Content: The main goal of a corporate identity is to transport a certain philosophy or motto from a sender (e.g. companies) to its receivers (e.g. clients). Visual identities are used by senders to communicate their values to a broader audience. These values can be heritage, stories, feelings, expressions, knowledge or other information that forms a good representation.
Before the 20th century, a logo or a trademark was designed as an ultimate, rigid form. Nowadays, visual identities are more flexible. They are able to adapt to changing formats and can be used on print and in multimedia, signage systems and scenography. Instead of a rigid logo, which is always used like a stamp on available white space, logos have become more lively, like organisms that can be modified and adjusted to different contexts and situations.
During the workshop the students will create a visual identity for the city Hangzhou. This identity will have to reflect more the personal experiences of the students and less the common global values. The goal is not to represent the obvious qualities, but to search for and discover the unexpected values of Hangzhou. Each student will work on the design individually. Together, all the different designs will show a vibrant, dynamic and flexible representation of the city of Hangzhou. The students will work and think beyond the common logo conventions and learn to develop ideas in a more experimental way.

Content: The spirits of books are fascinating, they spread their fragrance far and wide, and good contents are like words singing and dancing in the books.
However, graphic designers have more concern about books than readers do: they pay close attention to the form of the book, to paper selection, to binding craftsmanship, to the printing technique, to the packaging……they are even concerned with procedures like folding, stacking, cropping, cutting, pressing, gilding, framing, extending and tearing……Sometimes they forget the original idea of a good book when they focused too much on these techniques. A good content is necessary for a good book, while a good design reinforces the contents of the book, however no matter how good the design is, it’s not possible to improve the quality of bad contents and save the book.

Content: Visual processes with Laure Boer from BANK^TM. The Class is about creative processes or how to build strategies to fool your brain and formal habits in order to explore new ways of creation. After exploring processes and what they involve, you will define your own process with a minimum of 5 steps. Each step will bring results that you will reuse in the next step and so on. The working material consists of projecting and visual recording material such as scanner, camera, video camera, printer, photocopier, video projector, overhead projector, lights and mirrors. In addition you use all the material you like to work with: e.g. paper, pen, paint, ink, cardboard, glue, tape, scissors, cutter, etc.The computer will only be used for saving the materials unless you want to consciously include it in your process.

Content: Designers should have a better insight into Latin type, because every type is indispensable for a proper use. My aim is to give students a precise idea of what different kinds of typefaces there are, how to distinguish them from each other and what their specific profiles are. Some are better readable than others, some have a friendly character while others have a technically cold one. The course will lead students to a more reasonable and more sensitive use of type. What is important for the judgement of a design, is to be able to tell if rules were broken or followed, for it can be very good to break rules sometimes, but first one has to know them. At the end of the workshop the students should have a feeling for principal composition rules and for basic microtypography in order to help them to come to better design decisions.

Content: "The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees." To me, this is a beautiful quote by one of Germany's most famous philosopher. It's something I would like to impart to the students. The two concepts, "seeing" and "thinking", are key to graphic design. Yet, what designers they do with these concepts - in terms of typography, illustration and abstraction - is entirely up to them. I believe this forms a good basis for discussion and collaborative work!

Content: "Looking from the side"--my poster design which awarded and in my creation of nearly one hundred posters which are chosen by worldwide major poster exhibitions, I view poster design as a good way to train my way of thinking--thinking, organizing, integrating, completing, and demonstrate that the creation of each poster and the idea that a good design is the perfect combination of form and meaning. "Talks on Ten Books" -- my book design, introduce the design procedure of the more than ten books which awarded: ONESHOW DESIGN, D&AD, RED DOT and "the most beautiful books in China" which represents a high level of chinese book design. Confirming the unique design idea of each book by analyzing the contents of the book.

Content: Turning a newspaper into an art exhibition, the ordinary becomes sublime with Sebastian Bissinger from BANK^TM.
In the beginning of the 1st day there gonna be 50 copies of the same newspaper?Cthe issue of that day. At the end of the 3rd day we'll have an art exhibition (a group show) and the catalogue of the show. For the first 2 days all the participants will become artists, dealing with the newspaper as source material. Each participant will create his art piece or series of pieces. It doesn't matter what you pick from the newspaper: image, text, graphic elements or even the paper itself but you have to extend it into the gallery space. You can use scissors, photocopier, scanner, photography, computers, beamers etc. On the 3rd day you’ll be back into graphic design when doing a little catalogue for documenting the exhibition, the art works and maybe also the whole "making of".

Content: Designers should have a better insight into Latin type, because every type is indispensable for a proper use. My aim is to give students a precise idea of what different kinds of typefaces there are, how to distinguish them from each other and what their specific profiles are. Some are better readable than others, some have a friendly character while others have a technically cold one. The course will lead students to a more reasonable and more sensitive use of type. What is important for the judgement of a design, is to be able to tell if rules were broken or followed, for it can be very good to break rules sometimes, but first one has to know them. At the end of the workshop the students should have a feeling for principal composition rules and for basic microtypography in order to help them to come to better design decisions.