几年前看过一个电影，叫“Lost in Translation”。里面一幕印象深刻：一个美国人被请到东京排广告，他不会说日语，导演不会说英语。每一次导演非常有激情地说上一大段后，他非常热切地看着翻译希望知道导演的想法，但每一次翻译都非常简单和平静地说“请看镜头”。
这次回来后发现国内的和设计相关的印刷业非常繁荣。其程度和房地产繁荣的程度相仿，水平也相似。盗版书价格低廉，图片以量取胜。朋友给我看了几本新出来的书，每本上包含的项目之多，让我印象深刻。遗憾的是每个项目都只传达出项目很小一部分的信息：没有设计公司名称，没有设计建成时间，有的甚至连项目名称和地点都用“某”来代替，项目的构思来源、推进过程、实施中的问题和解决方法等当然是不可能有的，剩下的只有“请看图片”。
如果说有什么样的市场需求就有什么样的产品，根据产品，可以想象一下市场的需求是什么样子的。不过，我在这里不太想谈论这个问题，因为每个人都知道是怎么回事。我想说的是，在这些盗版书熏陶下成长起来的设计师有一个通性：见多识广，各种设计手法都很熟练，作起设计来思如泉涌丰富多彩，但缺乏原创性，所做的东西大都似成相似。虽然说一张恰当的图片胜过一万句文字描述，但如果大家只是通过“请看图片”式的书来修炼，只怕还不如不要见多识广，只凭本性来作设计的好。
我知道，我说“Lost in Translation”是在美化这种现象。
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
What to write
I have a strange feeling when I start to be a blogger and try to write something. First thing that bothers me is who are going to read my stuff, clients and potential clients? Does this mean I cannot really write something bad about them or complain the difficulty of the cooperation? If this is true, what else can I write? If it is not for the clients, why I create the link in our firm website? To think through this I have to go back to the initial idea of setting up this blog.
We are living in an ambiguous world. People like to make things unclear, and benefit from the doubtfulness and uncertainty. If you spend couple seconds to think over what you see on the TV advertisements, you will know what I mean. For my profession in China, this is extremely true. There are lots of so-called internationally noted firms around. They are doing pretty good business in this country. But who exactly are those guys behind the international firms? What exactly have they done to make them famous? At least, I do not know and I doubt the clients know. I understand, sometimes, the ambiguity is intended. But I do not like ambiguity.
Here is the reason why I am writing blog and linking it to our firm website. This blog, as my work notebook, is going to record the joy and grief, the happiness and the sadness, the excitement and discouragement in the project design process. I want to the clients to know me, I mean, know me as an individual designer who has both good and bad things to say about them.
Obviously, I am not brave enough to completely get rid of ambiguity, so I write this post in English.
We are living in an ambiguous world. People like to make things unclear, and benefit from the doubtfulness and uncertainty. If you spend couple seconds to think over what you see on the TV advertisements, you will know what I mean. For my profession in China, this is extremely true. There are lots of so-called internationally noted firms around. They are doing pretty good business in this country. But who exactly are those guys behind the international firms? What exactly have they done to make them famous? At least, I do not know and I doubt the clients know. I understand, sometimes, the ambiguity is intended. But I do not like ambiguity.
Here is the reason why I am writing blog and linking it to our firm website. This blog, as my work notebook, is going to record the joy and grief, the happiness and the sadness, the excitement and discouragement in the project design process. I want to the clients to know me, I mean, know me as an individual designer who has both good and bad things to say about them.
Obviously, I am not brave enough to completely get rid of ambiguity, so I write this post in English.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
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