Multi-faceted design master Chen Youjian - "East meets West" in a unique way

When it comes to Chinese design, many Japanese design celebrities still remember a solo design exhibition called "East Meets West" held in Tokyo in 2002, where the works combined "Western aesthetics" and "Eastern culture". The exhibition, which blended "Western aesthetics" and "Eastern culture", was well received by the design community in Asia and around the world. The "East meets West" approach has become a familiar label for this award-winning, Hong Kong-based design master.

He is a designer, artist, collector, businessman, photographer and other multiple identities in one of Hong Kong's new gentleman - Chen Youjian. The fifth installment of "Creative Creators" focuses on the multi-faceted life of Chen Youjian, a master designer who promotes the internationalization of Chinese design.

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| Artistic Enlightenment in a Hong Kong Fruit Shop |

Chen Youjian, a Hong Kong design master and one of the most representative Chinese designers in the international arena, has set up the design concept of "East meets West", which is highly respected by the design industry. His works include Coca-Cola, Lee Kum Kee, Hong Kong International Airport, Vanke and other brand design image system, but also contains the spatial image of Shanghai Bund 3 Spa, Hong Kong Fairwood Restaurant and other commercial places.

Over the decades, Mr. Chan and his design team have won more than 600 design awards, and in 1996, he was selected as one of the world's top ten best design firms by Graphis magazine, which is considered to be the bible of the design industry.

People wondered whether such a design genius was born with extraordinary talent, or whether it was the result of his education.

By Chen Youjian's own account, he had no formal education in design, except for a 10-month evening design course that he took on a part-time basis when he started working in the design industry at age 20. Even this kind of amateur learning, but also because of the feeling that the school is too slow to teach, not as fast as the company to learn and give up.

When he was a child, Chan initially attended a traditional Chinese elementary school, where he was criticized by the teachers for not doing well, so his family transferred him to a Catholic school, where he surprisingly finished at the top of his class. Later, he was admitted to Sir Ellis Kadoorie Secondary School, a school with a strong Western culture, where he excelled in both academics and sports, and participated in many school activities, including basketball, singing competitions, and track and field. He also participated in many school activities such as basketball, singing competitions, athletics, and was in charge of decorating the venue for Christmas and New Year's festivals.

But soon after, he dropped out of school and worked as a substitute teacher for ten months, resigning soon after because he couldn't stand the routine of teaching.

After that, at the age of 20, Chen Youjian really started to enter the design industry. At that time, in Hong Kong, where East meets West, the advertising and design industry was being increasingly revolutionized along with the economic development, and most of the advertising agencies were foreign-funded. With the help of his English knowledge gained from the foreign school, he was able to find a job in a foreign-funded advertising agency. It was during this time that he received his only design education in just ten months.

Giving up his design education at school, the advertising agency became Chen Youjian's schoolhouse. "Then I worked hard all the time, overtime and overtime and overtime."

Chen Youjian, who did not go through formal design education, believes that he is indeed gifted in art, and affirms the importance of talent for designers and artists. "No talent can be cultivated by the latter, if you work hard. But if you have talent, you will definitely jump out."

Chen Youjian feels that his artistic talent may have come from his father.

Born in 1950, Chen Youjian grew up in a family of Hong Kong fruit merchants, and it was this ordinary family of origin that established Chen's initial impression of art and design.

Chen Youjian's father, who arrived in Hong Kong from Guangdong in the 1940s, earned his living by selling fruit in fruit stores. "In the 1950s, the family wasn't very rich, and the furniture was made by my father from the wooden crates that held the fruit. The crates could also be put together into one big board to make a closet for the family."

When he was less than ten years old, Chen Youjian would stay next to his father like a little helper, watching him do all these bits and pieces and interesting things. Chen Youjian said that his father would also write Chinese New Year couplets and post them in the fruit store during the festivals, "He had a talent for art, and my talent for art came from my dad."

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| Unique "East meets West" |

Talent and hard work, coupled with the Hong Kong environment at that time under the collision of Eastern and Western cultures, so that Chen Youjian gradually have their own "East meets West" style.

In the 1960s and 1970s in Hong Kong, the middle and upper classes admired Western culture, and excellent advertising ideas were almost all imported, and many foreign advertisers and creators came to Hong Kong in search of opportunities. They drove the development of Hong Kong's advertising industry and nurtured a group of local advertising talents.

"The reason why there was a wealth of talent in the advertising and design industry in the 1980s is more or less due to these foreigners who had taste and were willing to teach." Chen Youjian said that the six advertising agencies he joined one after another from the 1970s were all foreign-funded, the equivalent of studying under foreigners, and that they all specialized in different fields. "Some were very good copywriters, some were very good at taking pictures, one was very good at illustration, one was very good at fonts, and one was very good at point of view."

Chen Youjian learned the language of internationalization from these bosses from different places such as the UK, the US, Australia, etc., and gradually began to look at the flavor of China's oriental culture from the perspective of exotic cultures.

It was not until 1980, at the age of 30, that Chen Youjian, with his diversified design thinking accumulated in many advertising agencies, and his wife, set up their own Darwin Advertising in Hong Kong. Chen Youjian had an identity other than that of a designer - businessman Chen Youjian. 6 years later, Chen Youjian Advertising & Design was established.

In the course of running the company, Chen Youjian gradually found a new positioning for his design thinking - the "East meets West" of East meets West, as well as market-oriented commercial design thinking.

Chen Youjian believes that design creation should be a good combination of traditional elements and modern design tools in order to reflect the true connotation of traditional Chinese culture.

Chen Youjian has won many design awards in Hong Kong and overseas with his artistic talent and keen design skills. At the age of 46, his advertising and design company was recognized by Graphis magazine as one of the top ten design firms in the world that year, and was the only Chinese company among the top ten.

