Interview with Siran Liu
Siran Liu is a creative entrepreneur living in greater New York, who works in multiple disciplines including illustration, graphic design, animation, and film.
Designer Interview
9 May 2018
I've always been loving to draw and paint since I'm small. Although I didn't go to a design major in university, my interests in art and design became a trigger for me to started doing graphic design works for various of school events. And it was in my Junior year, I read the book 'Designing design' by Kenya Hara. Before, I was doing design mostly because I enjoying making visual things. It was this book that helps me see and understand the true value of design in improving people's lives and how honorable it is to become a great designer. After that, I made my decision to pursue a career in art and design. And in 2011, I came to the United States from China for my master degree to study animation and visualization. Since then, I've been working in animation film industry as well as taking projects in art and design for communication.
I think "design" is a very broad topic to discuss. In many cases, when people mention 'design', they usually refer to a specific category in design like graphic design, product design, user experience design, etc. But I believe the one core concept, that every type of design share, is problem-solving.
I love projects that related to lifestyle and culture because such project usually has interesting stories you can dig in about our living condition.
I designed a lot of posters for school events while I was in university. But the first paid design job I had is a logo I made for a gift store. After that, I had been collaborating with the store in designing advertisements for their special sales events until I graduated and moved to the United States.
My main focus is design for communication. There are multiple types of design I have done over the years including logo, identity, illustration, posters, motion etc. Engagement and Clearness have always been the two most important aspects of my works and the goals that I want to achieve. First, this has something to do with the nature of the communication design category. Most often, the main problems I'm trying to solve is how to make the audience/customers want to listen to your message (Engagement), and how to deliver the message correctly and effectively (Clearness). Also, my background is the animation film industry has a big influence on my works and I always consider myself a storyteller no matter what type of design I do. For me, engagement and clearness are also the two most important aspects of telling a story that I'm trying to bring into my design project.
My emotion varies in different stages. When starting a design project, I tend to feel excited and motivated. This is important because that is how I know I'm doing the right project. To live to health design life, I try to avoid doing projects that I have no excitement or motivation in. During the design process, I'm very focus and involved, but in many cases have a mixed emotion of frustration. This usually because for every project I do, I like to challenge myself to design better work than my previous project. Christoph Niemann, a very well-known illustrator, once compare the creativity process to lifting weight in a workout: If you work really hard and push the limit while working out, you tend to feel frustrated and struggling. On the opposite, if you feel all happy and relax, it probably means that you are not working hard. And it is the same in the field of art and design, which I agree with a lot. So despite that, I enjoy doing design a lot and the joy of seeing the design get finished is huge for me, I tend to always keep some degree of 'health frustration' while I'm designing.
Clearness. This is more specifically for communication design cause that's my main focus. A good design should have a clear first read about what idea it tries to convey and promote. Besides that, there should be other layers of detail that create more dimensions in the work.
Designers play a big role in how well the public/market accept a product/service. Good design can promote and facilitate a product or service hugely. So I believe designs do have responsibilities in promoting and designing for the right product and ideas that affect our society in a positive way because once a product or idea get accepted by the market and public, it could influence how we live and our belief system.
I can summarize this into ' the 3Ps': Person, Process, Portfolio. 'Person' means that this need to a person you would enjoy interact and work with. Regardless of his professional skills, he needs to be a respectful person who communicates well with you. 'Process' means that you need to know what's his working process is, how you are going to interact with each other during the whole project. And you need to feel comfortable and trust this process. Finally, 'Portfolio' means that it always good to see the previous project a design did and get an idea of his skills and what type of work he does. And I believe that 'Person' and 'Process' are more important than 'Portfolio'. In many cases, companies are so caught in the details of the portfolio (things like whether a designer has done a similar project before, or whether a design has a large quality of projects in the portfolio), that they forgot what's really matter when deciding whether a design is right for you. Remember it is always the people and process that determine the outcome.
The process varies a little depends on whether it is a client project or personal project. But no matter what types of project I do, I always start with a research on the specific topic or field I'm designing for. This step is crucial to help me understand what is the problem that I'm trying to solve. Because I believe the core concept of design is problem solve, and you cannot solve the problem without understanding what the problem is. Next step will be brainstorming by gathering references and sketching on papers. This step is to help me see how many possible solution and direction I could take before I narrow them down. After that, I will compare and narrow the options down to 1 to 3 options. If it is for a client, I will communicate with them in this stage by presenting the 3 best options I pick and take feedback from them. If it is a personal project, I will probably go with the number 1 option that I favor the most. After that, it is the step of finalizing the work with feedback. The key is to communicate well with the client or myself so that I can direct the execution of the design in the right direction.
Empathy. This means the ability to understand other people's need and put yourself in other people's shoe. Sometimes, designers can be a little bit opinionated and protective of his/her work. This is natural cause we are creative people passionate in generating ideas. However, especially when designing for a client for a target market, designers should know how to think from other people's perspective and try not to get too personal when talking about works.
You can reach me by email: siran.lovedesign@gmail.com. I also have a Behance page, and I like to post my personal works regularly on my Instagram: siranarts.