Interview with Quan Yuan

I graduated from Zhengzhou University of Light Industry in 1994, majoring in industrial design. I studied painting since I was a child, and my ideal at that time was to become a painter, but I didn't get into the oil painting or printmaking majors of the Academy of Fine Arts, and I only got into the design majors of ordinary universities, and I learned the design majors in a haphazard way. When I first went to college in 1991, China had just opened its doors to the world, and everyone knew very little about design. I knew even less about design and only had a basic knowledge of art. In the university also only learned some design basics, and the university teachers really understand the design is not much, but still through various channels to see a lot of foreign design albums, and slowly from not understand to understand slowly become a designer. When I was young, I liked to see all kinds of novelty and fashionable designs of foreign designers, and I fantasized that I would design something like them one day in the future. When I first graduated from university in 1994, there was no Internet at that time, and I had no way to see the outside world. I did a logo design for a communication company in China, one of the alternatives was not selected by the client, but I liked it very much. 1999 when I went abroad once, in the United States, I was surprised to find that it was exactly the same as the logo of Saturn, a sub-brand of Ford, I was 27 years old at that time, and I never thought that my idea was the same as that of the world-class company, I was very excited, and it also strengthened my confidence. I was very excited and it strengthened my confidence. I went to the United States to work for 8 years from 1999 to 2007, during which time I worked as a designer for a web design company and a printing company respectively, and since I returned to China in 2007, I have been an independent designer with my own studio.

When designing, my focus is to develop ideas around the characteristics of the product, first find out enough designs of similar products to avoid other people's design ideas. Think about how to realize it in a better way from multiple perspectives, and keep sketching until I find the optimal solution. Then I will make a simple physical model first to judge whether it is worth making a digital model.

Generally speaking, if I can easily find the initial idea that excites me, and in the specific design process, keep on revising it, and in the end, I can still restore the feeling that I originally envisioned, which is the most exciting, then this design project is the most satisfying for me.

I studied painting since I was a child, and my ideal was to become a painter, and if I can't be a painter, I will be a designer, which is not contradictory, because both professions need a strong foundation in art. I can't talk about which person had the greatest influence on me, the main thing is my own learning ability and persistence.

Regarding my growth path, as I answered in question 2, my future plan is to become a furniture designer, and my dream design project is also furniture design.

The future is all unknown, try to stick to what you really want to do and stick to it in ten year increments.

I don't have any advice, because I think most designers are doing better than me. If I had to say there is advice, it would be not to rely too much on AI to do design.

I just moved to the US for my children's education, and now my daily routine is to cook for my son, learn English, and prepare to find a job as a designer here.

I think a good designer has to have his own unique insight and stick to his own design style. He should not follow the trend randomly because the trend will be outdated easily, while a good design is not swayed by the fashion trend.

A good design must be beautiful, it must be practical and it must be easy to use. So I will consider these three aspects when evaluating a design. In addition, every good design should also have its anthropomorphic temperament, and through this anthropomorphism to let itself tell its own story. A good design can speak, that's the reason.

Don't finish a project in a hurry, try to make the product perfect without any regrets.

It is my biggest regret that my best design work was not mass-produced due to the client's financial problems, and I hope to bring it back to the market sometime in the future. The Coolline Bottle, which is now winning awards at A'Design, is a good design, but it is not great enough. It took me over a year to go from having the idea to solving the joint structure problem to finalizing it. It has an interesting 2D to 3D transition, subtle positionable joints, and combinable features, all of which I like.

My favorite designer is the Danish designer Verner Panton, whose classic Panton Chair deeply influenced me when I was young. There are also Japanese designer Sori Yanagi, Danish designer Arne Jacobsen, Japanese industrial designer Kenji Ekuan, Japanese new generation designer Oki Sato, etc. There are so many great designs that I fall in love with the first time I see them, for no reason at all.

My favorite city is New York, where I live now. There are a lot of classic buildings and museums here, it's a place where all the world's cultures collide and it gives me a lot of inspiration. I think design is about creating beauty, and creating more beautiful and more human-centered works can only be beneficial to the development and progress of society.

I made the biggest decision in my life and chose to come to New York to start over. I don't know what the future holds yet, but I will try my best.

When I was in China, I participated in a lot of unpaid design work and some lectures that provided experience to design college students. If there is an opportunity in New York in the future, I will actively participate in it.

Participating in A'Design is my first design competition, which may help me in my future career, but I don't know yet.

