Mapping China: Design - Design Media

Grow with Chinese Design Industry

——The development and challenge for Chinese Design Media

TEXT/LIYE

Facing the grim situation of traditional media, I believe all the media practitioners will have a certain pressure, but we have reason to believe that the magazine who has a real quality and the ability to combination with business will continue to survive and continue to discover beautiful designs and promote the development of the whole industry into the world.

As the growth of Chinese design industry, the development of design media in China is also much later than westerns.

Before China's reform and opening up, most of the design works were completed by the urban design institutes, the fields were mostly focus on urban planning, architecture and largescale public projects, such as railway station, museum and so on.

At the beginning of the nineties of the last century, with the opening of the economy, the first group of designers who can combine creation and business began to rise. Especially in Shenzhen, Guangdong and other coastal cities, a wavelet graphic designers firstly produced the profound influence of well-known designers all over China. In the following 5 years, many fashion designers like Ma Ke, the founder of fashion brand EXEPTION and the personal designer for Peng Liyuan began to show up and gradually become active in the market.

Almost at that time, China's first professional design magazine Decoration was born in Tsinghua University. Decoration is a monthly publishing magazine, reporting outstanding contemporary architecture and interior works, also carrying out in-depth reports with the innovative architects and designers. After 1 year’s exploration, it became a must reading publication among professional designers and college students.

In the year of 1997, another influncial industry veteran magazine Art and Design was founded.Besides, the foundation of Chinese domestic media group TRENDS group in 1993 , the access of Condé Nast Publications Inc, which is the largest media group in the United States in 2005, and the French Publications Hearst’s entrance had a decisive and historic impact on China's design industry and the media environment.

Under the Condé Nast group , there is the most famous fashion magazine Vogue, which was taken as the fashion Bible. In the year of 2011, the Chinese edition of Architectural Digest was published. It followed the American edition’s focus for “a better home”, with more Chinese designers and works involved, helped them to show up on the international platform.

The Chinese edition of ELLE DECO from the Hearst media group was firstly published fifteen years ago, by now, it still is one of most influential and active design magazine in China.

In addition, there are Surface from US, Frame, Mark and Objekt from the Netherlands and many media products abroad has entered China under a copyright cooperation with China's publishing group.

With the popularity of electronic publications and new media, information design began to become more easily spread. Many well-known foreign design websites such as Arch Daily and Ddesign Boom also launched the Chinese version.

From the traditional paper media, to the website and more new media products, the forms for broadcasting was renovated fast, but one fact no one can ignore is the traditional media all over the world are facing the end of an era. Under this situation, some senior media practitioner’s exploration is worth to using as a reference.

One of the pioneer, ex- chief editor of The Bund, Mr Xu Husheng started his new business in the year of 2014. It was a new media product called “Yi Tiao”, which produce and release one video about good design, architecture and life aesthetics everyday, with electronic business and advertisement as Revenue Streams。

Also THE OUTLOOK MAGAZINE’s chief editor and creative director Peng Yangjun and Chen Jiaojiao founded design electricity supplier website Liang Cang, which stayed on the Apple's app top several for a long time. The visual design of Liang Cang also received many praise. This is another transformation and direction for traditional media to take.

Return to the index page

Mapping China: Design - Design Media