WORLD’S END CLOTHES
ADVERTISING AND DESIGN
NEW TALENT
Jasu Hu is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer from China. After graduated from Academy of Art & Design of Tsinghua University majoring Visual Communication Design, now she's a grad student in MFA Illustration Practice Program of Maryland Institute College of Art based in Baltimore, USA. She loves exploring how illustration can be a visual communication way to solve social or visual problem.
World's End Clothes is a self-initiated publishing project with the combination of architecture and fashion design in order to create a new applied approach with the visual language of architecture. These six designs are inspired by the architecture of Louis Kahn, including Richards Medical Research Buildings, Kimbell Art Museum, Yale Center for British Art and Studies, Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Phillip Exeter Library.
“I'm so glad to have this honor to be the New Talent Winner in Design Category. As a new illustrator and an international student, it really means a lot to me that people can understand what I want to express. With both graphic design and illustration background, I believe that design and illustration have the same function to solve social and visual problem. Before working in the industry, the school gives us more time to go deeper in a project with our curiosity. I’d like to thank our faculty in my school program for encouraging me to expand the boundaries of illustration.”
BRIEF: World's End Clothes is a self-initiated publishing project with the combination of architecture and fashion design in order to create a new applied approach with the visual language of architecture. These six designs are inspired by the architecture of Louis Kahn.
MATERIALS: Pencil and Adobe Photoshop
RESEARCH: I read books by Louis Kahn, including Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn, Louis Kahn: Conversations with Students, Louis I. Kahn by Robert McCarter and the documentry, My Architect: A Son's Journey. Kahn's works are sacred, elegant, silent and mysterious. I'm impressed by his perseverance of creating art and the spirit of his architecture.
PROCESS: I’m very interested in architecture and want to find a creative way to present its visual language. After reading many books about the architect Louis Kahn, I summarised the keywords and the main tone of the design. Then I subtracted every visual language of those architecture, come up with ideas and sketches for the shapes and forms of my clothes design. Finally I drew those visual languages in Photoshop and played with the shapes and forms to present the emotion of architecture.
RESISTANCES: The hardest part of this project is to find the right emotion when presenting a specific architect. All the forms, colors, shapes and textures should follow the content. Different from drawing fashion illustrations based on fashion shows, creating an original fashion design includes researching, designing and drawing. I treat architecture as an emotional creature. The understanding of their functions, structures, visual language, emotions and philosophy of existence are the resistances but necessary.
INSIGHT: I always believe that not just human beings can have voice. When I was doing my project, I think as the architecture would “think”. If I were the building, what is my favorite part? What kind of people do I want to be? What kind of clothes do I want to wear? By changing the subjective perspective, I can project their thoughts and use them in my creation.
DISTRACTIONS: I worked at home while there was noisy sound outside the window. But I enjoy most of my time researching, thinking and drawing things.
NUMBERS: 6 designs, 5 buildings, 1 architect, 2 weeks, 20 products.
AFTERWORDS: The enthusiasm of architecture gives me many inspirations to move forward. I’m going to continue exploring fashion-related work and push forward into lifestyle illustration - combining people and architecture in the sense of narrative form.
Jasu Hu2014Jasu-Hu Image