Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. I am Yiying Lu. I am a creative citizen of the world. Today's class is going to be about cross-cultural design. My interpretation of cross-cultural design is designing for a global audience. For the audience that is not only speaking your language or living in your location or coming from your own background. Your design should speak to audience that is larger than you. In this class, I'm going to give you some tangible examples that I've done in last 10 years, and also break it down to colors and topography and iconography and research and guide you to show you uh how can we create something for a global audience. I'll also be giving you a creative prompt to help you to start your first cross-cultural design piece. This class is really for everyone, but it's specifically helpful for people who are already doing their own design or creative work and believe that they're a citizen of the world. They're not only designing for the world, they're also living in a world, they are co-creating with the world, and wanting to find their own voice in this global community, which ultimately is going to make their own work better and also serve their audience better. I would like to invite you to get onto this creative journey and discover your own creativity. I think you guys have this incredible amount of power to shape up the world we're living in. You also have this really amazing position that you can use your design to influence and impact the world that you're living in. I want you to walk away feeling inspired, confident, and also having these tools that you can apply to your own design creativity process. I'm really excited for you to join the class. Let's get this started.
2. What is Cross-Cultural Design?: The topic cross-cultural design might sound huge, but at the very core of it, it's designing for people from around the world. As a creative that dealing with visuals, you have this very unique position as well as a unique responsibility to make your work that speak to a global audience. So visual language is this unique language that speaks across the language barriers. If I'm watching a movie that is produced by someone who's not living in my country, I can probably cry and feel the emotion, and it's because it's such a strong work. There is this amazing force of unity that is coming from this visual language, that is so powerful and it transcends the linguistic barriers or culture barriers. Whether you're a graphic designer, or you are a motion designer, or you do video production, if you're dealing with visuals, you have a very unique power to communicate with your audiences. As soon as you put your work onto the Internet or your work is going to be broadcast to the Internet, you have a global audience. Having the toolkit to access your creativity from a global view is going to help you to become a better designer, a better production person, a better marketer, or just simply a better communicator. When you have a mindset or you have an audience that is global, it doesn't matter where you're coming from. They probably don't speak your language, they don't have the same background or upbringing as you do, or coming from your country. This is a very powerful tool to have that in mind and also being able to connect with another human being that is different from you. In this class, I'm going to introduce four building blocks for you as a visual designer to use as a tool for your communication, color, typography, iconography, and research. I will not be teaching you how to use Photoshop or Illustrator or these actionable tools, instead, I'll be showing you the actual projects I've been working on in the last 10 years to give you a concrete idea of how I apply these building blocks into my practice. I really hope that this class is going to help you to started to unlock your creativity, and also helping you to see through the lenses that you don't see normally, and helping you to discover there's so much more from everyday life. You can also start to really appreciate things that you don't normally notice, or start to appreciate culture or a language that you don't even know about. Having that appreciation, and having that understanding from a perspective of acceptance and respect is going to help you to become a better person, not only a better designer, a better human being. The reason why I'm teaching this class is because this is what I believe in and what I live for. The whole practice of doing cross-cultural design is not my job or career, it's my calling and this is the thing that I live for. Because I really see the value of me as a designer being able to grow my career as a designer, but also to be able to grow as a person as a creative human being. I do believe that everybody have the creativity in themselves, and I also do believe that everybody have the creative potential to be able to grow themselves as a global citizen. By the end of the class, I would like to invite you or to create a visual piece. It can be a postcard or it can be a poster to illustrate the notion of sharing. You are going to select two countries and you're going to create this poster that reflect another culture apart from yours, another country or another city, and you combine them together into this visual piece surrounding about the theme of sharing. It can be sharing joy, sharing knowledge, sharing food, it's about interacting with another culture. I really hope this class is going to help you to discover the world better and also open up your creativity and also open up your eyes of discovering beauty and meaning. With that, let's get it started and let's dive into the first section, color.
