Editor's note: this article is from the official account "story FM" (ID:story_fm) of Wechat, and the author's story FM36氪Released by authorization.
Liu Zhizhi's studio "entry ban" accepted the invitation of the Beijing International Film Festival last year to design posters for the 10th Beijing Film Festival to be held in 2020.
Finally, they made two dynamic posters. The first is a windmill blade representing the 10th anniversary, which rotates to become a windmill; the second is to design the camera lenses into colorful lenses of different lengths, stacked in posters to form the appearance of the Temple of Heaven.
The first picture: windmill blades representing the 10th anniversary
Second: stack the camera lenses of different lengths to form the appearance of the Temple of Heaven.
But after the design was completed, when the poster was posted on Weibo Corp, the official Beijing Film Festival, comments flooded in, countless people called it ugly, and many designers in the industry supported Liu Zhizhi. Comments become polarized.
Generally speaking, whether a design is good or not is generally discussed professionally in the industry, which rarely enters the public's view, and the public does not care. However, in this incident, the public discussion was so heated that the "Beijing Film Festival poster" incident even rushed up.micro-blogHot search.
Liu Zhizhi is very closely related to the story FM. The Logo of the story FM, including the previous first edition and the second edition now in use, is written by Liu Zhizhi. Today, we have invited Liu Zhizhi to sort out the context of this incident.
Controversy storm
My name is Liu Zhizhi. I am a post-70s graphic designer and a teacher in the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
It was Tuesday morning. When I woke up, I found that Wechat had been fried. Most of the Wechat I received was still "refreshing", but suddenly I saw a message saying, "it's all right, don't be sad, there will be arguments about everything." "I thought it was a little strange at that time. I had the feeling of sending telegrams of condolence from all walks of life.
So I hurried to the official WeChat of the Beijing International Film Festival to see it, and they posted leading posters of the festival, commenting on "too ugly", "how can it be so ugly", "can you design the text", "this student made it", "the color is so vulgar and dirty" and so on, and some pure swearing words.
Some comments on Weibo Corp
Accept the invitation
It is said that as early as seven or eight years ago, the Beijing International Film Festival extensively solicited posters from the community. They are also working with Beijing Design week, hoping to use the platform of Design week to solicit posters from people who follow Design week.
Because I have not only my own studio, but also a member of the International Federation of graphic Design, a world designer organization, I am often invited to some activities in the design industry.
At that time, I happened to be working with Design week, and they asked me to tell the film festival what the poster was.
So I went and talked about some of my works. I seemed to comment on the previous works of the Beijing Film Festival. I couldn't remember exactly, but that's how we got to know each other.
We kept in touch, and they kept inviting me, saying, "could you please come out and do it?"
As a result, there was a cauliflower event at the Ninth Beijing Film Festival last year.
The thing goes like this: since there is a big prize at the Beijing International Film Festival called the Temple of Heaven Award, last year their poster showed a goddess waving silk, which formed a Temple of Heaven, and then regarded the goddess as a tree trunk with luxuriant branches and leaves.
Their main problem is that because the crown is found directly in the picture library and trimmed directly, the whole tree will look like cauliflower without a definite light source.
Some previous posters of the Beijing International Film Festival. Among them, the pattern of the 9th poster (top row, middle) has been described by netizens as "looks like cauliflower".
The comments at that time were one-sided criticism, and I also asked them what was going on. Their internal explanation to me was that they did not find a professional designer, but probably a young designer who worked in the brand. Moreover, after it has been done, it has been changing all the time, and only after changing more than 30 drafts can the leaders be satisfied.
So when they are preparing for this film festival, they want to cooperate with me even more.
I thought to myself, it is not appropriate for people to chase you for so long, not to mention that no matter how bad it is, it should be as bad as "cauliflower", and I also think it is quite funny.
As a purely official project, I think I can add some new things, some possibilities, because like ordinary pure official posters, it is basically a silk around the Chinese watch, children stand up pigeons, or blue sky, white clouds, the red wall of the Imperial Palace, but I think there should be some provocations in the design, which can give some stimulation to the mediocre society or this established paradigm. This is a concept of my personal design. And then I said yes.
Design process
After I accepted the invitation, the Beijing Film Festival also made some requests.
First of all, this year is the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Film Festival, and they hope to have the concept of "ten".
Secondly, there should be windmills. There was an image of a windmill made of film before the Beijing Film Festival. The windmill has seven blades, as if because movies are the seventh greatest art.
Then the colors are required to be colorful. The organizers like the colors of colorful rainbows very much. My analysis of the reason is that it can't go wrong. Too green or too red, or any color, may be understood as a preference for a certain group. So just seven colors, all kinds of colors.
Finally, because the Beijing Film Festival will award an award for the Temple of Heaven, it is also required to have the Temple of Heaven.
So when we proposed the proposal, we divided it into five different forms according to the concept and means of expression, and then selected it for the organizers.
Outdoor effect of the poster
In fact, when we first started the design, we went in the direction of the main poster. But the organizers may find it difficult to accept our style and style of leadership. So on the premise of respecting me, they finally made a compromise and told me: this group of posters is no longer the main poster, but as a more conceptual pilot poster.
What is a pilot poster? In general, the film has not yet been edited, or may even have just entered the shooting stage, in order to create momentum, will first put out a poster, this is the pilot poster.
