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Editor Frank Scott (FS) from DesignPRWire has interviewed designer Nancy Zhang (XZ) for A' Design Awards and Competition. You can access the full profile of Nancy Zhang by clicking here. Access more information about the award winning design Shapes of Light here.
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Interview with Nancy Zhang at Monday 31st of October 2022 FS: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design? XZ: This collaboration series “ Shapes of light” was an extension of my personal art project “Lightseeker”. The inspirations came from the natural phenomenons that I came across in daily life: it could be the sunrise on the beach; building lights in evening, gentle moonlight in summertime. FS: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve? XZ: How to represent the light scenes with minimal geometric shapes and colors. It was quite challenging because the textile weaving techniques were quite different from drawing & painting. I treated these designs as abstract drawings, people could feel the warmth of light through the colors. FS: What are your future plans for this award winning design? XZ: Continue making a new project/series. There are many new ideas come out from my mind recently. FS: How long did it take you to design this particular concept? XZ: The concept ideas comes out like thunderstorms usually, however filling the concept completely takes longer time. FS: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration? XZ: As I said it was my personal art project extension, I discussed with my clients and they trusted me very much, approved this concept smoothly. FS: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself? XZ: This was a crossover collaboration series between the company and artist. I am glad that my clients have such a professional, well experienced technique supports and make the actual product design ( especially dyeing colors) perfectly. FS: What made you design this particular type of work? XZ: There’s a lot of personal drawing style attached to it. FS: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work? XZ: I guess my aesthetics has been influenced by Bauhaus designs a lot all these years. FS: Who is the target customer for his design? XZ: The people who likes artistic, quality and sustainable design products. FS: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts? XZ: Patterns, color palette and fabric’s quality. FS: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean? XZ: Because these series represented several different forms of lights in my memory so I called it “Shapes of lights”. I believe “lights” could also shape us. FS: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project? XZ: Photoshop just like other designs did. FS: What is the most unique aspect of your design? XZ: Nothing is truly original and unique nowadays but I think this series has a lot of emotional memories attached to it, I hope it could also wake up people’s memories who wear these designs. FS: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills? XZ: Luckily I collaborated with such a professional design team in JOE’s company. There were around 33 craft experts I worked with transferred my drawings to the actual product, also I appreciate a lot other departments and agency’s hard works. It was a perfect teamwork. FS: What is the role of technology in this particular design? XZ: The actual design is a story, concepts were my vocabulary and technology were grammars, it help the whole storytelling clear and smooth. FS: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design? XZ: It was an emotional, personal design journey. Usually my works won’t rely on the big datas unless I plan to do some other type of projects in future. FS: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept? XZ: It was quite challenging at the beginning because I was lack of the textile technique knowledges. So I had to minimize the original details a lot. But it was a good experience because it made me realized what was “ less is more” properly. FS: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition? XZ: I was quite happy about my first design series result so I tried to submit it to an international design stage without thought too much. FS: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work? XZ: Firstly I learnt a lot of textile techniques knowledges that’s the most obvious. Secondly my design experiences helped my drawing style improved also, thirdly this collaboration it enriched my memories. FS: Any other things you would like to cover that have not been covered in these questions? XZ: I think it’s all I want to say. Thank you for the questions, and I hope my new design works would meet everyone soon.
A' Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers. |
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Good design deserves great recognition. |
A' Design Award & Competition. |