3. Choosing Colors that Connect: So, the very first building block is also one of my favorite topic which is color because if you're doing design, if you do anything that is dealing with visual obviously color is the language you are going to use to speak. Then one thing about color we can probably all agree is that even though we see color the way of interpret color could be differ from whichever culture you're growing up with. Even though it's the same color, it probably means different things to different people if they're coming from different backgrounds. So what I'm going to do next is I'm going to show you the color symbolism and also how we can apply colors for your project, and also how impact for color can bring into your project. The use of color can be really differ from the contextual usage of where, which country it is being used, and where it is being used. For example, in China, the color red is a symbol for celebration, good luck, and happiness. In Tibet culture, it's a sacred color. It means protection against the evil eyes but also symbolization of revolution because it's also the color of blood, and wall, and aggression. Green, in this case also it's a very interesting culture case study. In Western culture, it is the color of ecosystem nature. Islamic culture, the color green is a secret color to Islam. Blue is also another really good example. In Asia, blue is associated with holiness and immortality whereas in most of the western cultures, blue can associate with the feeling of sadness and even depression. So, when you're applying the colors into whatever design you're working on be very mindful of the choice of color. Be also very mindful about different shades of colors too. The shades of darker blue that is more like Indigo can associate with sadness and also depression. The sky blue evokes this notion of tranquility, and calm, and communication. That's why you see there so many technology companies are using sky blue as their logo colors. So, be very careful when you apply the colors, know your audience, and make sure you choose the right color. Now that we have the overview of color, I'm going to dive into the application of color and introduce you the project that I've done with Disney Shanghai by using color. When Disney Shanghai reached out to me back in 2014, they're building this new theme park in Shanghai China and their target audience is not only global audience but specifically, Chinese local audiences. The most important thing for any institution is the building block which is people. So, when they try to attract all these talents in China, they need to build a recruitment campaign. So, when they come to me they said we know what the recruitment campaign message is going to be, it is going to be authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese. We also know that the five characters we'll be using Mickey symbolize for magic, Simba symbolize for growth, Moulan symbolized for courage, Elsa for dream, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs for teamwork. But, how do we make these five characters that's coming from very different backgrounds, and they're not even the same genre, they're not even the same species. How do we create a very visually consistent campaign that brings these five characters together as a whole, but they also can be created or developed individually as posters and campaign artworks by itself? One of the effective method of bringing these characters together and speaking in a coherent way is using the effective color. Also, in a color scheme that also encapsulate these five characters together. I decided to assign a color to each characters and they also got to be working in harmony with each other. So, what's the best way of making sure that the colors are working in harmony? In this case, we have five characters here so we have these five dominant color from the rainbow color scheme, the red, the yellow, the green, the sky blue, and also purple. So, once I decided these five colors are going to be the main color for these five characters, I then needed to assign each color for each individual characters. So, firstly because we're debuting this campaign targeting on Chinese audience. So, the color red is being used here to localize for the local audience. Red as you know is a color of celebration and luck in the East. In this case, it works very well in conjunction with Mickey and having this very celebrational appearance. That's why the color works well here for this particular contexts and this particular demographic. Elsa is the snow Queen that live in this Island kingdom. Obviously, the color blue applies very well here. I decided to use sky blue because it's less controversial because the indigo blue or the darker royal blue can associate with different meanings in different cultures, and the color blue works really well with Elsa not only because of the clothing she's wearing, but also it works really well in conjunction with the snow land, the white. The next color is yellow for Simba, because in the closest to color to the fur of Simba is yellow. I also had additional color brown that works really well in conjunction with the yellow. It creates this mood for Africa. The land, this vast land of nature. So, I assign the color purple to Snow White because there's several reasons. Number one, Snow White is a princess, she's coming from a royal family. The color purple reflects really well for royalty. The second thing is the brief also asks that we need to have Snow White with the seven dwarfs. So in this case, because seven dwarf is the number seven, and purple is also the seventh color in the rainbow, so that also comes very naturally that this is the color that I'll be using for Snow White. So, the remain color would be the color green and it was assigned to Moulan. It works really well for Moulan in this case because the color green also associate with nature, environment, youth, vigor, and the reason why also it works well with Moulan is because the name Moulan in Chinese actually means the magnolia flower. So, it really works well with Moulan's name because it's coming from the nature. This is the reason why that each color is assigned to each different character. One thing I do wanted to stress is that if you're working as a designer, don't over-complicate your design process by thinking too much. Often the design decision comes very naturally when you tap into the emotion you try to convey, or the the nature of the subject matter you're working at. Color is just a method for you to express. So in my case, with assign of the colors into these five different characters seemingly, it's a quite difficult challenge but start with something that is more obvious. In this case, Mickey is pretty obvious the red and the blue are pretty obvious, and the yellow is pretty obvious too. Work out the thing that is mostly obvious to you and the easiest problem to solve, and do it one step at a time. Then, start to work on something that is more complex. In this case, Moulan come to be the last decision but it worked out so well. So, a lot of times when you are working on a very complex design challenge, work on something that you think makes sense to you in the first place. So in this case, this whole color design exercise will help you to also figure out a way to simplify your design process as well.
