In honour of Chinese New Year this week (the year of the dragon, if you’re struggling with the title of this post?) I took a Chinese-themed cultural jaunt to the Chinese Arts Centre, via China Town.
It’s interesting to see China Town even more vibrant and colourful than it usually is (see the now obligatory colour dips below).
Onto the Chinese Arts Centre in the heart of Manchester’s Northern Quarter. I’ve long been an admirer of the CAC logo, dating back to my days as a design student at Salford; where I’d point it out to anyone that would listen (or was sober enough to see it). For me, it’s a classic example of design taking the viewer from A to almost B, with some effort required on their part to complete the picture.
So it came as a pleasant surprise when starting at Barraclough, to discover that it was the creation of our very own Creative Director, David, and his team — whilst heading up the design arm of CheethamBellJWT. This iconic mark, created almost ten years ago, has since been applied to numerous bits of collateral by the CAC team and their design agencies:
There were some interesting bits and pieces on show too, with the Chinese New Year honoured in the ‘Wishing Tree’ installation created by Manchester based artists Olivia Glasser and Lu Di. The tradition of the wishing tree, is that people write their wish on a piece of paper, tie it to an orange and throw it up into the branches. It is believed that the wish comes true if the orange does not fall.
The exhibit that held my interest the most, was a series of pieces by Jeremy Hutchison, that seemed to be inspired by the incredible attention to detail that seems to be present in most Chinese manufacture processes. Jeremy created a series of ‘Incorrect Products’ by briefing Chinese factories to create one of their products, but with an error built in that means the product cannot be used for its intended purpose. The error must be created and thought up by the factory employee him or herself. The results were really interesting:
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