JUNPENG ZHANG

My Chinese name is Junpeng Zhang and my English name called James. I am from China and I just finished 3 years undergraduate course at Kingston University of Art. First, let me introduce my childhood. Since I was a child, I have liked to read colourful patterns in books. Every time I was taken to a design exhibition by my parents, I was attracted by the design posters on the wall. So when I was very young, I became interested in design. With this interest, I started to learn to paint when I was in kindergarten.

When I went to middle school, my cultural classes began to become heavier and heavier. I began to think that if doing art can only be an interest, then it is likely to give up. So I started to take my art test path and began to study painting as a major.

After my senior year of high school, I began to prepare to choose the college design major that suits me. I went online to find out what kind of major suits me. As a result, I unexpectedly found that many foreign design schools rank higher than domestic ones, and there are data showing that through the cultivation of innovative ability, British education has penetrated innovative thinking into every teaching link. Whether it is the application of design principles, the composition of interface elements, or even the choice of color schemes, students need to be open, innovative and innovative. Innovate and design a unique user interface.

On the contrary, to a large extent, design education in China is still based on book knowledge, which is beyond the practical state of theoretical design and lacks design case analysis. In the hardware teaching equipment, it ignores the skills of hands-on operation, and there is no corresponding workplace, which is far behind the design universities in developed countries in Europe and America. An article concluded that the basic characteristics of this ancient practice are the emphasis on knowledge transfer, thinking and innovation. There is no new breakthrough in teaching methods. It is still a traditional teaching method. When inspiring students' creative thinking, it does not attach importance to the cultivation of innovative ability.

Therefore, with the dream of receiving higher education, I successfully applied to Kingston University. The reason why I choose the graphic design is that I found that the employment path of graphic design is very broad. It includes the design of advertisements, books, posters, logos and similar landscape typography design for indoor and outdoor. In contrast, architectural or product-related design has more limitations.

In university life, as a relatively small number of Chinese students in my class, sometimes the projects I did would not get too high because I didn’t adapt to the British style, so I started to try to compare the designs of the two countries. difference. After all, hearing is false, seeing is believing. The differences between China and Britain that we have seen before are all information on the Internet.

So, you can see that in my graduation portfolio, there are two publishing designs that are about the similarities and differences between Chinese and English graphic design that I study. One is an adaptation of my graduation thesis (Comparison of Graphic Design Teaching between China and the UK Based on a Survey), which summarizes the differences between Chinese and British graphic design from historical development to modern education. The other is to use the concertina book style layout timeline (the 1950s-2020s) to horizontally compare the differences between the 70 years of Chinese and British graphic design works. I think these two graduation projects are the most representative of my three years of study in the UK. Because I can use the different designs of the two countries, to sum up, the differences between Chinese and British graphic design that I feel.

In my summary, whether it is studying or working in a new country, you must understand the local history and culture and compare it with your own country to learn to sum up the real differences between us and them. In this way, you can be considered to have accomplished something.