4. Blending Typography to Bridge Cultures: So the next building block I'd like to introduce to you is typography. The idea of typography in this class is referring to the layout of words on the paper. How do we manipulate the shapes of characters in certain way that it's not only visually pleasing, but also it speaks well to the particular audience from that particular culture? In this case, if you're designing for more than one culture, making sure that the typography also not only legible but also conveys the meaning visually as well. We have already dive into color previously, because color as a visual language, is probably more obvious to people as in different colors speak to different cultures in a different way. Typography on the other hand is almost like one level up. For example, the letter O, in English letter, is letter O, but in Arabic numbers system, it works as a zero. In Hangzhou, if you look at a lot of Hangzhou characters, it has those lines and circles in combination. So finding the common ground that shapes that languages have in common, is going to really help you to solve complex problems. The first example that I like to introduce to you is this project at Google Campus in Seoul, Korea. This is an event that tried to empower female founders in Korea. So in this case, we have four different stakeholders here, we have 500, Google, female, and Korea. These four elements needed to be reflected in this singular unified logo. I start with the female theme because this is a female orientated audience. Looking at the Korean characters of female, I couldn't really find a common ground here typographically speaking. The next thing I thought is, which other part works really well with these two characters? There's two circles in the character, 500 also has two circles. So perhaps, we can utilize this common ground here, which is these two circles, and applied them to the actual logo as the common elements that intersect. After that combination, you have this new character that has both elements typographically from the number of 500, and also the visual element that's coming from the Korean character of female. Then I was using the color coming from the Google brand name. In this case, we apply three colors from the four colors of Google; the red, the yellow, and the green onto the Korean Hangzhou which, works really well with the 500 characters. Now you have these three elements working in harmony with each other. The next thing I did is invert the color of the black and the white with the logo of the Google Campus in Seoul. So this is the final design solution for the 500 woman. So in this case, I'm using color and typography to solve a very complex problem. The next project I'd like to introduce you is, how can we use typography effectively to speak to two different countries and people from two different cultures? This is a business project that I did for a real estate company that is based in Australia. As this company grow, they wanted to attract more audiences from Asia, particularly people from China. The CEO of the company came to me and said, "We have the English version of the name, which is Home 789, and the reason why it 789 is because seven means rise, eight means develop, and nine means sustainability in Chinese. But we wanted to have this three characters appeal more towards the Chinese audience and we wanted to combine the actual Chinese character into our new identity. How can I come up with a solution that can bring the English and the Chinese character together?" That is a very big challenge. Because if you look at the original English character, which is home, versus the Chinese character, typographically they have nothing in common. So I was looking at the character and looking at the typographic evolution from the oracle, to the more recent version of the character. I started to realize that in the recent version of the character [inaudible] or home, in Chinese, has two elements because Chinese Language is a pictorial language. So often, the language character was developed from pictures. So in the olden days, people actually put a little roof on top of a pig. So this element on the top is the radical symbolize for roof, and the character underneath it is the character to symbolize for pig. So I combine the characters seven, eight, nine and made it more similar and more into the form of the character pig and it's sort how works. So when the CEO look at my first draft, he said, "This is a great start. I like it, but I also would like to have my adviser looking at the design and give you some feedback. He is not a designer, but he is a functionary master and he has helped me with a lot of projects in the past." I was a little bit befuddled to be honest, but part of me is telling myself that you should be open to this opportunity because maybe you can learn something from this functionary master. So the next thing I had was, I had a phone call with this functionary master who was overseas. His feedback was, "I like the design, but do you know in functionary, we tend to like something that is more organic? We tend to avoid corners. We tend to avoid sharp items or sharp corners visually. The other thing he said, these two strokes here doesn't work in harmony with the seven, eight, and nine because it looks redundant and it's not integrated well with the seven, eight, and nine. Is there any way you can integrate these two strokes into the eight and make it more flowy just like a ribbon?" I was like, wow! This is a very interesting suggestion. I've never thought it that way, because I was only looking at typographically. But now, all of a sudden he's giving me this new insight and this new way of looking at what I can deal with typography. So this is how the second version came about, and I showed it to him he said, "Very nice. We love the interaction with the seven, eight, and nine altogether as a coherent piece, but I'm still not sure about the top part which is the radical. Can you make sure that you also soften it so that it looks integrate with seven, eight, and also getting rid of the sharp corners? " So I went back and look at the history of that radical and how it became what it looks like today. Again, I discovered that radical is the roof and the name of that radical in Chinese is actually translating to English. It's called the treasure hijab. Well, the [inaudible] is coming from the ancient Chinese currency, which is the Yuan Bao. So why not redesign the radical of the treasure hijab according to the original form of the treasure? So I started to redesign and simplify the radical and made it more rounded to mimic the shape of the Yuan Bao, which is the shape of the treasure and then I combine them together. This is the final character of the Home 789 in Chinese character. This is the final logo of the Home 789 in conjunction of the English and Chinese. This design also help the company to win the brand Excellent Award and also Marketing Excellent Awards three years in a role. One other tip I'd like to offer to you, when you're working with typography, especially typographic exercise involves another language that you don't speak. Make sure to do a lot of researchers, especially consult with people who speak that language because when you manipulate shapes and forms, it might mean different things according to different audiences. So making sure not only it looks great, but also it conveys the exact meaning that you're trying to convey. Users test with people who speak that language and combining numbers of different things and also different styles and make them appeal in a more coherent and consistent way.
