client: hong kong design centre, designex’08
year: 2008
what: a 70 x 100 cm poster ‘to promote cross cultural design’

“designex’08 is a bodw 2008 event, the annual flagship event of hong kong design centre, of which the netherlands is the partner country of this year. a series of design exhibitions will be staged at designex’08 at innocentre,hong kong, featuring dutch design across various design disciplines. amongst all, a cross-cultural poster exhibition of hong kong and dutch designers will be curated to display cultural diversities of two places and reflect the impact of design in our everyday life from a graphic design perspective. through these posters, we will be given lots of new insights, contributing to the understanding and appreciation of the urban interweaving of art, media and culture.”

“each designer will choose one theme and design a 700 x 1000mm poster of his/her personal interpretation from his/her cultural upbringing. hkdc will be responsible for the production of the poster (inkjet output) and the poster will be displayed at designex’08, concurrent event of bodw 2008. a half-size poster book will be printed (limited edition of 1000 sets) as collectables of this project. each participating designer will get 20 complimentary copies.”

“target audiences include art and design lovers, architects, designers and students, and the general public. guided tours for senior highschools and teritary institutes plus art & design lover group will be arranged to further disseminate the impact of cross-cultural design.”

a country’s culture reflects itself in many words, names, terms and sayings.

our brainstorm session about the given subject ‘living environment’ lead to a rich collection of the items mentioned above. some dutch words don’t even need to be translated, because they are so close to the ‘universal’ english language. some need an explanation. altogether the result is a very subjective dictionary in associated word chains.