Interviews med Lam Kam Kun

Identical to most designers in experience, I enjoy painting since childhood, consequently, I enrolled in a design school when I was in college. However, before my enrollment, I was very vague about what I would study and had little understanding of the profession as a designer. It was not until I entered the design school that I began to get contact with different categories of design. Finally, I chose graphic design as my undergraduate program.

As far as I can see, similar to modelling clay, in the face of different situations and different objects, "design” will present different shapes, but it depends on customers or audiences instead of designers. As a service industry, the design industry aims to serve customers or audiences, the work from which is a product or handicraft. Such product or handicraft will be deemed as a design if it carriescommercial value. If there is no commercial value, the work created purely based on the author's preferences can only be a creation rather than a design. That may sound pessimistic, but that’s the truth, because designer is nothing different from other professions or entitled to higher social status, it is just a very ordinary work to make money.

I like typeface design and poster design.

It always depends on the actual situation. But every time when I design a new work from scratch, I am full of wonderful fantasy at first, unfortunately, I am with disappointment when completing the design.

It always depends on the actual situation. But every time when I design a new work from scratch, I am full of wonderful fantasy at first, unfortunately, I am with disappointment when completing the design.

The quality of the design may be affected by a lot of factors. If we can complete high-quality works with mutual respect and trust, we will be happy, otherwise, it can only be regarded as the completion of a business transaction or a job.

Personally, I can't determine whether a design is good or bad, because everyone has a different perception of beauty.A design which I considered good from a professional perspective may be completely unacceptable or incomprehensible in the eyes of the public, or even fails to bring positive commercial or image reactions to the customer, making the customer believe that it is a poordesign.

I think it's too exaggerated. Being a designer is just a profession. I believe that everyone should carry a sense of responsibility for society and the environment.

As new technologies continue to emerge, design does not need to be dealt with by professional designers, and reducing costs is the eternal idea of large and small enterprises in the world. With the emergence of comprehensive AI and minimalist design apps, designers will have an increasingly reduced influence and development.

I live in Macao, which is a very small place. Although it was a commercial center where Chinese and Western cultures met hundreds of years ago, the current design education is not popular, and the public's awareness of aesthetic beauty is still weak. Although it has frequent business transactions, the design quality of large, small and medium-sized enterprises varies greatly.

After graduation, give yourself 3 years to engage in relevant design work, if there is no improvement after 3 years, or if your living environment has been declining, leave this industry as soon as possible and start again when you are still young.

Because the creator of this electronic music CD gave me a lot of creative freedom, and he also don’t like old and traditional things, so I have to an alternative idea, packaging modern electronic music with classical visual style. This alternative visual expression technique echoes with the uniqueness of electronic music itself each other. The entire creation includes experimental works that have an impact on the image of electronic music and are very 'impish'.

The theme of the album is called "Container", for which, the album creator explains as a "Container" for soul. I combine people, plants, and animals into a new "container" with a variety of familiar forms and countless muscles scattered around them to form an unconscious space. I hope that the visual expression of the work can present a feeling that is completely different from the impression of electronic music.

Although the album creator gave me a lot of freedom, but we both made decisions during the process that we couldn't agree on. Sometimes we were not satisfied with the expression of the picture, sometimes we didn't like the shape of the pattern, and sometimes we thought we could keep brainstorming new designs. Therefore, we made multiple revisions and discussions, which led to the current version. Of course, the work exceeded our expectations and we are also very satisfied. Looking back on the whole process now, it was actually painful.

In fact, I have no too complex idea, just want to create an "impactful", "anti-traditional" design. To be specific, I think the songs in the album can be regarded as modern elements of all the works, and the album is visually designed with classical elements. Although the two styles are different, they can exist simultaneously in one work. I find this impact very interesting.

Because of the limited printing cost, there is no printing special effects for my work, so I can only start from the visual expression. In fact, I have been engaged in graphic design for many years. I believe that the less a design should be decorated, the more it can test the designer’s ability. An impressive picture is better than tens of kinds of printing special effects.

I chose the people, plants, animals, and did not retain the original forms of various elements, because forms are appearance. I removed the old appearance, combined into a new "Container". I accidentally created a painting while focusing on the creative process. The image is like a space, and I treated it as an element that cannot be synthesized from the "container" remaining in this space, becoming the image on the album outer box and music CD.

