

Text print on adhesive glossy vinyl, 5.4 cm × 17.5 cm Acquired from the Tse sister’s bedroom & washroom door

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請勿攜帶外食進入 2018 (from the Sign Sticker Series)

Text print on adhesive glossy vinyl, 5.4 cm × 17.5 cm Acquired from the Tse sister’s bedroom door

This piece is bought by Yuyu Tse in 2018 when she went back to Taiwan during the summer. “Please No Outside Food or Drinks” is written on it. Despite the stretch caused by the number of characters, the message maintains its legibility. It was placed on the door of the Tse sister’s bedroom door as a reminder for not to eat in the room before it got collected to the Ephemeral Design Museum.

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請勿攜帶外食進入

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2018 請勿攜帶外食進入 (from the Sign Sticker Series)

Typeface 王漢宗特圓體

Font size 53.6 pt Text stretched Vertical Scale - 100% Horiztonal Scale - 180% Frame Stroke Weight 5 pt

This design is very popular used for businesses especially in Taiwan. Although the design is very simple, it is a very recognizable design for its iconic border and the consistent red color.

The dimension of the sticker always stays the same despite the various number of characters for different stickers; the fixed space for text causes the tracking of words changes according to the message and sometimes even causes text stretch like this case.

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The Twist Tie Series 22

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2019 – 2020

The Twist Tie Series: Cilantro The Twist Tie Series is one of the most famous collections in the Ephemeral Design Museum for its diversity and well preservation. Although they are all from different artists, they all contain the same elements including the barcode, vegetable name, vegetable number and brand name.

Text print on paper bilingual cilantro 1.1 cm × 20.2 cm boskovich cilantro 1.1 cm × 25.7 cm eat 5 a day cilantro 1.1 cm × 20.2 cm talley farms cilantro 1.1 cm × 21.3 cm Acquired from the Tse’ kitchen drawer

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Bilingual Cilantro Twist Tie

2019

The name of this art piece is in the biggest font size among the text printed because of its importance.

Text print on paper, 1.1 cm × 20.2 cm Acquired from the Tse’ kitchen drawer

Bilingual Cilantro Twist Tie is the smallest piece from The Twist Tie Series. However, despite its size, it is the piece that includes all the features of a classic twist tie clearly and with strong contrast.

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Unlike the PLU code, the barcode is unique for every piece even if they are in the same category. #4889 is the PLU (Price Look-up) code of Cilantro.

It is a universal code for categorizing fruit and vegetable.

Despite it is a project of the USA, a French version of the information is included as it is sold in Canada.

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The Cardboard Boxes 29

2009 / 2020

The Cardboard Boxes The Cardboard boxes contains 2 pieces of Taiwanese cardboard box. Even though they are from the same origin, they strongly contrast between each other. Madou Wendan Pomelo Box shown on the right is a classic piece that used the symbolic Taiwanese fruit cardboard box design.

Text print on cardboard, 33 cm × 24 cm × 24.5 cm Acquired from mom’s closet room

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O’long Soy Sauce Cardboard Box

2020

Text print on cardboard, 28.4 cm × 27.2 cm × 20.5 cm Acquired from Beside the tse’ Kitchen garbage can

Unlike Madou Wendan Pomelo Box, O’long Soy Sauce Cardboard Box is a neoclassical piece that incorporated the vintage composition of the printed design with a modern dimension of the box. Comparing with the classic wide horizontal box, this piece is taller and narrower in size.

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O’long Soy Sauce Cardboard Box

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2020

The composition of the piece is a classic Taiwanese cardboard packaging style from a long time ago and is still a popular aesthetic for cardboard boxes now.

The design is very simple with a main graphic in the middle and text surrounding it. The typeface for the text is inconsistent for every design piece, but they are almost always in calligraphy style.

Orange marks for the area of text

The centre graphic is usually an illustration of the fruit or vegetable the box contains, but in this case, it is the brand logo.

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The Cardboard Boxes - composition

2020

Although the composition is fixed, there is no specific grid to follow; as long as the text and graphic is in the right place, they do not have to be very precise.

The design is usually on all sides of the box except for the top and bottom.

calligraphy style Regular Script / Kaiti ( 楷體 )

Typeface Round Type / Yuanti ( 圓體 )

colour Red / Green

type justification Fully Justified

As the top two examples shown on the right, the graphic in the middle is usually an illustration of the fruit the box contains (the illustration style is inconsistent). However, there are still exceptions such as Madou Wendan Pomelo Box and O’long Soy Sauce Cardboard Box where the brand logos are chosen to be printed instead.

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The Mom’s Useful Plastic Bags 38

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2014 – 2020

Mom’s Useful Plastic Bags Collection Collected by Emily Wang, this collection contains many different pieces from all around the world. The number of pieces is over 200 and is currently still growing. Because of the different origins of the pieces, each of them has a very distinct design.

dragon view chinese restaurant Text print on plastic, 25.4 cm × 43 cm t&t Text print on plastic, 30 cm × 48 cm Acquired from the Tse’ sink base cabinet

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2014 – 2020

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Rice World Plastic Bag

2020

(from the Mom’s Useful Plastic Bags Collection)

Text print on plastic, 33.5 cm × 59.5 cm Acquired from Rice World Supermarket

Rice World Plastic Bag has graphic elements printed on both sides for the purpose of serving as a walking advertisement when the customer leaves the supermarket with it. It is a classic example of the mixture of Mandarin and English design in one piece with the top part displaying a big logo of the supermarket and the bottom part filled with information in English. The many typographic mistakes in the English section reflects the common disregard for English text in Chinese design.

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Random double / triple space

No space between Random double space

Random double space

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No space between

2020

Rice World Plastic Bag

Typeface Helvetica Neue

Font weight Medium

Text stretched Vertical Scale - 110% Horiztonal Scale - 100%

Leading Auto

Kerning Auto + inconsistent spacing in random places

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2020

Rice World Plastic Bag

The danger of suffocation period - supposed to be a comma

From babies and children comma - supposed to be a period

Comparison of the strecthed text and the original

The bottom section of this piece, also known as the English section, uses the typeface Helvetica Neue.

This safe decision demonstrates the artist’s basic knowledge about the choices of type. However, the 10% vertical stretch shows the artist’s disregard for the form of type. The inconsistent spacing between words and the wrong use of punctuations also reflects the lack of attention for typography.

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