We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Nancy Zhang about their original and creative Decorative Scarf design work. Nancy Zhang is an award-winning fashion designer, that makes our world a better place with their original decorative scarf works.
Nancy Zhang ("NZ") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work Shapes of Light Decorative Scarf . Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
NZ : This collaboration series “ Shapes of light” was an extension of my personal art project “Lightseeker”. The inspirations came from the natural phenomenons that I came across in daily life: it could be the sunrise on the beach; building lights in evening, gentle moonlight in summertime.
NZ : How to represent the light scenes with minimal geometric shapes and colors. It was quite challenging because the textile weaving techniques were quite different from drawing & painting. I treated these designs as abstract drawings, people could feel the warmth of light through the colors.
NZ : Continue making a new project/series. There are many new ideas come out from my mind recently.
NZ : The concept ideas comes out like thunderstorms usually, however filling the concept completely takes longer time.
NZ : As I said it was my personal art project extension, I discussed with my clients and they trusted me very much, approved this concept smoothly.
NZ : This was a crossover collaboration series between the company and artist. I am glad that my clients have such a professional, well experienced technique supports and make the actual product design ( especially dyeing colors) perfectly.
NZ : There’s a lot of personal drawing style attached to it.
NZ : I guess my aesthetics has been influenced by Bauhaus designs a lot all these years.
NZ : The people who likes artistic, quality and sustainable design products.
NZ : Patterns, color palette and fabric’s quality.
NZ : Because these series represented several different forms of lights in my memory so I called it “Shapes of lights”. I believe “lights” could also shape us.
NZ : Photoshop just like other designs did.
NZ : Nothing is truly original and unique nowadays but I think this series has a lot of emotional memories attached to it, I hope it could also wake up people’s memories who wear these designs.
NZ : Luckily I collaborated with such a professional design team in JOE’s company. There were around 33 craft experts I worked with transferred my drawings to the actual product, also I appreciate a lot other departments and agency’s hard works. It was a perfect teamwork.
NZ : The actual design is a story, concepts were my vocabulary and technology were grammars, it help the whole storytelling clear and smooth.
NZ : It was an emotional, personal design journey. Usually my works won’t rely on the big datas unless I plan to do some other type of projects in future.
NZ : It was quite challenging at the beginning because I was lack of the textile technique knowledges. So I had to minimize the original details a lot. But it was a good experience because it made me realized what was “ less is more” properly.
NZ : I was quite happy about my first design series result so I tried to submit it to an international design stage without thought too much.
NZ : Firstly I learnt a lot of textile techniques knowledges that’s the most obvious. Secondly my design experiences helped my drawing style improved also, thirdly this collaboration it enriched my memories.
NZ : I think it’s all I want to say. Thank you for the questions, and I hope my new design works would meet everyone soon.
