Playism by Harry (Haiyun) Jiang

photo Date published 15 9 2016 , Age 8 years ago

My intent is to use T-shirts as a medium to explore topics young Chinese people care about in a humorous way.

"T-shirts have long been a means of telling the world what we care about: the T-shirt can act as an autobiographical noticeboard" - Bachelor of Arts and Media graduate Harry Jiang.

Alt text to be replaced from CMS — Playism - Harry (Haiyun) Jiang

For this project I created a T-shirt brand called ‘Playism’ marketed to young adults between 18 to 25 years old who are keen on Chinese traditional culture. I’ve always been interested in graffiti styles and contemporary fashion illustrations.

The target audience for Playism are people who have no capacity to buy luxury clothes and do not want to wear popular commercial goods. The aim was to present a confident, current, stylish, and optimistic identity. To visually represent the brand, I designed an identity that consisted of a logo, and a pattern.

The identity was then applied to business cards, gift cards, badges, packaging, recycle bags, phone cases, labels for T-shirts, and an online shop. I designed a mural and manually screen printed the shirts myself. In my view, the West is a ‘culture exporter’.

I feel passionate about juxtaposing our unique Chinese traditional culture with that of the West in an amusing if not unexpected way.