..:: belblog ::..

http://www.sleepingchinese.com/

quite an interesting discovery

*it reminds me to what my friend RocHerms did when he traveled China back in 2006,
he called it “the sleeping giant” and he got exhibited in photoespaña ;D

Today I did not clearly understood this sign…
…means this that there’s no graffiti penalty..
…and the $1500 are for the winner?
that would be great!

*note the paradox of a no-graffiti sign made with spray paint
“hong kong” and “street art” are not really good friends, due to the cleaningness obsession of the authorities and the rule-followingness of its citizens…

…but even if there is this paranoid attitude of banning almost all the walls from any kind of expression (besides commercial ones, that are always welcome), we still can find interesting stuff around hong kong.

thirsty for graffity? > check the Graffiti Research Lab

all my life thinking that the Forbidden City was located in Beijing…

but in fact, Hong Kong fits better this description…
here everything is forbidden!!! …looks like the only allowed activities are working and shopping

…this is a common sign you can find in almost any park around Hong Kong…

if all this is forbidden… what are the parks for?

>> here a link with a cool panoramic photos of the real forbidden city

Bernat Cuni wraps up his correspondence with a report on the third and final day of BODW 2006:

The last day of BODW started with a presentation from Joe Ferry of Virgin Atlantic Airways. He explained how their USD$60 million redesign of Virgin’s Upper Class Cabin transformed the flying experience. Joe admitted that Virgin often seeks help from design consultancies in order to challenge the company’s design team.
Later on, ECCO Design’s principal Eric Chan noted that 80% of the features on an office chair are used only 20% of the time, then further emphasized the importance of searching for “global language” and the “Asian Luxury,” unfortunately with little detail.

After a power-networking lunch break with enthused designers and manufacturers, the session resumed with a poetic Yung Ho Chang presenting his works surrounding inside/outside space relations in architecture. Takashi Sugimoto from Super Potato followed with a criticism on the globalization of aesthetics and reclaimed the importance of small and local expressions and trends. He stated that the significance of any design is the atmosphere it creates and the emotions it evokes in people, rather than merely its shape. To illustrate this concept, Takashi discussed the relationship between humans and nature, and the beauty of ordinary things created by ordinary people–the “un-designed beauty” (like the houses built some centuries ago for example).

Christopher Frayling from RCA expressed his belief that design is moving toward center stage to become a major player in the economy. He also shared his vision of “how a school of design should be.” After a short and interesting review of European design education history, he concluded that a desirable design school should be like an agency of partitioning professionals, plus a research institute, and that it should stimulate the creative economy, holding a strong focus on designing for the people. He laid out some requirements for desirable students as well. They should engage themselves with the world to be aware of cultural diversity and have an attitude of driving their own agendas. They should be excited by the unpredictable and believe in the possibilities of the future.

Business of Design Week 2006 ended with a presentation from Pininfarina, highlighting the signature styling, engineering and manufacturing applied to their latest concept cars, the Nido and the Maserati Birdcage.

The hall got suddenly emptied as the last speaker barely had a chance to wrap up. Attendees quickly said their goodbyes and thank you’s. Here in in Hong Kong, everything moves fast!

This morning of the second day of BODW commenced with a colorful presentation of patterns and cuts by fashion/textile designer Zandra Rhodes. A real pick-me-up highlight was Ron Arad’s boisterous and inspirational presentation, showing early chair designs to his latest hotel designs. His experiment-oriented process of designing served as a reminder that quantity of ideas is not so much of a concern as, knowing which the good ones are. There are a myriad of creative and skilled professionals, but the world lacks an equal number of good clients.

The afternoon session focused on “Brand, Product and Technology”, kicking off with Peter Zec, of ICSID, that design needs to communicate its value in a more pragmatic way. He explained that there is no real definition on how much money a company should invest in product development, however other professions, like the advertising community, use a fixed budget and still gain credibility. In turn, design should do the same in order to have more credibility. Later on, Martin Darbyside from Tangerine gave a similar talk, illustrating his points with examples of in-depth projects such as the successful Club World sleeper seat. After a coffee break, came the grand finale for the day, where Jin Kim from LG Electronics revealed the design process encompassing their hit Chocolate cell phone, spiced up with nice trend-maps, early sketches and color palettes.

The Innovation and Design Expo was a bit less than packed today–perhaps because Hong Kong is a perpetually busy city. But we were there to excitedly discover some weird stuff in the Inventors Section, like an ashtray that keeps a forgotten cigarette lit for 2 hours, allowing the smoker to resume smoking after the time had passed. We also enjoyed conversing with the folks at the “Smart Boutique”, who showcased an RFID based system (developed by PolyU and Schmidtrfid) of sensors and a visual database that allows “go” to a shop, choose items of clothing, and then try them on–omplete with suggestions and service.

Today also marked the announcement of the 2006 Design for Asia winners. The images above and below represent a few products from the winning companies including Apple, Banyan Tree, Integration Co., Lane Crawford, LG, Nigata Industrial, Odaku Electric Railway Co., Samsung, Thann-Oryza, BenQ, Shunde, Daka Development, House of Three, Philips, Traxon Technologies, Anothermountainman, and Steelcase.

