We, as the Designer Interviews ("DI") had the distinct pleasure and opportunity to interview award-winning, most creative and innovative Chenglong Tao ("CT").
Mars Lecturer, Blue Pencil Online Digital Arts School Lecturer, Graphic Designer, Engaged in graphic design for 15 years, CorelDraw software course specialists, specializing in fonts, posters design and research in recent years, access to COREL Asia-Pacific Digital Art Competition 2010, GDC17 (Graphic Design in China), The 2nd FONTSTAR Design Competition, Hiii Typography 2016 awards more than 30 ; Works included in the "GDC17 Award-winning Portfolio", "Chinese Creative Design Annual 2016-2017", "China Art Design Yearbook"; works selected and exhibitors 11th Macau Design Biennial, Chinese Designers Excellent Works Exhibition Of International visual Competition, GDC17 Winning exhibitions, ADCK Asia Design Competition and other exhibitions.
Chenglong Tao Designs
We are pleased to share with you original and innovative design work by Chenglong Tao.
Designer Interview of Chenglong Tao:
DI: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
CT : Since high school, my major and specialty have been pure painting. After graduating from university, I chose to do graphic design. At first, I was not interested in design. Later in the work, the basics of the arts played a role. The accreditation was more and there was some recognition in the local area, so I was reluctant to leave the design industry. I have been adhering to the present. In the future, I will always work hard and stick to it.
DI: What is "design" for you?
CT : a practical and aesthetic product
DI: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
CT : Most like practical, and aesthetically pleasing product design
DI: When do you feel the most creative?
CT : Sometimes I suddenly thought of some ideas before going to bed, for fear I would forget to influence the work of the next day in the morning, so every time I put a sketchbook and a pen on the bed, I can record some inspiration sketches at any time so that I can sleep Be practical.
DI: Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
CT : Visual effects, functions, these two elements must be treated the same
DI: What kind of emotions do you feel when you design?
CT : In fact, the beginning is the most difficult, there must be a good idea before they can be formal design, this stage is difficult; then the design process will continue to find some new problems, such as font design often encountered, although small For small details, I will extend the solution for each of the details. After comparing them, I will adopt one of the most promising solutions.
DI: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
CT : There is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction because not all ideas in the mind can be well realized.
DI: What makes a design successful?
CT : When you persist in focusing on a design, it is hard to think about success if you keep improving the details and change the details.
DI: When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
CT : Visually comfortable, original, differentiated, details in place, and functional.
DI: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
CT : Each time I design a piece of work, I try to make a big difference with the previous piece, whether it is style or other aspects. I think that the designer's own style of design should be ever-changing. Don't have a fixed routine. Every time you try it out, you'll be tired.
DI: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
CT : In the design process of Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province, China, there will be unprofessional opinions from customers affecting the final result of the design, because most customers feel that they want to make their satisfactory works, but the customers do not know that they are spending custom designs. They need to serve their customers, so compromised designs at this level often don't work well.
DI: Can you describe a day in your life?
CT : Get up at 7:00am, after breakfast, turn on the computer to check if there is any new mail, open the design file yesterday, continue to improve or design a new project, and after 2500 hours, you will do 2 hours of aerobic exercise (regular exercise, Maintaining good health is the premise. After dinner, it will check the work during the day. After 20:00, it will not touch the computer. At 22:30, it is the sleeping time. This is the basic daily arrangement.
DI: Could you please share some pearls of wisdom for young designers? What are your suggestions to young, up and coming designers?
CT : The younger designers are more and more engaged in the industry, and finally they can persist in the industry and can make few achievements. The main reason is that a large part of the designers lack the ability to self-learning. When they encounter any problems, they do not think or go online. Instead of searching for answers, in some groups of instant messenger software, they repeatedly ask some junior questions, and there are a large number of such people every day. My suggestion is: If you do not have a systematic study of yourself first, you will find obstacles in your work. When you encounter problems, the first thing you should think of is to try to solve it yourself. You may not digest the answer that others instilled in you. There are no quick fixes in any industry, and it can only grow as time goes by.
DI: What is your "golden rule" in design?
CT : Keep improving, not catching up with the trend, not being led by the trend, insisting that every piece of work has his uniqueness
DI: What skills are most important for a designer?
CT : The basics of fine arts, especially the ability of modeling, and the familiarity of software operation and creative thinking are all equally important. In addition, we must be meticulous in grasping the details, and we must have the craftsman spirit.
DI: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
CT : CorelDraw, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, 3ds Max, work together to complete the work efficiently, but not limited to these major tools, as long as the plug-in and independent small software that can produce effects and improve efficiency can participate in the work, usually when they are free Browse online for updated information on some software technologies. There are some helpful design theories. I will add him to my favorites.
DI: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
CT : I will create a .txt file on my desktop and schedule each task in the order in which it was posted. Design is really time consuming, but I can get up to ten minutes or pause for other things in an hour and a half, and then come back.
DI: How long does it take to design an object from beginning to end?
CT : This question depends on the design. If you design a Latin font, it takes only half a month from the character design to the OTF format font file output. If you are designing a Chinese character library, the Chinese characters of a set of fonts need at least 6763 to qualify. More than 9 months. Jewelry design looks complicated, usually male jewelry is relatively simple, not so many diamonds inlaid, there are not so many complex curve shapes, the construction period is very short.
DI: What type of design work do you enjoy the most and why?
CT : Font design and jewellery design (I will see my jewelry in the future). Because many graphic designers don't understand the meaning of designing their own fonts, they buy or download fonts designed by others, without personality; and their own designed fonts are used in their own work, so that they can be used with other designers who abuse shared fonts. There are obvious differences in the works; in addition, the fonts that you make can also be sold for profit. As for the jewellery design, this is purely for the sake of beauty. When the design is made into a finished product and the model is wearing a catwalk, the sense of satisfaction and honor is not comparable to the graphic design.
DI: What are your future plans? What is next for you?
CT : Continue to participate in the design competition, the number of works, the number and quality of the awards are necessary to join some design associations, the next step to the school to share design methods and experience.
DI: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
CT : At present, the Latin script is developed on its own; however, the workload of Chinese fonts is very large (more than 7,000 characters). For Chinese fonts, it is hoped that they can find a font company to work together.
DI: How can people contact you?
CT : QQ：542894871, Email:542894871@qq.com