It is a coincidence that participating in the competition and winning the awards, which is not my goal. And getting affirmation is certainly happiness, that's all.Winning the award has nothing to do with my design work. I believe that helping clients solve problems is the first job of a designer. I hope that I can be able to perform well in other graphic design projects in the future and continue to be recognized by the industry.

The format of posters generally follows this standard, and there are also A3 and A2 sizes that need to be adjusted after practical application. Actually, if possible, I would consider using a larger size. I really enjoy designing posters. If there were more budget, perhaps more different projects could be developed for promotional purposes.

I have never intended to influence or lead the visual style of the album. I don’t have the ability or this idea. I just want my work to be different. When I think about my own work, I would be very happy if I can produce a work that I am satisfied with. I hope that I will have the opportunity to encounter work projects in the future that allow me to fully demonstrate my professionalism.

I completed this work in a irrational state, and I think it is a bit like handling the feeling of the art. In fact, it is very contradictory. I don’t like this feeling, because the design itself is "the solution", which is a service. And the real artistic creation is the emotional expression, which can be very free or even without explanation. In order to dismantle this work completely and clearly, I also think I can not completely explain it at present easily, maybe I can say it easily decades later.

Characters is important role in the development of civilization, communication between people and emotional expression. Before the emergence of characters, human beings expressed their emotions and records by simple patterns or totems, but after the emergence of characters, they were accompanied by pictures to deepen the meaning they wanted to express. The two complement each other and continue to modern times. Chinese characters are an important legacy of Chinese wisdom that has been handed down for thousands of years. It is indeed a challenging and satisfying thing to recreate a character that combines modern elements and can be recognized at a glance.

At first, the design was not created with Chinese characters as the concept. After many redesigns, I decided to persuade the client to try to combine the similar pronunciation of "墨" in Chinese characters with "MA" in MADO. "墨" font structure is complex, strokes are also many, so the design will retain the appearance of the font, but simplify the strokes, with sharp and powerful quadrilateral to re-create a perfect combination of text and graphics works.

The Chinese pronunciation of MADO is similar to the Chinese characters "墨" and "度". "墨" directly retains the font for re-shaping, while the Chinese interpretation of "度" is the "degree" of temperature, and the unit symbol of temperature is "℃". I retain the " 。" Combined with the Chinese character "墨", although the text expression is more abstract, I hope that the logo can have a kind of pondering in it.

Logo application is mainly concise, with black, white and grey as the main tone. with sharp and powerful quadrilateral to re-create a perfect combination of text and graphics works.Reduce the cost of logo printing for all applications. The entire project actually emphasizes minimalism and how to create and apply at low cost.

In the world of design, I think things with historical value or traditional culture never conflict with contemporary values. As long as there are ideas, they can definitely be combined to create new works. I live in a place where Chinese characters are used for daily communication. Chinese characters and design are naturally inseparable, so I don’t think there is anything special about combining Chinese characters with modern design. But I occasionally do not use the Chinese fonts in computer software and try to design some unique fonts for the titles in design projects.

Reduce the cost of the logo when printed in all applications. The simpler the color, the easier it is to control the printing cost and applications in various media, the simpler the logo design, the better. This creation is based on the previously mentioned core elements - minimalism and cost reduction. No more additions.

The whole project has been revised, fine-tuned and pushed back many times, and "trust" is believed to be the most important factor for the successful completion of the project.

In contemporary graphic design, the integration of Chinese characters into contemporary design elements has long been a very popular expression in brand design in the Chinese world. So I just follow the current design trends, which is my self-awareness to continue to improve and grow as a designer. It is definitely a wonderful thing that Chinese characters can have a new visual expression in modern design.

I believe a logo should be visually beautiful, unique, simple, and easy for the audience to remember. A logo design should be memorable in a short period of time. I am influenced by Japanese design, especially poster design and logo design. I personally admire their graphic design very much, and their works even contain some philosophical ideas.

In fact, after each project is completed, the subsequent development direction of the project is very passive for designers. Where I live, small businesses generally do not have a very long-term plan for their brand identity, and some may even just provide one-time design services. Although I have been engaged in graphic design for many years, I seldom encounter corporate identity projects with long-term planning. Where I live, both design education and art education are in their infancy, and I'm still struggling to figure out how I can increase the impact of design, so I don't have a complete answer at the moment.