Personal branding Research book Zihan Zhao
It's all about me! When I consider myself as a brand, as a designer or a passionate person who want to draw into creative inductry, I want to point out my unique elements compare to others. I grow up in China, my logic and perspective of this world is generelly based on Han Culture. It is quite different from where I am being now, for chinese people, we believe in single person is smaller than a community, we believe in our surroundings and environments will change who you are, we believe in there is a level of balance with nature and humanbeing which will change the mind of this person. I reflect to see the character of me, as a designer I am not concentrate on graphic design but my ambition is have my own design language or logic so that apply to different field. I would like to see myself as a art director when I graduate after durther study, because overall I am really open minded and have a lot interests in both art and design. I have the ability of working with group or work individually. While when I study in the UK, I feel like I need to develop my management ability and more concentate on the idea of design. For my work, I see the graphic works are quite urban but with meanings, I also do photography and really like craft. My style of design is willing to show: experimental, urban, positive, concise, playful, problem-sloving.
Moodboards about me, my brand , my work.
MOODBOARD 1 - IMAGERY A moodboard of imagery which represents your brand values.
MOODBOARD 2 - SYMBOLISM A moodboard of symbolism and abstract concepts relating to your brand values.
MOODBOARD 3- MY WORK
MOODBOARD 4 - YOU
This is where you can put any other visual material you find inspiring or that represents your personality.
Beand value
Zz is a personal brand for final year Graphic student Zihan Zhao, for who love art and design and believe in even little ideas can change our surroundings and make this world better. Zihan grow up in China, and then study design overseas. Living in different cultures build up her comprehensive understanding of design. The brand Z.z using hand craft letterpress to enhance the brand value: culture based, experimental and reliable. Zihan would like to design things with posthastism life style and slow down the speed of urban life. Zihan love living in metropolitan city because everything in city makes Zihan curious, but she always want to keep a peaceful mind just like the Chinese ancient poem saying, � It was my nature to love the mountains and hills. Now back to Nature I return again.� Follow this motto, the brand will aim to attract people who have the same interest, as Zihan is willing to study further in university and practice more as an art director. Z.Z will apply to a tea packaging design and a Zen Focus Music Disc Packaging to promote the brand value. Tea as the symbol of slowness delivers brand value directly. Also the finest yellow tea from china will be send as a gift to show Zihan’s love.
" In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. True writing, in which the content of a linguistic utterance is encoded so that another reader can reconstruct, with a fair degree of accuracy, the exact utterance written down is a later development. It is distinguished from proto-writing which typically avoids encoding grammatical words and affixes, making it more difficult or impossible to reconstruct the exact meaning intended by the writer unless a great deal of context is already known in advance. " History of writing
LOGO
ZZ
Letters can represent a person. On the other hand, It is not just a letter then, when it becomes a Logo, it has the function of symbol of one's personality. Chinese language and English language have their different logic in writing. It is possible that combine these two together and investgate a new thing of beauty. Also, I adore the way how letter press onto a paper. The action itself has the emotional connect between what you want to say and who you are willing to speak with. So that I combine the element from both Language and trying to use "ZZ" to represent myself.
CASE STUDY
Xu Bing, Tianshu 夊書 , Book from the Sky Book from the Sky, which in its complete form is a room installation, ranks among the most discussed and best published works of contemporary Chinese art. Xu Bing’s volumes are composed of 4,000 self-invented characters which cannot be decoded. Whether in its full form or as a single volume, this work provokes fundamental questions about Chinese identity and its relationship to the written word, which has long been intertwined with concepts of authority and morality. The artist believes that writing is the essence of culture, and his subversion of it alerts us to the ever-present need to communicate and the dangers of distorting or eliminating intended meaning. Object details Four printed book volumes made as a set. Ink on paper, blue paper covers and thread binding. All contained in a walnut box.
Height: 45.9 cm (covers (each volume closed)) Width: 30 cm (covers) Depth: 2 cm (Closed) Width: 52 cm (Open at double page)
Xu Bing using chinese character to represent English letter.