5. Using Iconography to Communicate: So we've talked about colors, we've talked about typography. Now, we're moving onto, how do you use iconography to communicate with audiences from around the world? How can you create a piece of visual that is so recognizable from a instant grasp of just looking at it and then you can get the exact meaning or you can get the exact message that can cut through the language barriers? From a Nike Swoosh to a Playboy Bunny, everybody can very quickly gasper on what's going on here because icons are highly simplified visual language. So we're going to move on to this building block and I'm going to show you how it works. The first example that I'm going to introduce to you is actually my own piece of artwork. It was being known as the twitter fellow. This is during early days of Twitter from 2008 to 2013. Every single time when social media Twitter kind of having a overcapacity moment, the users will be able to see the whale on their screen. What's really fascinating is the power of iconography here working as a very effective communication tool to engage with a global audience. Because Twitter as a website or as a app, it has users from around the world. Not everybody speaks English. However, when you have a visual piece that transcends linguistic barrier, you can use visuals as a metaphor. So in this case, the birds were representing Twitter as the company. The team of the birds are trying to solve this big overcapacity issue. So in this case, the whale here, representing the capacity challenge the Twitter team is try to solve. Using that visual metaphor, it's not only making it more relevant, but also it makes it more fun for people to relate to you. It humanizes the technology and it also humanize the business. "We're working very hard to solve this big capacity issue. Please, bear with us." That's probably the reason why people send me a lot of tweets, "Thank you for making me feel a little bit better." Or, "Every time I see the whale, I actually feel a little bit calm." The users from around the world start to create their own versions of the whale in all kinds of different languages. That to me, I think it's such a rewarding experience as a designer. How can you create something that really engage the user and also, how can you create something that transcend the linguistic barrier, and cause people emotional shift, and cause people to have this curiosity of creating something that is inspired by your work? So talking about iconography, one particular visual language that a lot of you probably use it now is emoji. Emoji was originated in Japan, for those of you who don't know, but what's really interesting is now you have people from around the world as using that pictorial language to speak to everyone. So next, I'm going to dive into my design process of making the dumpling emoji and also mention a little bit about my redesign of the chopstick emoji. So the design of the dumpling emoji is actually coming from the need of having a dumpling emoji. So often, when we're doing a visual design or we're doing any designs, it comes from an urge or desire of communication. So in my case, I started the dumpling emoji because my friend Jannie Lee sent me a text message of dumplings and invited me to come to her house to have dumplings and I realized there is no dumpling emoji. So I text her back and said, "I'm surprised that we don't have a dumpling emoji", and she goes, "Oh, good point." The next thing I realize is like, "Wait a minute. I'm a designer. I can solve that problem. I might be able to use my imagination to design an emoji on my own." So I came up with my very first dumpling emoji attempt. I sent it over to Jennie and she said, "Oh, that's great. We should publish this." I thought that was such a great idea that we should make it available to people from around the world. Coming from Asian background, I love dumplings, but also I realized this is also a very universal food. In fact, it's the ultimate food that cross cultures. We have Samosas from India, we have Gyoza from Japan, we have Mandu from Korea, Ravioli from Italy, Maultaschen from Germany, and all kinds of different culture having their own versions of dumpling. So it is crucial to have a food that reflects this global experience. We decided to form emojination, a collective of friends who work together to support our kick-starter campaign to get the dumpling emoji to be added onto people's phone. In order to publish the dumpling emoji into everyone's keyboard, we need to get the blessing from the Unicode Consortium which is a Silicon Valley-based group of computer and software corporations and individual volunteers. Unicode came back to us and tell me specifically that they like the design of the very first draft of the dumpling emoji. But if you look at the actual design of most of the emoji that's already on the keyboard, they don't have much of expression. So I got rid of their facial expression on the dumpling, it looks more like a pinata. They also mentioned that most of the food in the existing emoji category are 45 degrees. So we wanted to depict the dumpling in a more 45-degree fashion. I also did more research onto dumplings around the world. I discovered this shell-looking dumpling as a universal form. So I decided to use it as a reference point and I came up with the final design of the dumpling emoji which everybody was in agreement with. Unicode came back to me and said, "We love your dumpling emoji. We also have a lot of people requesting the takeout box, the chopsticks, and also the fortune cookie." We present the first draft of the design at the UTC, which is Unicode Technical Committee meeting in 2016. Immediately, Bobby, who is a Unicode member, who's also a expert in linguistics, he's from Taiwan, he sent me this piece of feedback from Taiwan, mentioning that the figure, crossed chopsticks mean impolite in China and Japan to the elder. I was born in Shanghai, China, but I had no idea of this piece of adequate until Bobby was mentioning it to me. But then again, I thought about the Chinese characters. We have the simplified Chinese characters and also the traditional Chinese