Per reporter: Shi Puning Per editor: Tang Yuan
Zhang Zhen Image source: Photo by Zuo Menghan
"Design makes me feel less shy – I can hide behind the project I design and not expose too much personal stuff."
The girl in front of him, who seems to be a little shy but is quite "more real", is Zhang Zhen. She is very sensitive to words, and behind it is the result of years of training.
This sensitivity, the other block words and letters are effective, in the words of partner Gong Li, even a simple lowercase letter "o" is tilted by a millimeter, Zhang Zhen can detect it. This perception is reflected in a pile of font designs the thickness of an adult's thumb as highlighter markers of different colors – orange, for example, indicating that the font spacing is too wide.
At least in terms of design, square characters and letters are not without distinction, which may be a practical gain of Zhang Zhen's research on Chinese characters using the Kangxi Dictionary as the original. In a recently designed font, Zhang Zhen deliberately glued the two characters AE together in a hyphenated manner to reflect the sense of rhythm when writing Chinese characters, so as to meet the expression of customers' "oriental aesthetics" appeal.
In fact, she is not only a type designer, but her previous projects even include a seesaw that can hold up to 6 people.
Image source: Courtesy of respondents
"When you give shape to something that you feel, think, and want to understand, performance is born naturally." This is a sentence from Nagasawa Tadanori, president of Musashino Art University, where Zhang Zhen studied, when answering the question "What is the so-called art and design?" Therefore, from the perspective of design expression, the traditional pairs of East and West, tradition and modernity, public and niche are no longer reflected in the artist's style battle, but have become the material selected and used by designers.
"What's even more attractive is that it can hide itself behind the design, which is more purely personal than art, and design makes me feel less shy – I can hide behind the design project and not expose too much personal things." Zhang Zhen told the "Daily Economic News" reporter.
"Good design is not enough for me to be cool"
Musashino Art School, a designer whose name is not well known to the public, is very well-known for its designers. Even if you don't know his name, if you live in the city, it's hard not to meet MUJI, who is his design director. Currently, he also serves as the head of the basic design discipline at this school, with the title of professor.
Not going to the basic design discipline but the department of visual communication design is the result of Zhang Zhen's deliberate choice. The route is clear: studying in Japan is "cheaper". What I like is the picture, and what I like is the plane direction. The Department of Visual Communication Design is the best match.
Against the backdrop of a dormitory where someone gets up at five o'clock in the morning to memorize English words, it is not uncommon for her to learn Japanese by learning Japanese by herself. According to the official website, as of May 1 this year, there are 25 graduate students in the department, 13 in graduate school I and 12 in graduate school II.
Design for Japanese food stores Image source: Courtesy of interviewee
Expression requires intuition, but the story of Jiang Lang's talent is familiar to everyone. The same is true for design, how long can this dependence last when relying solely on perceptual intuition to create expression? Or is there a way for designers to "output" inspiration on a continuous basis?
Although it has nothing to do with design, Gregor Mendel, who appeared in high school textbooks and made a name for himself with the pea experiment, once gave a model answer - hypothesis. According to the definition of common logic, a hypothesis mainly refers to "conjectures made in scientific research".
The hypothesis is not nonsense, but scientifically based on deduction and induction, which is Zhang Zhen's gain in design methodology when studying in Japan, "Good design is not simply a flash of inspiration, or I think cool is enough." A good designer must have enough thinking and sufficient understanding of the client and the background of the case. In fact, I think that good design is a deliberate decision. ”
How can abstract ideas be put into practice in this studio with two pets? - "Quarrel". Gong Li told us that in daily work, Zhang Zhen must be the one who broke the casserole to the end, "For example, today I told her that I like this font very much and think it is very beautiful." She must ask, what is pretty? What exactly makes you think it's beautiful? Is there anything else you don't think is OK? ”
In this regard, Zhang Zhen made a more specific explanation, "We are doing business projects now, and we will definitely give at least multiple answers in one project. Similarly, in response to a customer's appeal, different people may give countless different shapes, on the one hand, pointing to the meaning of its communication, on the other hand, it may point to the details of the style, which can be discussed and demonstrated. So we often quarrel, we fight every day. ”
First time "do words"
Although he undertakes a lot of designs, font design is undoubtedly the direction in which Zhang Zhen has put a lot of effort into it. In fact, she had developed a font based on the 1716 Neifu Ben of the Kangxi Dictionary.
It is generally believed that Taowen, as an engraving symbol on clay pots in the Neolithic period, is the origin of Chinese characters. As for which of the pottery texts in this are considered "original characters" and which are marks, there is still debate in the academic circles. At present, the earliest pottery script found - Banpo Taowen, can be traced back to 4500 BC. In short, Chinese characters have a long history of development, during which a variety of styles have evolved.
Image source: Courtesy of respondents
For modern designers, on the one hand, it is a valuable resource library, on the other hand, it is also a vast network of knowledge, inextricably linked, and it takes a lot of effort to straighten it out.