Xu Bing: Rewriting Culture Alice Yang "A Book from the Sky" is composed of massive sheets of Chinese characters, some left loose and some bound into books, which are suspended form the ceiling, pasted on the wall, and laid on the floor. Everything about "A book from the Sky" has the look of authenticity. Form its arrangement of headings and marginalia on the page to its string bindings and indigo covers, the work mimics in every detail the characteristics of traditional Chinese printing and book -making. While donning such a guise, however, "A book form the sky " is supremely inauthentic. Its characters are purely of the artist's invention and utterly without meaning. What is most unsetting perhaps is the way in which Xu Bing's characters approximate the real thing , for the artist has composed them from the variant parts that make up Chinese characters. In fact, Xu Bing's lexicon is derived from and authoritative Chinese dictionary, but subjected to a radically deconstructive bricolage . When it was initially shown in China, "A book from the sky" became the focus of instant acclaim and notoriety among artists and critics, provoking volumes of intense criticism. Some found the work a devastation critique of Chinese culture, a condemnation of its inutility and meaninglessness. Others viewed the work s a tribute to Chinese culture, a testament to the beauty and balance of its aesthetic structures as well as distillation of the tenets of Chan Buddhism founded on metaphysics of silence and paradox.
The variety of opinions and the fervor of the discussions that greeted Xu Bing's work reflected the complex cultural conditions which gave rise to this ambitious project. In the eighties, with the demise of the Cultural Revolution and the onset of reform, China had entered into a new phase of critical introspection. The political policies of past years were opened to criticism, and the value of Marcist ideology itself reassessed. Chinese intellectuals feverishly argued over the solution to their country's problems, which were attributed not only to the disastrous effects of the Cultural Revolution but also to China's tardy or insufficient modernization. These discussions spread across different
sectors, including artistic ones as well. Thus it was asked: What of the Chinese tradition should be discarded, utilized or reformed? What of the West should be adopted? Regarded s an exemplary work of the period , Xu Bing 's " A book from the sky " became a focal point for all the debates that revolved around the possible avenues of national and cultural reconstruction, but what the works does, in its highly ambivalent way, is to highlight such struggles and still refuse the possibility of any simple closure. While it speaks in a national syntax, it disarticulates such syntax and renders it completely garbled. While it constructs a symbolic
national text, it evacuates all meaning from such a crisis, which might be afforded by simple allegiance to culture and tradition. In "A book from the sky" , Language -a symbolic system fundamental to the integrity and perpetuation of a national culture -is endlessly reproduced but vitiated of andy functional value and thus made curiously unproductive.
http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/texts/xu_bing_rewritting_culture/
CRAFT LETTERS making process
I developed letters Z, I, H, A, N, in chinese writing system then apply them to my branding context,
TYPEFACE CHOICES Graphik Family Light ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890!@#$%^&*()
unused ones: zihan zhao www.hannah-zhao.com ziha n zha o ca rgocol l e ct ive.com /ha nna hzha o
Regular ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890!@#$%^&*()
zih an zh ao
Bold ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890!@#$%^&*()
Zihan Zhao
www.h an n ah -zh ao.c o m zihan zhao www.hannah-zhao.com
cargocollective.com/hannahzhao zihan zhao cargocollective.com/hannahzhao Zihan Zhao cargocollective.com/hannahzhao zihan zhao www.hannah-zhao.com
Texture elements
Making process process Making Screen printing printing + + letter letter press press Screen
The business card was screen printed.
Making process Screen printing + letter press Letter press block.
Out put
I am willing to apply the branding elements to Zen focus CD and Tea packaging.
Reflection
Through the journey develop personal brand, I have a more sense of " Do a design that everyone easily understand". Although there are lots difference between cultures, as a designer, we have the responsibility to design things that people adore ang easily get the point. Also, by doing a personal branding, I have more confident to see myself as a designer. The future plan for personal branding is keep developing graphics, use social networks to promote myself (blog, behance, my website) , build the stuacture of my brand, also really listen to what others say about me, then make my planned self-impression equal to how other people perceive me. Thank you.