Zhiyuan Zhang relishes branding projects as problems to solve

Zhiyuan is based in Hangzhou where he runs Studio Motive alongside two others. He tells us about a recent project for a florist in Xi’an.

Date
5 July 2021

As a young creative, connecting with the work of those who have come before you can be inspiring and motivating. It opens your eyes to what’s possible with your medium, or even introduces you to a new medium, and it means the work you will go on to create will be all the more informed and rich. For Zhiyuan Zhang, it was the moment his friend introduced him to the Chinese magazine Alice that his eyes were opened to the possibilities of graphic design. Then, in his senior year, he purchased a copy of Taiwanese designer Aaron Nieh’s Re_Signature Work Yet to Come and it was a done deal: “This collection made me firm in my determination to take the path of a professional designer,” Zhiyuan recalls.

Zhiyuan is based in Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang province but he grew up in Lanzhou, a city inland in the northwest of the country. After graduating from a master’s in 2015, he worked in several design studios and today he runs Studio Motive alongside two others, taking primarily an art direction and graphic design role.

Despite many years having passed since Zhiyuan first fell in love with the design and printing of Alice, a love of paper as a medium still roots much of his practice. He’s an avid collector of printed matter but he explains that, of late, his interest in digital and screen-based media as well as multimedia has increased. He notes how the form that graphic design takes has expanded with the development of the internet and that this has allowed the medium to “escape certain limitations of the past”. Now, he adds, it’s an extremely diverse medium and so he loves to exploit the fact. No matter what he creates though, whether it’s a website, animation or a publication, “the foundation is still graphic design, and what I do is still design”. This grounding in the principles of graphic design doesn’t mean Zhiyuan’s work is necessarily traditional though, but rather it appears to lend him a rulebook he knows so well that he understand how and when to stray from it.

Above

Zhiyuan Zhang: Fake Florist (Copyright © Zhiyuan Zhang, 2021)

One such project is an identity for Fake Florist, a flower shop in Xi’an (where one of the Studio Motive members is based). The shop is run by a florist who, according to Zhiyuan “pays great attention to the design and beauty of the products” in her shop, where customers can buy both real and fake flowers – despite the shop’s name. In turn, Zhiyuan wanted to create an identity that reflected this attention to detail and which would appeal to the shop’s discerning customers.

The entire identity is built around the notion of “branches and flower bones” and is largely typographic, with the design of both Chinese and Latin characters based on the same grid system. “Using this grid system, various types of Chinese and English fonts can be designed in the future extension of the brand,” Zhiyuan explains. Then there are auxiliary graphics in the form of paintings of flowers inside the shop, “which are processed into dotted graphics and applied to various materials as patterns,” he adds. The result is a sharp, contemporary identity that sets the tone for Fake Florist’s intentions as a retailer.

Working on commercial projects such as these are Zhiyuan’s favourite kind of briefs, he tells us, because it challenges him to work within constraints and to solve multiple problems. Looking ahead then, he hopes to work on more branding projects “that connect with society,” while also harbouring ambitions to create several art books and exhibitions too.

GalleryZhiyuan Zhang: Fake Florist (Copyright © Zhiyuan Zhang, 2021)

Hero Header

Zhiyuan Zhang: Fake Florist (Copyright © Zhiyuan Zhang, 2021)

Share Article

About the Author

Ruby Boddington

Ruby joined the It’s Nice That team as an editorial assistant in September 2017 after graduating from the Graphic Communication Design course at Central Saint Martins. In April 2018, she became a staff writer and in August 2019, she was made associate editor.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.