Back to the design, this time I tried to make it as minimal as possible, made the “2012″ fill up the whole space, that four color plates is represented to their main four different subjects; the polka-dot surface with spot UV gives it a little sensation when touching it. The polka-dot idea came across in all pages of inside page and calendar, even the monthly dividers.

This is the old planner for 2011, the design is ugly and the ribbon band crossing the word 2011, that’s mean the layout and the placement of wording without a thoughtfully design.

This is the planer for 2012, much better. The teachers love to using it.

http://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/maroc-botola/id451040912?mt=8

Los Angeles, CA (May 1, 2011) Alan Lee of Hong Kong was Awarded: Second Prize in Sportswear Competition for the entry titled, ” Dancing Lion board short..”

The International Design Awards exist to celebrate the world’s most visionary designers, discover new and emerging talent, and promote the appreciation of design worldwide.

Architects and designers of interiors, fashion, products, and graphics submitted entries from over 65 countries throughout the world, proving IDA’s global emphasis. Judging was a rigorous process, with winners receiving publication of their work in the 2010 International Design Awards Book of Designs, to be distributed nationwide; promotion to 100,000 design professionals and potential clients worldwide; year-long coverage on the International Design Awards website; and critical acclaim by our distinguished panel of judges.

Jurors included Alice Blackwood – Editor, Design Quarterly; Lise Coirier – Editor-in-Chief, TL; Hans Fank – Editor-in-Chief, OBJEKT International; Aaron Kenedi – Editor-in-Chief, Print; Rebecca Epstein Kong – Co-Founder, Artware Editions; Raj Nandan – Managing Director, Indesign Group; Laurence Ng – Publisher, IdN; Josh Rubin – Editor-in-Chief, Founder, and Publisher, Cool Hunting; and other leaders and editors in the design community.

About the Winner:

Alan Lee :
alanika@me.com

http://www.monogum.com

For Press Inquiries, Contact:

Jade Tran
International Design Awards
550 N Larchmont Blvd, Ste 100
Los Angeles, CA 90004

jtran@idesignawards.com

Here is the link: http://idesignawards.com/winners/catwinner2010.php?compName=FASHION%20DESIGN&level=pro&compNum=IDA%2010

It is my honor to design the logo and this invitation card for them on this meaningful event. The whole idea of the logo is a flipping footprint, it’s implied the new page of carbon footprint management, and the new thought on how to reduce the environment impact. The dash line in the footprint and the word “CARBON” were implied the meaning of eliminate carbon output.

Due to the main message of the seminar was all about environment protection, this invitation card should use the appropriate paper, it must be a certified recycled paper. Therefore we chose Cyclus offset, 200 gsm paper. Another main feature of this card is the diecut footprint, some details of the seminar put inside of it, it ist the interaction with people that echoing the logo concept.

Here is the pictures of this invitation card.

Chrysanthemums

According to Wikipedia, Chrysanthemums were first cultivated in China as a flowering herb as far back as the 15th century BC. It is very easy to found in some Chinese paintings, a very popular subject. I tired to use the original form of Chrysanthemums but render in pop colors, in order to make it looks peculiar.

Dancing Lion

Lion dance is a form of traditional dance in Chinese culture, in which performers mimic a lion’s movements in a lion costume. It is very popular in every China town in the world, but it is not a popular elements in painting world. The most difficult part to make this design is to capture the movement of lion dance and present it on 2D media, I even went to the Chinese martial club and ask them to show me the dancing lion head for my reference.

Golden Carps

Golden Carps is one of the lucky symbol in traditional Chinese culture. it’s usually can be found in the ponds and rivers. This is a very good material to make boardshort because of the water-related elements. In this design I tried to put many golden carps together to make it looks powerful and energetic.

Gold Fishes

Another popular elements in Chinese painting. This time I made it more whimsical and girlish, because this pattern only print on girl’s boardshort, not for men.

Phoenix

Before this design were made, I’ve struggled on this subject–Phoenix, a very dated element and it is very hard to present it as a girlish water sport fashion. After many sketching time, I found this simple way to present it, using gold and pink color, quite a bizarre combination, but the outcome not looking to bad.

I will be produce more Chinese element’s boardshorts next year.