Designer and researcher Bernat Cuni is attending this week’s Business Of Design Week conference in Hong Kong. He sent in this dispatch:

In the heart of busy Hong Kong, the crowded BODW 2006 kicked off today, under the heading “Brand, Design, Innovation”. The plenary session opened with an inspiring John Sorrell explaining the human, economic and environment impacts of bad design. He used examples from the UK, and encouraged everyone to join a campaign against bad design by sending pictures and thoughts to Cabe (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment).

The second speaker was Bill Moggridge, who focused his talk on the power of design for business by showing work done at Ideo, while promoting his book and website Designing Interactions. He used various examples of design problems and solutions, a highlight being a video where a consumer spends 23 minutes to buy a drink from her cell phone!

Later on, a non-stop-talking Karim Rashid took the stage to convince the audience about the democratization of design, explaining that design shapes business and that the physical reality needs a push by designers in creating new behaviours. He also talked about the New-Casualism, where consumers are more creative and informed, and products should fit this behaviour.

After the lunch break (western-style coffeshops were full of attendees while local restaurants had hardly any designers eating there), the “Luxury Goods” session started with a speech by Trussardi on how to innovate by expanding a business, from a glove makers to Italian fashion leaders. Five floors below, the “Museum, Leisure & Culture” session was going with discussions on the benefits, problems and economic impact of large-scale architecture and landscape design projects in Hong Kong.

Another event coinciding with the BODW conference is the Innovation and Design Expo, also held in Hong Kong. Among some mainland China “innovations” like a computer case with “fake fishes” on the side we found a lot of local design agencies and design school booths. Some nice findings are MilkDesign, who have a nice collection of home products, and SwedenDesign, a combo of 3 Swedish design companies based in Hong Kong.

Today Hong Kong had something to tell to design educators, and specially to those who keep an eye at Asia.

Concurring with the bodw (business of design week) today started the 2 days event DesignEd Asia 2006 titled “Creativity :: Point :: CounterPoint”.

The Creative Person & the Creative Context:
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
He summarized some concepts about flow related to the creative process from his book in a series of really understandable slides.
He made the statement that the problem of creativity is not in the supply (we don’t need to make the people more creative), it’s in the demand (we need to make the society more receptive).

The Challenges & Opportunities of Creative Education within a Global Context: by Renke He.
He mainly talked about the need to change the label “made in China” to “designed in China”, and proudly showed some BusinessWeek cover pages talking about China + design.
He also questioned the shape and form of the “Chinese touch”, by showing some examples of traditional Chinese elements and contemporary Chinese design.
BTW, did you know that China delivers more than 100.000 design related graduates a year?

Educating Creative Professionals – Experiences from the East & west: by Douglas Tomkin and Kees Dorst.
They ensured that the word “creativity” is over valued and that the “idea” gets too much importance on the design process.
They reminded that design is a problem solving activity and encouraged everyone to practice “creative exploration”, what means having multiple solutions by defining the good questions for a problem.

Creative “Lion”: by Jian Hang
In an unfocused talk, the speaker quoted Napoleon to remind us that China was called “the sleeping lion” a cople of hundred years ago, and he is still waiting the wake up.
With a sense of inferiority compared China with the western creativity, and he said that Chinese mindset is to follow rules and not to be creative because is socially unaccepted, but this need to be changed (that’s a good paradox).
He also complained about the westernized Chinese movies that misrepresent the authentic Chinese aesthetics.

Project Briefs that Enable Creative Solutions: by Alice Lo.
She used up her 45 minutes talk saying that if you tell the students to “design a chair” you get “non-creative chair designs”, and if you tell them to “design a comfortable place for sitting” you get “creative breakthrough innovative ideas”… and then she gave us a free book called “Creative Tools”.

Field of Creative Perception: Inventing Design Issues within the Process of Drawing: by Takeshi Suonaga.
He started with an interesting case study of a project where they designed a device for teenage girl’s shopping experience that allow them to store, personalize and share data in order to “help” them to make shopping decisions.
Then, he explained us that if you ask your students to draw 100 sketches from one day to another, you not only ruin their nigh plans, but you are giving them the opportunity to discover the magic moment of “drawing without thinking” which leads to a “creativity driven by action not by imagination”. He explained that by drawing and letting your hand flow free, you are creating a “space for thinking, where your brain perceives movements and translates them into idea generation”.

The day ended with a panel discussion titled “Beyond School: Nurturing Creativity in Young Designers”.

Panellists repeatedly highlighted that Hong Kong fresh design graduates have very poor creative skills and suggested that the best way to empower creativity among Hong Kong design students is to study abroad.
This statements obviously didn’t pleased all the audience, and some teacher reminded the panel that China’s design students hardly go abroad to study and their results are celebrated as creative.

What was happening at the Hong Kong basements 20 years ago?
simple: they where selling pirated apple computers and software (like now)

Take a look at this video that was recorded back in 1986 using a hidden camera.
*the intro is quite long but retro-futuristically nice
The most amazing is that in that shops they could get any software within 3 days of its announcement anywhere in the world.
How could they do this without internet?
easy: they had lots of good friends that were airline pilots

As a Big city, Hong Kong has lots of different people…
but the type i’m missing, is the streetartist….
…I miss Les Rambles

enjoy this wonderful video called Mr.Fortune

*this video belongs to a series of shortfilms creted by Eric Lerner.

this pair of photos are not mine, but I really like them.

this one was taken by > ~Chris

and this one belongs to > _berc
you can find both of them at the Hong Kong ?? flickr group.
enjoy!