Silver Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2025
SDI Teaching Building Space Visual Design
by Meng Shenhui
- A' Design Award 2025 Silver Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Meng Shenhui
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 83,923
- Verification code 72AA539192 · Verify this award
About SDI Teaching Building Space Visual Design
SDI Teaching Building is a spatial visual design for the interior of a six floor teaching building. Large scale walls are combined with large scale text to replace an empty and rigid atmosphere with a creative one. A classic German typeface echoes the German teaching model of the design school. DIN, the standard typeface of German road signs, marks guiding information, while Futura is used for other text. Fine wall paint is applied up to five meters, with overlapping colors and stacked letters. Some text is made of acrylic to create a contrast of materials.
Meng Shenhui's SDI Teaching Building Space Visual Design exemplifies the contemporary practice of environmental graphic design as architectural integration, demonstrating how typographic and chromatic interventions can transform institutional spaces into immersive brand experiences that communicate organizational values while enhancing wayfinding and spatial orientation. The work participates in a distinguished lineage of supergraphic design that emerged from mid-century modernist experimentation with large-scale typography as environmental element, subsequently developed through the pioneering work of environmental graphic design practitioners who recognized that surfaces of buildings could function as communication media equal in importance to their structural and protective functions. The designer's deployment of saturated yellow establishes an immediate emotional register of optimism, creativity, and intellectual energy appropriate to an educational institution dedicated to design and innovation, while the restrained palette of gray and white grounds this exuberance within professional sophistication. The typographic treatment demonstrates particular accomplishment in its dual strategy of legible institutional messaging and abstracted letterform patterning, the former providing clear wayfinding information while the latter transforms language itself into decorative motif celebrating the institution's engagement with visual communication. The spatial composition skillfully frames views through the threshold into the courtyard beyond, creating a processional experience that builds anticipation while maintaining visual coherence across multiple planes and distances. The phrases "INNOVATION FOR GOOD" and "DESIGN FOR ALL" articulate values of social responsibility and accessibility that resonate with contemporary design discourse regarding the discipline's potential for positive impact. Viewers might consider how the physical experience of moving through such a chromatically charged threshold space could influence one's psychological preparation for creative work and collaborative learning.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Solving the originally empty, rigid, and lifeless issues of the teaching building with light construction, low cost, and heavy impact methods, the design utilizes large-scale walls combined with large-scale text for spatial visual design. It adopts the classic century-old German font to echo the college's unique German teaching training model. In terms of layout, it uses detailed design such as text stacking, color overlapping.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The space has 6 floors, the first floor space is 5 metres high and the building is hollowed out with a very distinctive rotating staircase leading up to the 4th floor.
- Tags
- Shenzhen Technology University, Space vision, space design
- Production Technology
- The design breaks the sense of large color block segmentation and the empty, rigid, and lifeless atmosphere within the building by using large-scale walls combined with flat text, font, and creative layout methods.The construction carried out fine wall paint on the wall up to 5 meters, and adopted the way of color overlapping to make the space more vivid and artistic. Some local text used acrylic to form a collision between materials.
- Design Challenge
- The client wishes to infuse the originally empty space with vitality and approachability while maintaining a minimalist aesthetic, and also to achieve an international visual experience and the creative atmosphere that a design academy should have.
- Project Duration
- The project started in Shenzhen in April 2023 and will be completed in Shenzhen in August 2023
- Operation Flow
- This building has 6 floors, we do visual design for the interior space of this building, that is, "help him put on a beautiful dress", so that the children studying here can feel the design atmosphere, and strengthen the logo of each floor, so that he is more distinctive and more visual impact.
In terms of layout, it uses detailed design such as text stacking, color overlapping, and digital projection to create a strong visual impact and greatly enhance the creative design atmosphere. - Research
- Shenzhen Technology University, established in 2016, is a new applied university in the Greater Bay Area. Its School of Creative Design, with an international educational philosophy, has cultivated many talents. However, the school's spatial atmosphere has not kept up with its swift growth. The large-scale space feels empty and dull, and the high ceilings and massive spiral staircases make the space rigid and lifeless. Additionally, the strong industrial feel and prevalent gray tones create a teaching environment that lacks warmth and feels distant.
- Inspiration
- The design breaks the sense of large color block segmentation and the empty, rigid, and lifeless atmosphere within the building by using large-scale walls combined with flat text, font, and creative layout methods. It adopts the classic century-old German font to echo the German teaching model of the Creative Design Academy, using the DIN font, the standard font for German road signs, as the guiding functional text font in the space, and Futura font for other uses.
- Image Credits
- Photographer:Huang Yinghua
- Patents
- Intellectual property rights： 孟申晖Meng Shenhui
/Shenzhen Chengmei Culture Communication Co., Ltd