How big is that? When Zhang Zhen was writing his thesis, he sorted out enough information to fill an ordinary bedroom-sized room.
From an economic point of view, it is not cost-effective to develop a Chinese font specifically for one brand. Taking the font designed by Zhang Zhen mentioned at the beginning of the article as an example, English only has 26 letters, while the Chinese character library has two specifications, one is about 6700 characters, and the other has 27533 characters, which is "really impossible to digest the volume" for an emerging brand. Generally speaking, only companies of Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent and other sizes have customized fonts including Chinese.
Of course, in the face of real interest, economic considerations tend to take a back seat, not to mention that Zhang Zhen's study of Chinese characters began in the academy. Her research began with a question: Is the Chinese character with large text typesetting a little too regular and dull?
The development of Chinese characters from handwriting to woodblock printing, movable type printing, and then to computer input partially answers her question - she concludes that the accidental and random things that appear in handwriting are slowly converged to a very uniform and noise-free state. Here, noise refers to elements that interfere with the reader's access to information through text, such as excessive font changes.
Zhang Zhen Image source: Photo by Zuo Menghan
Solved the "why" and also answered the "what to do". In Zhang Zhen's opinion, choosing the Kangxi Dictionary would provide a good coordinate.
First of all, this is the ancient dictionary with the largest collection of Chinese characters in China; More importantly, after research, she concluded that the Chinese characters included in the Kangxi Dictionary had been fixed by movable type printing, and retained a certain classical handwriting beauty while having a sense of regularity, "suitable for the transformation of modern fonts." ”
Since it is a conversion, a simple scan obviously cannot meet this requirement. "Some words are very large, some words are very small, some words may be glued together, and some words may be crooked. This needs to be reconciled to a state where reading will be comfortable, which is a process of constant correction. Zhang Zhen took out a box of information folders and explained to us that the font design has two levels: skeleton and outline, simply put, the skeleton is related to the structure, and the outline is related to the style.
The specific development was very tedious, including how to leave the most suitable space between the two characters to allow some flowing strokes to stretch out, but in the end, she developed the "Re-engraved Kangxi Dictionary" font, which includes both regular and bold fonts.
It is worth mentioning that this is Zhang Zhen's first time "doing words".
"Treat the user as a real person"
Less is more? Not necessarily.
"I don't think any design is absolutely good right now." Zhang Zhen told us that she and her partners still have a lot of problems about design, "Putting the customer's demands first? Beauty first? Better user experience first? Cost control first? Or is it environmentally friendly first? So far I haven't found anything very definite. ”
Panda-based inkstone design Image source: Courtesy of interviewee
The concept can be considered, and the project must be implemented. In the material room of the studio, Zhang Zhen took out a cardboard box marked with the word "experiment", which was full of their various "experimental objects".
Taking the recently completed design of a beauty brand powder box as an example, Zhang Zhen explained to us the hard-won nature of this small green rectangular paper box:
First, the carton can be packed after the worker simply folds it; Secondly, there is no plastic cover that is generally used as protection. In order to adjust the most suitable packaging steps and meet the environmental protection demands of customers, she has the impression that the relevant experiments are "at least hundreds of times".
This is also one of the most practical places of commercial design, designers can not rely on a cool concept to achieve the optimal solution, this is because designers are likely to be unable to determine the entire chain from design draft to landing, "using one more piece of paper, less paper, one more structure, one less structure, is really affecting everyone in every link of the industry." ”
Beauty brand powder box design Image source: Courtesy of respondents
In fact, Zhang Zhen called "one of the happiest projects in the past two years" - "Watching the Ball" was born in the above pull.
From the very beginning, there was a tension in the project concept: one member had a dream, and in the dream the whole team was playing seesaw. Zhang Zhen took this as a starting point and introduced the concept of "multiple collaboration", adding a labyrinth-shaped disc in the middle of the traditional seesaw, and the person sitting on the board needed to work together to gather the two small balls in the disc from the surrounding to the center.
The final presentation of the installation is not what was envisioned. For example, in order to ensure the safety of the device, the team abandoned the budget for rich color expression and chose monochrome instead. For another example, in order to ensure that the ball can move without being taken out by others, the team has designed a special size bayonet. Similar examples, Zhang Zhen said several in one breath.
A look at the creation process of the ball Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee
However, this did not prevent the installation from being loved by the local population, and the multiple collaborations that the project wanted to convey were even transmitted beyond the installation itself.
In an interview with the media, Gong Li once said that during the final voting session of the "Watching Ball", which had been used as an entry, community residents enthusiastically forwarded it in various relatives and community groups.
"Treat the user as a substantive person," when answering about what is "good design", Zhang Zhen picked up a milk carton on the table, which is a product designed by a domestic design company focusing on new brands and new retail industries, without the blue sky or white clouds common on the milk cartons, "echoing a clear appeal, it may need to be subtracted, or it may need to be added, but it is the most difficult thing to really chimerize the demands of a project." ”
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