Interviews with Tuo Zhang

I was born in China’s Yunnan province, known for its diversity and cultural dressing. I was mesmerized with the extensive color-palette used by the fashionable tribes of Yunnan. I became curious about the symbols of clothing and partial to the study of culture and humans.

My experience in fashion began at ten with one of my illustrations of a fairy costume being awarded the Second National Star Creek Painting Competition. These early endeavors allowed me to join a comic group with twenty-two members, featuring costume play. I had the creative freedom to experiment with my team in competitions through which I gained technical social skills like leadership, teamwork, communication, and perseverance. I became certain that apparel and design was my calling. Since then I have sought to work in the fashion world.

In Yunnan province, clothes meant more. Families pass on the traditional appearances to generations. They record their family tree on the jacket and note stories on the underpinning. The garment now tells a story and represents the family social status. Today’s society with its economic advantages and convenient solutions undermines the inheritance of fashion. The seamstresses of today should recognize the fashions of the past to evolve with the trends. Every concept marketed today is not stand-alone and is inspired. How can I utilize the contemporary trend to connect to the past? To find answers, I must transcend and learn from the ground, the culture of apparels and the design concept.

I consistently seek balance between art and science. My transdisciplinary experience with designing from fashion, graphic, product, and visual merchandising, to research gives me an extensive foundation. Among every aspect of the design experiences, I enjoy partaking in the conceptualizing process, the research that goes into it, prototyping and finally breathing life into a product. It is essential for me to have a deep conversation with the design object and audience. Thus, design to me is beyond an action and a task; it is a connection.

Through the design experience, I discovered the interaction between humans/audiences to the object. There are multiple layers of the interaction happening: the functionality of benefit, the emotional value of being attached, and the connection between people.

Discover your own path. Everyone is different.

Aspirational passion and empathy translated into the work.

A good design root in your soul that will constantly remind you not only the visual aesthetic but also the meaning of advocacy.

Design push the society forward and innovating itself

A life portray poster for anyone

Redesign flags for each country

Not success yet so still trying

Kenya Hara

A traveler

Send a story to elevate the present

Loved ones. Always.

With near ten years of experience in the fashion and creative industry, she is the founder and creative manager at LIMVI Studio, leading a team of six to focus on creative solutions, business branding, and UX/UI projects. Her experience includes but not limited to branding identity, package designing, web/app product designing, and visual merchandising, and fashion designs.

Over the past four years, she has helped several businesses to launch products, websites, mobile app, and commercial digital designs. Her focus is not only on visual design and product appearance but also think like the clients to grow the business with elevated user experiences and brand strategies. She works closely with different creative talents, developers, project managers, business owners, and sometimes, with the targeted customers directly.

I want to use design to impact people’s life and awareness in a good way.

She spends her days organizing the team, crafting proposals, visual presentations, digital designs, and planning new projects. She leads the creative team to serve with all sizes of companies, from small local businesses up to international brands.

Less is more - simple, clean, but with philosophy

The utilities of need - then aesthetic for inspiration

Fabric - or digital

Conceptive ultimate vision

Focused but fun

Being accepted is always cool

Design reference, research, passion

Design concept and cisual design

Delivery high-quality work, and enhance people’s awareness that how important is design

I think the design field is becoming more and more complicated — a design work, usually including different design technologies and methods.

I love reading some design blogs, like the medium. By reading these articles, you can understand that other designers are thinking about what they are doing.

I will always be a good fan of digital illustration, and when I design at work, I will try to input this idea to my work.

Right now I’m living in the US. I don’t think my design style effected by my own culture, but I do want to add more Chinese elements into my work in the future.

I love to talk with them a lot and try to understand the story behind the work, that will be easier to do the job.

I will suggest all the companies not only care about the work but also try to understand how the designers make their design decisions. That will be an excellent way to filter the great one from them.

At first, I need to figure out what problem I’m trying to solve; second will understand what’s the pain point of this problem, understand my users.

My iMac, sketchbook, pencil, graphics tablet, and whiteboard

Get up and take a shower, start to work.

Join as many as possible design conferences, build your network.

The positive thing is you can create anything you want, the negative stuff is you need to fight with the deadline all the time, and also your work will be challenged by anyone.

Less is more

Learning to feedback, and do research

I use illustrator and sketch a lot

Before I start a new task, I will make a timesheet and list all the steps I will take. That will help me manage the time better.

Depends on how big is this project and how big is this design team. Normally it will take one month

The most frequent question is, why do you make this decision.

There’s a time when I was asked to design a series of posters about the environment protect

Application visual design or branding design, this kind of job allow me to expand my thinking and use my skills to make the work as best as possible.

In the future, I would like to lead a team, and I would change my role from a design to a design manager.

We have a design team

Not at this moment

Some of my clients will reach out to me through LinkedIn or email.

Not at this moment