2000 -2002

This was my first workstation after I graduated from design school as a web designer. My daily job was to design the Flash animations, which would then be coded by the programmer. Office Location: Causeway Bay, Hong Kong   | Computer: An unknown PC

2003 -2004

When I joined the advertising agency, as shown in the picture, I was practically on fire everyday. I would work till11pm every night, sometimes even overnight – it was the craziest time in my life. My daily job was to designing the packaging for Wai Yuen Tong ( A Chinese medicine company), prepare the advertisement output files for Samsung, PCCW, Dai Sung Bank…etc. Office Location: Wan Chai, Hong Kong | Computer: Apple Power Mac G4 400 AGP / OS9.1

2004 -2005

This is my beloved office when I was working at React Design. We had a Maple wood floor, perfect for walking bare foot inside the office in summer time. My duties there were to create hotel packaging, restaurant menus and corporate identities. Office Location: Central, Hong Kong  | Computer: Apple Power Mac G4 466 Digital Audio / OSX 10.3,  Apple Power Mac G5 1.8 PCI / OSX 10.3

2006 -2008

Li & Fung Trading Ltd. is a giant corporate with offices spread worldwide. This was the first time that I worked in such a large company and with so many people. The experience gave me a new perspective on business. My duties here were designing the packaging for Walmart, Kohl’s, Belk..etc. Office Location: Lai Chi Kok, Kowloon  |  Computer: Apple Power Mac G5 2.7  DP / OSX 10.4

2008 -2009

I joined a small design house, where I enjoyed designing corporate identities and logos. I even  managed and monitored the work of two other designers. Office Location: Lai Causwaybay, Hong Kong |  Computer: Apple Power Mac G5 2.3  DP / OSX 10.5

2010 (four months)

This is the Bergner’s design office – a typical one, zero design element, nothing special.

Home office: Lamma Island (2005-2009)

Lamma Island is the most beautiful and unique island in Hong Kong, and that’s where I had my beloved home office too. Computer: Apple Power Mac G4 1.25 Mirror Door / OSX 10.3 – 10.5,  Apple Power Mac G5 2.0 PCI / OSZ10.5

Home office: Coastal Skyline (Now)

This is my home office now. Computer: Apple Mac Mini C2D 2.0 / OSX 10.6,  Apple Mac Mini C2D 2.4 / OSX 10.6

Thanks for reading! If you guys want to share your work space’s metamorphosis too, please contact me!

Design Brief

“We are looking for a trendy modern design for our hair salon close to the Perth CBD called Origin Hair. Our clients are predomiantly females between 25-40 years old.”

This is it, nothing more. Sometimes such briefs are good for designers because lesser requirements mean lesser restrictions and more room for creativity. Back to the job, I had to design a logo that would appeal to young ladies. Since the age group was between 25-40, it shouldn’t be too funky or kiddish. I chose to opt for an elegant and absolutely feminine theme.

Concept • Origin Hair

Very straight forward, the concept is to simply play around with the initial “O”, tying to blend it with a hair curl. In this project, conceptualizing was not as difficult as the execution of the visual.

Visualization in software

As always, I’m using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create designs. The first step is to scan the hand sketch into the computer and place it into Photoshop. Then, I open the Character panel, choose one suitable font to start with (using the Free Transform tool from the Edit menu), and adjust all the corners of the sketch to fit with the character “O”.

After I am done with Photoshop, I import the sketch into the Illustrator, and start drawing the path along it. This step is simple enough, so I won’t bother with the descriptions here.

Once the overall shape is outlined, tracing the “hairs” would be the next step.

Using the Width Tool from the Toolbar to adjust the shape of path, I make the hairlines look more dynamic; this tools is awesome because it lets me rollover to the path and drag it left or right to make it thicker or thinner.

After the “inner hairlines”, I start to draw the “outer hairlines”, which would be thicker.

When all the hairlines were drawn, I move on to the coloring and shading. the first step is to choose a lighter gray for outer hair, and a darker color for inner part.

Using the Mesh Tool from the Toolbar, click on the shape and it with generate serval anchor points. Select the middle point, and then using the Eyedropper to choose a lighter gray, leave both the ends in a darker gray.

The shading visually created the negative space, which gave the logo a little bit of depth.

Using the same technique, I finish another parts of the “hair”. With the logo image pretty much done, the next step was to work on the logo text.

In order to blend with the elegant and feminine looking logo mark, the text line should look a little wavy and classic. I went with the serif font, as it was an appropriate choice, and this time I picked Americana LT Bold. The font was very well shaped already, so I did not bother to modify it. Instead, I concentrated on the text effect. The first step was draw a wave line above the text.

I did this by closing the wave line path and then selecting it with the text. Of course, the text should be outlined too. This can be done by copying one set of text, placing it on top, and then going the the Pathfinder panel and cropping out the wave text.

Now the text appeared in two layers. I chose the bottom layer, and applied the gradients. Because of the irregualrity of the wave, the gradients should be adjust individually for every single character.

This is the finished logo.

Thanks for watching!

Written by Alan Lee (www.monogum.com)