The whiff of graduation

The whiff of graduation

I am Informative proclaims the title of Ka Wing Lau’s stunning design work.
Majoring in jewellery and object design, Lau’s final work is a refined plywood and aluminium presentation system built for the Published art bookstore. The elegance and simplicity of Lau’s work belies the complexity of the design which involved laser cutting, CNC routing, polishing, anodising and laser engraving; all within a three month period. An international student from Hong Kong, Lau is currently enrolled in the COFA honours program in design. His current research focuses on a bilingual typography project and is a distinct change of pace after a semester of hard labour. Whilst fascinated  with lettering and typography, Lau says that he definitely misses the workshop, and declares he’d “rather be polishing and bending aluminium than hunched over a computer monitor all day.” Judging by his exceptional work ethic and previous involvement in ConnectED 2007, Ka Wing Lau’s investigations will prove to be a powerful body of work.

Text by Vaughan O’Connor
COFA Magazine
Summer 2008 - Issue 20 P.18
ISSN 1833-8526 
[a pdf version can be downloaded here]

After reading the actual magazine, we realised there are a couple mistakes in the article:
1/ Wing was majoring in graphic design as well as those disciplines mentioned above.
2/ I am informative is an experimental/flexible sign system design rather than a presentation system as being described in the article.

Research thesis 2007

Research thesis 2007

Title
Investigate bilingual typographic designs in cross-cultural contexts where Chinese and English characters co-exist in pre and post-1997 Hong Kong.

Abstract
Typography is considered the most important element in graphic communication design. Fundamentally typography represents language in a written format. In multi-cultural, officially bilingual societies that use two very different visual languages, a designer should have the required knowledge of the two languages to achieve successful bilingual typographic design. This investiagtion focuses on Hong Kong and its use of bilingual typography. This is a city where east meets west, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) where since 1997 the local government has established both Chinese and English as official languages; a context in which more than one typographic language needs to be applied in a design.

Within a theoretical framework informed by Edward Said and other discourses, I argue that it is important for a designer to have the understanding of the languages that he is working with. Case studies have been provided on the Hong Kong-based Austrian design Henry Steiner and the Hong Kong designer Alan Chan, to examine and illustrate how typographic design been affected by the social and political situation in pre and post-1997 periods of the city. The study recognises that by having the knowledge of both Chinese and English, one’s design ability will be strengthened and will therefore contribute to assist the practice of bilingual typographic design in Hong Kong to become a role model for other cross-cultural territories.

Wing Lau 11.2007
COFA, UNSW 

Special thanks to Ian McArthur for supervising on the development of this paper, Katherine Moline the Honours Program coordinator and Keith Tam for allowing his latest research - “Typographic Bilingualism: a framework for the coexistence of Chinese and English texts” to be one of the most important source for this research thesis.