Qian Qian: Drawing from the East
“The One Club does activities in China every year to promote the creative industry, and they also have a programs branch in China,” Qian says. “They asked the Chinese office to recommend somebody, and that somebody was me. Since they were planning a Chinese theme, I think they wanted a designer who was authentically Chinese.”
The One Show Interactive Awards — one of three annual events produced by the association — honor achievements in various interactive media, from email campaigns to website ad banners. In his design materials, Qian gave the meaning of the word “interactive” a unique spin.
“It’s an interactive event, so what is the Chinese way of being interactive?” he asks. “I think game-playing is the oldest way to interact. So I used images of children playing traditional games.”
For the event’s signature illustration, smiling children in 1960s space helmets ride the One Show’s signature award — a double-ended golden pencil — accompanied by a small panda mascot, which also appears in various other illustrations by Qian. “My hometown is in the Sichuan province, and that’s where the panda is,” he remarks. “So I thought yeah, that’s a cute character, and I think these Chinese children need a pet. And the natural pet for them would be a panda.”
Qian’s stylized Chinese children roll hoops, fly kites, and play hopscotch in the artwork for various award categories. For the backgrounds, Qian manipulated traditional New Year celebration images in Photoshop to create texture and depth while adding to the overall theme of celebration and play.
The artwork was projected on ten large screens at the event, and related designs appeared on event posters, programs, banners, t-shirts, tote bags, and a CD-ROM. He drew the characters in Illustrator, combined them with the background images in Photoshop, and created Flash animation sequences for each of the twelve award categories.
Direct-to-Disk Drawing
Rather than using pen and paper or a graphics tablet, Qian draws everything with a mouse directly into his Mac.
“I just open Illustrator and use the pen tool,” he explains. “For me, that’s the most intuitive way, because that’s how I started to draw things. Other people might have training from an early age with pens and brushes, but the Mac is my main tool. It’s so easy to add and change things — if a line’s not the perfect curve I want, I can always go back and drag things around. It gives me total freedom of control, which I think it great. The more I use it, the more I feel the mouse is the best tool for me.”
Qian’s primary computer is a 17” MacBook Pro with a 20” Cinema Display and a Logitech mouse. “The MacBook is amazing,” he says. “It’s simply the best. And using the Cinema Display makes it feel even more vibrant. Macs can do everything — it’s the standard language in the creative industry, and you have to speak the language to communicate with others.”
Qian finds it ironic that although most interactive design work is created on Macs, designers still need to check their work on PCs. “Most people are still using PCs, so you have to pay attention to that platform,” he says. “A lot of times things don’t look the same on PCs, which is a challenge. The rendering of typography is so much better on Macs. The HTML text and the graphics just look a lot better.”
Designs on the Future
Nowadays Qian pursues his own work as well as working for ad agencies. He hopes to establish his own creative label at some point, but not just yet. “I still have a lot to learn,” he admits. “I’ve only been doing graphic design for seven years!”
Qian enjoys the creative freedom of solo projects, but also values the experience he gets working in larger firms. “Whenever a client approaches me, they already know what they want from me. I can be really, really individual in the work. But working for a company is important too, because you see the bigger scale of things, especially with big international clients. So much complexity goes into the projects — there’s a whole team involved, things might need to be translated, and there are many business things to consider. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but it’s good to learn the process.”
Whatever the future brings, Qian’s multicultural, multi-layered sensibility should guarantee no shortage of creative options. “Your style is your point of view,” he states. “It’s like cuisine — it’s the flavor you put in there. I don’t have just one style, though I may be on the way to arriving at one. A lot of established illustrators have one thing that they do, but I find it hard to repeat myself. I guess that could be a good thing, because I have years to go!”
