Bronze Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2025
Taishun City Brand Identity
by Zhejiang Gongshang University
- A' Design Award 2025 Bronze Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Taishun County People's Government
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 13,545
- Verification code 7D3E423ED6 · Verify this award
About Taishun City Brand Identity
Taishun City is a brand identity designed for a city. The logo is built from lines that form the city name, creating a modern and minimal mark. The white space inside the logo is treated as an open area where different urban visual symbols can be shown. The mark can be adapted through changes in line and shape, so recognition remains strong across many applications. Vector formats allow the logo to be scaled to any size, from business cards to outdoor advertising. Printed brand materials use recyclable and biodegradable stock.
Ying Gao's Brand Identity engages the evolving design discipline of cultural environmental graphics, where large-scale architectural branding installations serve not merely as wayfinding or identification systems but as immersive spatial narratives that embody regional identity, historical consciousness, and contemporary urban vitality within a single synthesized visual experience. The project demonstrates sophisticated command of the technical and conceptual challenges inherent in monumental-scale graphic intervention within active public architecture, achieving remarkable integration across multiple communicative registers and experiential layers. The compositional achievement merits particular attention for its masterful orchestration of chromatic rhythm across the upper architectural colonnade, where the LED matrix installation establishes a dynamic visual cadence through the alternating vertical bands of saturated red, neutralized black, and refreshing mint green, these color fields functioning simultaneously as decorative architectural ornament in dialogue with historical precedents of polychromatic building surfaces and as contemporary digital medium that pulses with technological vitality, the precise geometric organization of pixelated elements creating optical effects that shift between discrete component visibility at close range and unified chromatic planes at environmental viewing distances appropriate to the urban thoroughfare scale. The integration of cultural heritage photography within this contemporary technological framework demonstrates nuanced understanding of temporal layering as design strategy, the warm-toned historical architectural image serving as visual anchor that grounds the kinetic chromatic energy in deeper cultural memory, the careful proportional relationship between photographic insert and surrounding white field achieving elegant figure-ground balance while the vertical calligraphic text establishes cultural specificity and provides essential informational content without overwhelming the primary visual narrative, the typography's refined proportions and confident vertical orientation creating dynamic counterpoint to the horizontal thrust of the photographic composition and the vertical striping rhythm of the LED matrices above. The chromatic sophistication evident in the palette orchestration reveals deep understanding of color psychology and environmental color application, the saturated red suggesting celebration, cultural vitality, and welcoming energy while simultaneously referencing traditional decorative color vocabularies, the mint green offering chromatic relief and suggesting connections to natural landscape or historical pigment traditions, the disciplined black providing visual weight and rhythmic structure, and the warm earth tones of the heritage photograph creating tonal bridge between technological brightness and historical gravitas, the overall harmony achieving rare balance between chromatic excitement and compositional sophistication. The lower register's integration of active pedestrian movement and reflective pavement surfaces demonstrates attention to the temporal and participatory dimensions of environmental design, the blurred silhouettes of moving figures activating the composition with human presence and scale while the mirrored pools of colored light on polished paving extend the chromatic impact vertically and create visual rhyme between overhead architectural intervention and ground-plane experience, effectively doubling the branding presence through optical reflection while maintaining accessible human-scaled passage through the threshold space. The lighting design reveals professional command of layered illumination strategies appropriate to public architectural contexts, with the LED matrices functioning as primary chromatic light sources that transform ambient space through colored illumination, the projected photographic content receiving dedicated frontal lighting that maintains legibility across varying ambient conditions, and the overall installation clearly conceived for optimal impact during evening and twilight hours when architectural lighting gains maximum visual prominence against darkening sky, creating activated urban beacon that draws pedestrian attention and establishes memorable place identity. The work situates itself within broader contemporary design conversations around place branding, cultural wayfinding, heritage integration within modern urban fabric, and the activation of public architecture as communicative surface, while the specific visual vocabulary references both international contemporary environmental graphics practice and culturally rooted design traditions, creating productive synthesis that feels simultaneously globally contemporary and regionally grounded. One might observe how the design navigates the complex challenge of expressing cultural identity through environmental branding without resorting to superficial decorative application or nostalgic historicism, instead achieving integration where technology and tradition, innovation and heritage, monumental scale and human accessibility coexist within unified spatial experience, inviting viewers to consider how public space design can simultaneously celebrate cultural continuity and contemporary urban energy, asking what visual languages might effectively communicate complex cultural narratives within the accelerated perceptual conditions of contemporary urban movement, and suggesting that successful place branding emerges not from singular declarative gestures but from carefully orchestrated multi-layered compositions that reward both quick passing perception and sustained contemplative attention, ultimately proposing that the architectural threshold can function as cultural storytelling medium where past achievements and present vitality merge within designed environmental narrative.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This project means to design the local urban brand image. Firstly, the government hopes for a design that can highlight the city's name. Additionally, to meet diverse needs, the brand logo should be able to demonstrate variations through lines and also strengthen recognition through spatial representation. The whitespace within the logo can showcase various urban visual symbols, and it also signifies the infinite possibilities of the logo, providing ample room for development.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Logo graphics: Designed based on vector file formats such as AI, EPS, SVG, etc., to ensure unlimited scaling without blur (suitable for full-size applications from business cards to outdoor advertising).
Color mode: Define CMYK (for printing), RGB (for digital screens), and Pantone spot colors (for high-end printing) at the same time to ensure color consistency across media.
Multi-version design: main logo, simplified version (monochrome/wireframe), inverted version (for dark background adaptation). - Tags
- Culture, innovation, sustainability, inclusiveness,City Brand
- Production Technology
- Brand materials: Priority is given to the use of biodegradable and recyclable materials (e.g. FSC certified paper, plant-based plastics), in line with the ‘4R+1D’ principle of green packaging (reduction, reuse, recycling, regeneration and degradation); surface treatment technologies such as matte film, hot stamping and local UV are applied to enhance the visual texture of the brand logo.
- Design Challenge
- City branding often requires systematic thinking in design to help the city gain public recognition in brand promotion. This solution also has excellent scalability in design, leaving ample room for future applications in various aspects. In the realm of digital media, the logo's lines can be used to connect Taishun's local archways and ancient buildings, forming dynamic graphics that resonate well with the city's impression.
- Project Duration
- The project started its design phase in July 2022 and was completed in December 2022. It was officially launched in February 2023.
- Operation Flow
- In the field of urban brand image design, many cities face difficulties in choosing design elements due to their historical and cultural heritage. There are very few graphics that are as flexible as ours. This logo the diverse needs of urban development and application. It transformed using different lines and shapes to enhance recognition. The internal white space also provides room for showcasing visual symbols of the city, which implies high development potential of this city.
- Research
- From the beginning of the design process, this solution aims to integrate the multi-level symbolic meanings of Taishun city (such as the characters representing the city, the bridge representing the culture, and the lines representing connection) in an organic and modern minimalist way. In today's China, where young people's aesthetics are becoming increasingly modern and open-minded, a modern and minimalist approach is an important means to captivate them.
- Inspiration
- In the Taoist culture, the empty space must be left to fulfill its purpose of holding things. In terms of design, it achieves balance between the tangible and intangible elements. the tangible part highlights the city's unique identity, while the intangible part showcases the diverse characteristics of the city. Using taishun to create an open and versatile tangible part. The whitespace becomes intangible part, transforming into a new space for showcasing the diverse characteristics.
- Image Credits
- Designer: Zhao Kan
Colors of Taishun City Brand Identity
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