When I first went to college in 1990, China had just opened its doors to the world, and everyone knew very little about design. I knew even less about design and only had a basic knowledge of art. In the university is also just learn some design basics, the university teachers really understand the design is not much, but still through various channels to see a lot of foreign design albums, slowly from the understanding to understand slowly become a designer.

I chose to become a designer because when I was young, I liked to see all kinds of novelty and fashionable designs of foreign designers and fantasized about designing something like them one day in the future.

I have done a lot of logo design, packaging design, and furniture design, which I like and am good at.

Keep your interest, keep polishing it and refreshing it.

Great designers have to have their own unique insight, not to follow the trend, because the trend is easily outdated, while the great design is not subject to the trend.

A good design must be beautiful, must be practical and must be easy to use.

A good design has good business value and can create new business categories. If you ask why you should invest in good design, you must invest in projects that have a return.

I design furniture when I have time because I like it and it's easy to make my own samples so I can modify them better.

I have a lot of good designs that have not been produced because of customer's aesthetics or financial problems, I think it would be better to produce them if I have the chance.

My secret is to be persistent and not to give up. Some design ideas also need time to settle down.

When I was in college, I saw the Butterfly Stool designed by Japanese master designer Sori Yanagi in 1954, and it gave me a great shock, and I realized what great design is.

The works of Danish designers Verner Panton and Arne Jacobsen, and Japanese industrial designer Kenji Ekuan have deeply influenced me, too many to mention. I fell in love with all of them at the first sight, there is no reason for that.

My piece Coolline Bottle is a good design, but it's not great enough. It has an interesting 2D to 3D transition, subtle positionable joints, combinable features, and those are the things I like.

Think, come up with an idea, think of a better way to realize it, and keep thinking until you find the optimal solution for yourself.

If I hadn't become a designer, I might have become a painter or a carpenter.

To me, design is about creating aesthetics. Because nowadays the market has all the products that should be there, if you can design more beautiful and practical similar products, then your design can replace those ordinary products.

No one has ever helped me, my biggest supporter is myself.

Do more design in different fields.

It is hard to agree between good design and customer's aesthetics.

Push them to the market and show them.

Furniture design.

Make great designs.

I don't know.

Creating more beautiful, more human-centered design, that can be helpful.

Not yet so far.

I'm not particularly satisfied with any of my work.

A lot of designers rely on AI rather than really thinking deeply about their designs.

There will be more and more AI-integrated designs.

It depends on the specific project, some are one or two months, some are more than one year.

Every time the starting point is different, it's hard to tell.

Thomas Alva Edison: Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

I think design leads the way.

I usually design with the help of technology.

Mac and Adobe series software and C4D.

it's hard to say, different materials are used depending on the environment, and the color depends on the material.

I don't know.

I would think about why this designer designed the way he/she did, what is his/her thought process?

My ideal partner would be a mechanical technologist, so that both parties can make up for each other's deficiencies in different areas and create sparks of collision.

I am most influenced by technical experts in various fields. If a design does not make sense technically, it must be changed, otherwise the product cannot be realized.

The book - 1000 CHAIRS

More design, more projects in different fields.

Verner Panton and Arne Jacobsen.

I'm not famous, so I don't have much to say.

I love the colors of nature, i love the north with its four seasons, simple food and simple relationships and brands that are all about simplicity in design.

When I first graduated from university in 1994, there was no internet and I had no way to see the outside world. I did a logo design for a communications company in China, one of the alternatives was not chosen by the client but I liked it. I went abroad once in 1999, and when I arrived in the US I was surprised to find the same logo as that of Saturn, a sub-brand of Ford Motors. I was 27 years old at that time, and I never thought that my idea was the exactly same as that of a world-class company, which excited me and strengthened my confidence.

Life is supposed to be beautiful, try to stick to what you really want to do.

When I was a kid all I liked was drawing and crafts, At that time, I just wanted to be a painter.

I'm pessimistic about the future. I don't know if humans will be around in 1000 years

Ask me anything.

From 1999 to 2007, I went to the United States to work for 8 years, during that time I worked as a designer for a web design company and a printing company respectively, and after I came back to China in 2007, I've been working as an independent designer with my own studio. I have done a lot of logo design, packaging design, and furniture design. Especially wine packaging, from the shape of the bottle to the outer packaging, these are what I prefer and specialize in.