characters. So in mainland China, most of the times we are using simplified Chinese characters and in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in this case, they are mostly using the traditional Chinese characters. Over time, as time evolves, and also culture evolves, often we simplify things and we say things or write things in a shorter form, but I do think that sometimes it's great to honor the order tradition. In my case, I did more research and realized that what Bobby is suggesting was relevant and it's also helping me to reshape my understanding of how I can represent the culture, in this case, the chopsticks in a way that is also respecting the tradition from the past. So I redesigned the chopsticks and make it slightly close to each other, but not entirely parallel because then, people would probably think it's a drumstick or it could be interpreted into other things and also having the color of the black and the red to reflect the Asian culture. So this is how I redesigned the chopsticks to reflect the feedbacks from the users. So as designers, there's always so much things to learn and when you're open and being curious and also being able to receive feedback and iterate along the way, is definitely going to help you to become a better designer and also produce work that speaks to a wider audience.
6. How to Conduct Your Research: So we've talked about three building blocks color, typography, iconography. Now, we're moving on to the final building block, which is research. Research is the most important building block. Although I'm putting it into the last introduction of the building blocks, research should be the first, most important thing. In my case, I dedicate 80 percent of my design process to research. Because through research, this is the time that you actually have the full understanding of the subject matter, and you also figure out what is the challenge and how can I work around the challenge to find the solution, by executing it within the last three building blocks color, typography, and iconography. Research should be the foundation of your execution, not the other way around. Research also happens all the time. It's not only happened in the beginning of your design process. Having a better understanding of how to effectively using research as a foundation of your design, it's going to help you to come up with better product. So the notion of research, I think when I say the word research, probably pop into your mind is going to the library, or get onto Wikipedia, or get onto Google and just research. These are all valid methods of doing research. But to me I think what was also very very useful when I talk about the notion of research or redefine the notion of design research, is actually talking to your potential users. Especially, if you're working on some design that is going to be used in another country. It is super helpful for you to talk to people who live locally, who speak that language, who understand those customs from that country. The other thing I think it's super valuable as part of your design research process is traveling. If you don't have the access of travel to another country right away, a lot of times design research can be really easily accessible now that we have the Internet, and we have social media, we have Google Hangout, we have FaceTime. When you're working on your own project about bringing two cultures together, you can also tap into the community you have online and maybe talk to students that is coming from another country and ask them to do a Google Hangout with you. Having a conversation with someone that is having a very different background as you do, could be as rewarding and as interesting as you're traveling to another country. The other thing I also wanted to mention is also talking to people coming from different professional background. Research should come from the place and the desire of learning about something new. That's basically my definition of research, is having the curiosity of learning something new. So I'm going to provide you this example where I was working with this global company called 500 Startup. It's a global VC firm helping startup founders from around the world. In this case, they're localizing their regional into the Indian market, and they need a regional logo for the global presence of 500 in India. Now, when I start the project, the first challenge come about was globally, the company was known as 500, which is using Arabic number system, which is an international number system. However, if I use that number system into Hindi, it became like the form of 400. Because the Hindi form of number 5 looks like a four in Arabic number system. So obviously, we're not going to use the form of 400 for the name 500, because that's very confusing. People who doesn't speak Hindi wouldn't know that actually means five, and they'll be like, "Do we get a $100 discount if we speak Hindi?" Obviously, we're not going to be using that. So in order to solve that challenge, we decided to spell out the English 500 and then translate it into Hindi. That worked. However, the next challenge came as I realized by talking to the local team, that there are about 122 languages spoken in India. Hindi is just one of the 20 plus official language spoken in India. Not everyone in the country speaks Hindi. So the solution came as I worked very closely with the local team, and we came up with almost 20 different translations of the spelling out 500 version in all kinds of different localized major language. The next step we did is, how do we make all these localized version come together as a unified piece? We need a bit of assistance with the color. So in this case, I was using the color of the Indian flag, the orange, the white, and the green in conjunction with the original logo, the global logo of 500, and integrating all different languages of 500 spoken as the main language in India. So I ended up integrating all the main languages within the border of the original 500 logo and highlight the colors of the Indian flag in the color scheme of orange, white, and green to indicate the regional localized version of 500.
