Danny Lau Chat
This is a project which consists solely of a namecard. (note: not a business card.)
At the beginning of 2009, Mr Lau came to us and asked if we could design a personal card for him and so we didn’t mind kicking off the new year with a small but nice assignment. The fact is that Mr Lau is a retired professional and he would still prefer to hand out a card which identify himself to a particular person whom he met. Due to a wide range of practices Mr Lau has been involved in over the years, many younger practitioners from different fields seek him out for advice nowadays.
After understanding how Mr Lau would like to be represented by a printed material, we have based the concept around his multi-industries experience which most of the time lead people to consult with him.
Our first idea was to create a design that shows all the industries which Mr Lau has been through and gained great amount of experience. However, we soon realised that there are too many to be listed on a comparatively small printed surface which became too overwhelming. At this point, allow us to rewind back to a little while ago: before we took on this project, we were reading a book called ZERRO by Yukimasa Matsuda - a book that research into the field of symbols and signs containing the most common ones and those that are barely existing among today’s society.
After that, we have decided to only include his name (in both Chinese and English) and his contact numbers within the design. We were really inspired by the power of symbols and signs and hence we introduced the punctuation symbol - ellipsis (…) to replace what have been taken out. In order to achieve a more personalised visual representation of Mr Lau, we have extended the ellipsis into a set of seven dots. This extension is to create a underlying relation with the Chinese character ‘七’ which means seven in English. (Note: Mr Lau is the seventh child in his family.) We believe that by incorporating the chosen punctuation symbol, it symbolized Mr Lau himself taking on different roles within different contexts; while there are just too many to be mentioned.
A challenging aspect of this project was to deliver a design with bilingual components; in which Chinese and English. In order to execute this appropriately, we have researched into roman typefaces that would best harmonise with the comparatively narrow range of Chinese typefaces. A ’sans serif’ Chinese font and the Rotis Sans Serif designed by Otl Aicher were selected. We admire the idealism behind Aicher’s Rotis typeface design; the approach towards creating a family where serif and sans serif coexist. The idea of harmonious coexistence remains a critical element in this project.
Lastly, you might have noticed that the paper stock that we have used for this project featured a gloss reflective white on one side and an uncoated finishing on the other side. To us, this particular stock can further enhance our conceptual approach towards the design.
Card dimension: 85 x 55mm
Laser printed on Shimmer cote, 300 gsm.
Hermés Sydney
During mid September in 2008, we were commissioned to digitally typeset a series of printed cards as well as a number of window lettering for the Hermés Sydney city store.
The theme for that particular visual merchandise display was an approach on stage performances, based on a short story line which was created by the client and their designer. Each main window and vitrine of the store featured a set design along with a piece of printed card which were printed with text, displaying one chapter of the full story. The following is the original story:
1. The Story begins
One a train traveling somewhere through Europe……
2. Aperitif
Arelette loved a triple at 5 o’clock on the dot. François would often say ‘ Well it is past midday in Bombay - why not?’ But that night Arlette had more than drinks on her mind.
3. Dining alone
As the snow begin to fall outside, Arlette sat down to a light supper for one in her private compartment plotting the night ahead. Her mind was spinning, she needed money quickly.
4. Thief
For the clever Arlette stealing jewels had become a tedious bore. Dear old François didn’t have a penny to his name and he was growing suspicious. There was only one thing left to do.
5. Murder at Midnight
The following morning the train was abuzz with nervous chatter. In the dead of night a murder had been committed.
6. Blackmail
Just as Arlette began to relax, there was a knock on the door. It was François. He had seen everything. Unless Arlette gave him half the money he would go straight to the police.
7. The Plot Thickens
Too smart to be outdone by François, Arlette was one step ahead. François had no proof and there was nothing to link Arlette to the murder of Madame La Comtesse. Who would believe such a story?
8. Escape
With her bags packed and a new stolen identity, Arlette vanished into thin air, resurfacing as Madame La Comtesse’s only surviving long lost relative.
9. Evidence
The police never solved the “Murder at Midnight” case as it became known in the press.
10. It’s a wrap
Why did Arlette do it? ”I’d kill for that Kelly bag”, she whispered to no one in particular.
There were altogether ten window spaces for the visual merchandiser to work on and within each space, a card will be displayed to realise the story line. Five of the spaces were actually vitrine, with the same height but varying widths, running in between the other five main windows on the wall facing the street. Each card within those vitrines measure 80×120mm, containing both the titles and the lines of a chapter of the full story. Here is one of the mock-up we have:
The other five main windows were then being allocated with bigger cards which measure 148.5×210mm, containing only the lines of each chapter. The titles were being cut out on white vinyl, became the window lettering displaying at the bottom right hand corner of each window spaces. The following are two other mock-ups we have got and the scale became visible:
Shown in the following is a mock-up drawing of the five main window spaces of the store. What we are trying to illustrate in the drawings are the window lettering, in white. All other elements (such as the brand’s products and manikins) have been striped away as to efficiently present the titles at each bottom right hand corner. Every title echos the content of the card placed within each set design.
For this digital typesetting assignment, the typeface Prestige Elite Std by Creative Alliance has been chosen by the client and their designer to reflect the overall visual presentation of the set design. However, we did have a little more input on the details of typography as we wanted to create a more indepth layer of logical relationship within each typographic elements.
By introducing the basic Fibonacci sequence for all the type sizes, we were hoping that the type can become a part of the spatial environment, referencing the golden section as a model of proportion, in a natural way. The chosen type sizes for this assignment were 13pt for the vitrine cards, 21pt for the main windows’ cards and 377pt for the window lettering.
As we did not managed the print production for this project, according our memories, these cards were ink-jet printed on a type of slightly textured ivory card produced by Fabriano in Italy.
Commissioned by Sydney based interior designer Chen Lu for Hermés Sydney.