In 2002, he held a solo exhibition in Japan, "East Meets West", which he believes encompasses his design characteristics and artistic pursuits better than the honors he received. In the Japanese design world, his reputation is as famous as Jackie Chan's in the world of show business.

Since then, Chen Youjian has returned to the mainland, where he now works on half of his company's projects in various cities, and has held solo exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai. Some say he's like the Jack Ma of the design world.

Critics say that Chen Youjian's blend of Eastern and Western design elements is soft, elegant, and profound. He is a real commercial designer who likes to consider the visual effect of his works from different angles, neither making his works a purely artistic display nor letting them completely abandon artistry to fall into marketing routines, but rather letting his works both face the market and satisfy the aesthetic needs of his clients.

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| Designer? Artist? Collector? Businessman?

Chen Youjian's design language is unique, and his personal attire and demeanor are also quite labeled. A well-made shirt, a pair of signature round glasses, a goatee, a polite and handsome smile, a not-so-standard Mandarin, and the typical Hong Kong politeness and thoroughness.

Anyone who has seen Chen Youjian probably has a similar impression - he will greet and exchange pleasantries with every staff member, and the whole person is just like his design works, with a hint of Hong Kong-style foreign style and the combination of east and west "hybrid flavor". People who know him well will say, "when he is moving, he is a ghost horse Aquarius old boy; when he is quiet, he is a gentleman in the old Hong Kong old Shanghai movie.

Such a recognizable person, but it is difficult to find a suitable career label for him. Designer? Artist? Collector? Businessman? Photographer? Gallery owner? None of them seem to be accurate, his life is so multi-faceted and rich.

Among his design works, the most well-known one should be the Chinese logo of Coca-Cola, which was launched in 2003. This work, designed with reference to the original English logo, has smooth lines and fully reflects the design thinking of Chen Youjian, who blended the briefs of Eastern and Western cultures.

Back in the 80s, Chan also designed record jackets and concert posters for many Hong Kong stars - Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui and Jacky Cheung. It can be said that Chen Youjian's designs have, to a certain extent, promoted the development of Hong Kong's entertainment culture.

Speaking of Leslie Cheung, Chen Youjian said in an interview, "At that time, he didn't earn too much, and at that time, I had already started to wear designer labels, but he hadn't yet. He would also invite me to his house for dinner." "We weren't really good friends, but we communicated, mindfully, very openly."

To this day, Chen Youjian still retains the jacket he lent to Leslie Cheung to shoot a record sleeve.

Many people in the Beijing design community still have an impression of the "iEye Love - Chen Youjian's iPhone Photography Exhibition" organized by Chen Youjian at the 798 New Age Gallery in Beijing in 2012. It was only then that many people realized that in addition to being a designer, artist and businessman, Chen Youjian was also a photography enthusiast.

The photographs on display at that time also continued his usual style of using the Western iPhone as a photographic tool to capture traditional Chinese architecture, reflecting the living environment and state of the Chinese people.

Another well-known identity of Chen Youjian is the collector Chen Youjian. "From Panjiayuan 20 years ago to the current Panjiayuan, to Yuyuan in Shanghai, Portobello Road in London and so on, I have bought a lot of junk, fakes, and a lot of good stuff."

Chen Youjian is not shy about art investment, he said wryly, investment and find a husband is a principle, "as if my wife and I, began dating when I was a wage earner, the deposit of two or three million are less than, and the wife around the male friends are driving a sports car over to send her to dinner, but she is the only one who looks at me, that is, invested in me. "

Chen Youjian in Shanghai opened a home outside the home "27" such a special life concept store. He said that the purpose of building "27" is to share the real state of his life with everyone, and he also hopes that this space can provide a bigger platform for young people to concentrate on their creativity.

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| 65 to 75, the golden decade of art |

Time seems to have been kind to Chen Youjian, who still looks like a relaxed gentleman, but perhaps because he travels to Shanghai from time to time, he has gained a bit more of the "old kraut" tone of Shanghai. "The company's business is a very important part of the company's success.

Chen Youjian once said publicly that he would position himself from 65 to 75 years old as a golden decade of doing art, extending from the design world to the art field. "After my sixties, I will spend ten years thinking about my afterlife, lecturing and making art spaces in a state of dedication."

Developing art may be the sublimation of Chen Youjian's love of design. "Just because I develop art, it doesn't mean I give up design, I just have to reduce it a little bit and pick and choose carefully."

The exploration of visual arts is Chen Youjian's pleasure, he came from graphic design, and then to space design and art installation design, and then to the love of art, no matter which type of work image is y conveyed Chen Youjian's love for the Oriental culture, and how he expresses the "fusion of expression, close to the natural" aesthetic concept. and how he expresses his aesthetic philosophy of "integration and expression, close to nature".

For his own designer, artist and other multi-faceted "persona", Chen Youjian said, he was originally a typical Aquarius personality, all day in the change, is a "philandering" man, because not "philandering"! "It is impossible to have so many creative projects. If the whole day on the same type, they will be unhappy. "So always crossing borders, which allows me to cross the original behavior to reach another state, allows me to think out of the box."

And this kind of spontaneity, but also the word "persistence". Looking back on his 46 years of design, art career, Chen Youjian said he did not stop every day, running to this stage, a sense of mission, has not given up. "Life is like this, keep searching, keep increasing your energy, from the outside to the inside. I should use the time I have left in my life to share what I've learned."

"From the first day when I came out to work in my 20s to now, I'm very grateful to be where I am today."

Just the year before, Chen Youjian described his current state like this, "I'm not very rich, but I live a very stable life, and I don't think you need a lot of money in life. I have two apartments, two cars, a wife, two kids, my mom is still around, 94 years old, and basically I'm very content with what I have."

By Mullen MA