For me, design is about creating beauty and redefining the product from a new perspective. A good designer has to have his own unique insight, and cannot follow the trend, because the trend is easily outdated, while a good design is not swayed by the fashion trend.

My favorite style is minimalism, there is no extra stuff, less is more.

I like furniture design and wine bottle styling the most. Because they both have one thing in common, they are very much like modern sculpture, I prefer to create a different feeling by shaping the form.

The first piece of work I designed was a logo design.

my favorite materials are wood, metal and glass.

I think I am most creative after the age of 45 because the more I read and experience, the more I see, the more creative I become and the more control I have over my creativity.

A good design must be beautiful, practical and easy to use. So I will consider these three aspects when designing.

Every good design should have its anthropomorphic temperament, and through this anthropomorphization, let it tell its own story. Good design speaks for itself.

When a good design is realized, I would like to look at it as if it were my own child.

For a design to be successful, it has to be practical, then it has to be easy to use, and then it has to find a balance between the designer's and the client's and consumer's aesthetics. Then there's the timing and the angle of entry.

Lots of great designs, you fall in love with them at first sight, for no reason at all.

I think the designer's responsibility to the society and the environment is to use environmentally friendly materials to create beautiful designs, and not to waste the society's resources to make some junk designs.

I can't predict how design should develop, just like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, a lot of predictions about the present society were wrong. The future of design needs to evolve on its own.

My last exhibition was in China in 2023. I have now moved to the United States for my children's education and freedom of expression, and I have no plans for my next exhibition.

My designs are inspired by the amount of reading I do, and by other forms of art, such as architecture, sculpture, painting, clothing, movies, literature, history, etc. You have to read a lot to make a good design. If you want to make a good design, you have to learn a lot of other knowledge and absorb it into your own design language. If you only refer to other designers' works and see a lot of shadows of other people's works in your work, that's plagiarism.

I don't have a fixed style, I will try different design styles according to the customer's needs and product characteristics. But I like simple design style, I don't like too much decoration.

I will be living in China most of the time until 2024, and many of my clients like to add elements of traditional Chinese culture into their designs, whether it is appropriate or not. And they like to modify the design according to their aesthetics until they change a lot of good designs into another look. Many strong clients are borrowing designers to realize their own aesthetics. It is very difficult for designers to have their own space to play in many times.

I have worked with a lot of companies, and very often it is the design company that works with me and I do the design. I do the designing because my main focus is on designing, not on maintaining the relationship with the client.

For Chinese companies, there should be enough respect for the designers, there should be a testing program, let the consumers decide the design, not the investor bosses decide, after all, the success of the design is the market to decide.

First find out enough designs of similar products to avoid others' design ideas. Think from multiple perspectives, come up with ideas, think about how to realize it in a better way, and keep thinking until you find the optimal solution.

The Butterfly Stool, designed by Japanese designer Sori Yanagi,
Panton Chair by Danish design master Verner Panton,
The Egg Chair by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen,
Soy Sauce Bottle by Japanese industrial designer Kenji Ekuan.
Black Line Table by Japan's new generation designer Oki Sato.

My day-to-day life consists of taking care of my 12 year old son, working and learning English.

Try to stick to what you really want to do, don't give up, try to see as much as you can, learn more about knowledge that seems unrelated to design, history, literature, movies, cultural relics, etc., where your design inspiration may come from in the future.

The disadvantage of designers is that they are more tired, always thinking about design solutions all the time, although they are happier when they succeed.

Avoid other people's design ideas and don't imitate them.

Sketching and the ability to make models quickly are more important.

Mac and Adobe series software and C4D.

You can think while cooking and utilize fragmented time.

It depends on the specific project, some are one or two months, some are six months or more than a year.

I get asked all the time, Why do you design this way?

I lived, studied and worked in the U.S. for almost 8 years from 1999 to 2007, which opened my eyes to a different world, very different from the closed environment I grew up in before.

My clients include pharmaceutical companies, food companies and liquor companies.

My favorites are furniture design and liquor bottle styling. Because they both have one thing in common, they are very much like modern sculpture and I prefer to create a different feeling by shaping the form.

In the second half of 2024 I moved to the United States for the sake of my children's education and freedom of speech. I think when I stabilize, it would be best if I could find a job as a designer because that's all I'm good at.

I've always been an independent designer, developing my own designs.

Not yet, I hope to have the opportunity to do furniture design in the future.

I can be contacted at my e-mail address quanyuan99@gmail.com and cellphone +17185828686 to contact me.

I don’t know.