7. Start Your Project: So for our project, I would love to invite you to design this poster around the theme of sharing because we are taking this class which is designing across culture where we are living in this increasingly borderless world. We still have the differences in cultures and languages. The idea of design is to bring people together and exchange ideas in a more seamless way. What I think could be really helpful is having you to have this experience of trying to communicate or trying to express to another country or another culture and genuinely wanted to connect with another human being. It can really transform your way of looking at design. If you look at the examples that I have already showed you, in this case, the dumpling emoji, it's a shared experience of a global food. When you sending an emoji to someone, you're literally sharing the experience of expressing something that you have something in common with someone. In the case of Disney Shanghai, Disney is a very iconic American brand, but it also has this common ground which is Mickey Mouse as a beloved international symbol that's coming to a new market, China, and having this localized experience but having this exchange of this shared icon that is being recognized globally but also have a unique localized experience. It's also a great way of sharing something that is beloved from people around the world. We all know that sharing is caring. I really hope that you'll take care of this project and make this project into expression that will allow you to explore another country, another culture, and also another language. So the specification of the poster is, it is going to be in A3 size. So in this case, if you're using inches, it's 11 by 17 inches. If you're using centimeter, it's 420 centimeter times 300 centimeters. The orientation of the post doesn't matter. It could be horizontal or vertical. It's up to you to decide. The theme of the project is going to be sharing. So what I'd love for you to do is pick two different cultures and merge them together into this one poster. What I mean by that is the two cultures can be two different cities, or two different countries, or two different languages. It could be two different cities who has very different personality. It could be these two different cities that coming from the same country or it could be a sister city or a city that you wanted to travel to from another part of the planet. So in order to give you some tangible examples, I'd like to show you some examples I have done in the past. So here is a poster that I did for the event called intersection of art and tech. So here, I'm using just two colors and merge these two concepts or two fields together. That could be as simple as the form can be. The other example I'd like to show you is a piece of illustration that I did for Australian and US exchange. So as you can see on the artwork, you have the two bridges, San Francisco and the Sydney, Australia Harbour Bridge merged together, and also all the icons from these two cities coming together on one page. So you can make it as elaborate as that keys of illustration work or as simple as my intersection art and tech. That said, this project is super flexible. You're also welcome to take inspiration from my previous examples by choosing a well-known character, maybe coming from your childhood which you love and localize it for another country. For example, my case is I localized Mickey Mouse for the Chinese audience. So I dress up Mickey in a very traditional clothing from China. You can do something like that or you can choose the emoji that you wanted to rework or localized for a specific audience from another culture, and that could be the centerpiece of your poster too. No matter how you execute it, I'm sure it is going to be amazing and I can't wait to see your work in the public gallery and also, I can't wait to see you sharing with more people of your creativity around the world.
8. Final Thoughts: Thank you for staying through the entire class so far. So some final thoughts, as designers, I think you guys have this incredible amount of power to shape up the world we're living in and you also have this really amazing position that you can use your design to influence and impact the world that you're living in, and I want you to walk away feeling inspired, confident, and also having these tools that you can apply to your own design creativity process. I'm so excited to see what you'll be creating to bring the world together.
9. Explore More Classes on Skillshare: way.
Yiying Lu, Bilingual Designer & Creative Director
