‘What if this concept lived someplace else?’ Aiqi Zhang on designing throughout mediums

For Aiqi Zhang, her concepts have a tendency to start out with a query: “After I see one thing attention-grabbing, I usually begin asking ‘what if,'” she says. “What if this concept lived in a unique medium, what if the message modified, or what if the identical execution turned bigger, extra bodily, or extra interactive?” This drive to thrash between mediums and break the foundations slightly reveals up all over the place in her work, whether or not that is a typeface that turns into a blanket, a brand abstracted from the reminiscence of fish tanks or a movie with handcrafted typography. “I like amassing these small observations and imagining how they may grow to be a part of a stronger or extra surprising design concept.”

Aiqi Zhang is a senior designer at Mom LA, working throughout model identification, marketing campaign methods, typography and visible storytelling. Earlier than Mom, she spent a number of years at TBWAMedia Arts Lab creating inventive ideas for Apple’s model methods and campaigns, working carefully with groups throughout artwork path, typography, movement and manufacturing. Throughout each roles, what has stayed constant is a refusal to deal with format as impartial. “I discover inspiration in moments the place the medium turns into a part of the concept,” she says. “It could possibly be a storefront set up the place the dimensions of the picture modifications the best way folks expertise the product, a printed piece the place texture or manufacturing methodology provides that means, or a digital expertise the place interplay turns into a part of the storytelling. I am drawn to work the place the format is not only a container, however a part of how the concept is known.”

As soon as Aiqi has a mission effervescent away, she is going to sit and muse over it, taking time to indulge her concepts earlier than placing any pen to paper (or so to talk). She wants to grasp the core of the mission first, figuring out what it must say, who it is talking to, the context by which it lives, and the feelings it is going to evoke.

“Technique is vital to me as a result of it provides the visible work a motive to exist,” she provides. Subsequent up is the analysis, which varieties a big chunk of her course of. This consists of digging into visible references, sort historical past, cultural context, supplies, and, crucially, speaking to folks. “I wish to have conversations with shoppers, collaborators, individuals who perceive the story, craft, or neighborhood behind a topic, or individuals who might expertise the work in actual life,” she explains.

“These conversations usually reveal particulars that you just can’t discover simply by taking a look at pictures on-line.” Solely then does she start translating findings into kind, testing and refining till the work feels grounded in technique whereas carrying its personal emotional weight. Her final rule, delivered with a smile: “Preserve the presentation deck easy.”

In 2023, Aiqi labored on Apple’s vacation movie Fuzzy Emotions by Anna Mantzaris, made throughout her time at TBWAMedia Arts Lab, the place the whole design system emerged from the movie’s handmade felt world. Aiqi and her staff developed two customized typefaces to match the vibe, constructed to really feel like a comfortable, tactile and fuzzy materials. “It was a robust instance of how design can play a bigger function in promoting,” she says, “serving to to form the emotional language, narrative world, and general reminiscence of the work.”

The second is the identification for Firstborn, a Chinese language American restaurant in LA’s Chinatown, which Aiqi led from brand to menus, aprons, signage and web site. The goldfish logomark was “abstracted from the reminiscence of the fish tanks on the restaurant entrance”, turning a small spatial element into the muse of a whole model. “I loved constructing a system that felt up to date and contemporary, however nonetheless carried a way of cultural heat and specificity.”

The third, Credence, is a show typeface of her personal design – one that pulls from classical letterforms and pushes them right into a extra up to date register. Aiqi prolonged the considering into the specimen’s fleurons and composition, then took it additional nonetheless, translating the entire piece right into a woven blanket the place format needed to work by means of texture, materials and scale. “The piece turned a strategy to categorical not solely how the typeface appears to be like,” she says, “however the place it comes from, how it’s constructed, and the way it ought to really feel.”

Presently, she’s main inventive path for MA·LA, Mom’s Asian Worker Useful resource Group, constructing the visible language from the preliminary idea by means of to collaborative merchandise. “It feels private,” she says, “but additionally linked to a bigger neighborhood, which makes the method very significant to me.”

However what she needs, finally, is for folks to look nearer at her work – not simply on the floor, however at what’s behind it. “The story, the place, the fabric, the cultural reference and the best way it enters somebody’s reminiscence all form the lifetime of a mission,” she says. “Like land artwork, a chunk of design can proceed to evolve and shift after it’s made, formed by the place it lives and by the recollections, context and interpretations folks deliver to it.”