So the pilot poster can be more artistic, there can be no stars. It is more like a theatrical poster, more intentional and artistic.
After all, the other party is Party A, they think as a pilot poster is appropriate, but also have their reasons, I do not need to argue that I must be the main poster, so finally decided, as a pilot poster.
In fact, in the end, we chose the two posters of the windmill and the Temple of Heaven. This is not really a static poster, in fact, it is an animation, it is a dynamic poster.
Design concept
The first poster of the windmill, as it is the 10th Beijing Film Festival, is rotated by "ten" to form a windmill.
In the second poster, we want to use the lens as an element. Because all the images we take are filmed and projected through lenses, this is the movie. The lenses that are shot or shown in a film are all made up of lenses. For example, Leica's 35f2 classic lens, we will say that there are 8 pieces of jade, 8 pieces of jade is 8 lenses.
And we found that the Temple of Heaven is layered, so we regard each layer as a lens, designed to look like the Temple of Heaven.
The main elements of the two posters: windmill and Temple of Heaven
At that time, we also thought about choosing the color of a famous Chinese movie as the color on each lens. For example, choose the main colors of Farewell my Concubine, black, white, red, yellow and some pink, such as Tian Zhuangzhuang's small town spring, the emerald green and some gray tones of southern cities.
At the time of handing in the manuscript, my partner Zhang Yu said in the group, "it's all right, you can rest assured that everything is good, and some people say it's not good, but it's definitely not like cauliflower. Don't worry." "
At that time, I read it and said nothing. I was very confident, and I also thought that there must be a few who could not say well.
The poster was handed in for review and was sent out about a week later, that is, last Tuesday morning. And my Wechat blew up.
Create a possibility
Why is there such an argument? I think it may be because the poster of the film festival is different from the usual poster of art activities, usually, we will use graphic design techniques and language to design, which is acceptable to everyone.
But movie posters are a unique category in graphic design. Its picture must be able to see the technical content, that is, "dazzling skills", this is not a negative word. Even if it is a picture, it has to let people see a lot of results, and my poster let you down, or criticized, a big reason is that I went against expectations.
So I understand.
In fact, aesthetics is a very personal thing. And a good designer actually creates a possibility, if the end result is only beauty, then the designer is not satisfied.
A good poster and a good product can change you.
For example, Philip Stark, a famous French product designer, has made many famous designs, one of which is a machine for squeezing lemon juice, which is like a rocket. It has a head at the top, lemon twisted on top, and a three-legged bracket below to support it on the table. If you simply look at it this way, you will think that it has no aesthetic at all, even if it is a metal, it does not have a beautiful color.
Lemon juicer designed by Philip Stark
When you put such a juicer on the table, you will find that it is a foreign substance, it is very incongruous with other cutlery, and you may even wonder why you put a model rocket on the table.
But you will unwittingly replace the rest of the family with something related to this item. MUJI and Ikea are very good at doing this.
Like all the products of MUJI (MUJI), you think they are in harmony in its store. So you are excited to buy a product to go home. But at home, there are colorful plastic foam floors, children's toys scattered all over the floor, a transparent plastic bag hanging on the doorknob, and a tissue box from a 4S store on the table. When you see what you just bought from MUJI, you will feel very incompatible.
As a result, you will passively and unwittingly become a fan of MUJI, and then slowly transform your home into a MUJI-like style because of a MUJI pen or an object on your desk.
Once a black-and-white story
More ironic things have happened to me. Around 2003, we set up a studio.
One day suddenly came an official and his secretary. If they want to do a hydropower project, they need a promotional album.
We had a good chat, and the official wanted to have a look at the real picture books we had done. At that time, the picture books in the studio were all black and white. I explained to him that they were contemporary art ink paintings. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly asked me something I could not have expected. "you are a black-and-white company, can you do color?" "
I was confused at once. I said, "of course we can do color. We are designers. We will make whatever food you give us." "
I said, for example, if you put color film in a camera, you will take color photos, black and white photos, black and white photos.
But no matter how to explain it, the official always thought we were a studio that could only do black and white, and finally left.
At that time, Guang Yu and I looked at each other. This is a story I always remember.
Liu Zhizhi's main poster and trophy designed for the 2016 Xining First Youth Film Show
Some of Liu Zhizhi's past designs
A group of friends who are doing popular science once said to me: Liu Zhizhi, I now have a deep understanding of what is meant by courtesy. This sentence does not mean to be rude to the common people, but there are some things that cannot be widely discussed. To put it simply, for example, theoretical physics, if you let its discussion go beyond the scope of popular science and suddenly enter a broader discussion space, it becomes a "civil science". The theory of perpetual motion machine comes out, and they will say that Einstein is wrong.
In fact, as a designer, I only need to face my Party A, I do not need to explain to the whole people, but I am very concerned about why this controversy arises.
I think there are many reasons. One of them is that there are fewer outlets for opinions. When something that can be discussed reaches a certain level, people automatically stop talking about it. So people will not discuss who should be invited to the Beijing Film Festival, what is the core of the cultural output of the Beijing Film Festival, what is the theme, but they will be happy to discuss some other surrounding things. This is a big environment.
This article is authorized to be reproduced by Story FM, a sound program produced by the Elephant Association and told true stories by people who have experienced it. It is broadcast every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on Wechat official account (ID:story_fm) and other major audio platforms.