Alan Chan Project Archives 陳幼堅項目檔案
The Alan Chan Project Archives consists of 41 posters, 77 objects and a group of design process documentation and printed ephemera representing up to 35 project archives that span Alan Chan’s career from the 1970s to 2016.
Alan Chan is a graphic designer, art director and brand consultant who founded Alan Chan Design Company in 1980, whose work across advertising, branding, graphic, editorial and interior design have significantly shaped the graphic identity of significant entities in Hong Kong’s retail, media and entertainment industries. Beyond this Chan was a major influence on 1980s-1990s graphic designers in mainland China, and mediator of Japanese design, Chinese culture, and graphic affinities between Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China, through his projects with Seibu and collaborations with Ikko Tanaka.
Alan Chan’s work has been viewed by some to characterise a cross-cultural fusion with interest in a wide-range of subject matters and diverse design strategies gleaned from across geographies, including Pop Art, the post-modern influence of British-American-Japanese graphic design or the Italian Memphis Group, as well as his own collection of antiques and memorabilia. Working in Hong Kong design agencies since the 1970s exposed Chan to collecting practices of expatriate colleagues whose “orientalist” eyes inadvertently triggered Chan’s rediscovery of Chinese material culture and leading him to build his own collection. This led to Chan’s appropriation of these imagery out of a respect for the artistic cultures and visual techniques of the past. Chan was aware that the balance of design vocabularies across cultures would appeal to the Euro-American and cosmopolitan Hong Kong market. Chan’s grasp of projecting a culturally-rooted and progressive China led to key branding projects undertaken by Chan in mainland China including the rebranding of state enterprises seeking foreign investments in the late 1980s.
The feature of Chan’s practice that distinguished it from other graphic designers in Hong Kong is how it reflects the expanded role of the graphic designer, on which Chan has to a large degree applied graphic design across the design of products and interiors. Chan attributed this to his background in advertising and marketing, in which graphic design is not just exercised on the level of the customer’s visual or physical experience of the brand.
The Alan Chan Project Archives were donated to M+ by Alan Chan in 2020.
Alan Chan is a graphic designer, art director and brand consultant who founded Alan Chan Design Company in 1980, whose work across advertising, branding, graphic, editorial and interior design have significantly shaped the graphic identity of significant entities in Hong Kong’s retail, media and entertainment industries. Beyond this Chan was a major influence on 1980s-1990s graphic designers in mainland China, and mediator of Japanese design, Chinese culture, and graphic affinities between Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China, through his projects with Seibu and collaborations with Ikko Tanaka.
Alan Chan’s work has been viewed by some to characterise a cross-cultural fusion with interest in a wide-range of subject matters and diverse design strategies gleaned from across geographies, including Pop Art, the post-modern influence of British-American-Japanese graphic design or the Italian Memphis Group, as well as his own collection of antiques and memorabilia. Working in Hong Kong design agencies since the 1970s exposed Chan to collecting practices of expatriate colleagues whose “orientalist” eyes inadvertently triggered Chan’s rediscovery of Chinese material culture and leading him to build his own collection. This led to Chan’s appropriation of these imagery out of a respect for the artistic cultures and visual techniques of the past. Chan was aware that the balance of design vocabularies across cultures would appeal to the Euro-American and cosmopolitan Hong Kong market. Chan’s grasp of projecting a culturally-rooted and progressive China led to key branding projects undertaken by Chan in mainland China including the rebranding of state enterprises seeking foreign investments in the late 1980s.
The feature of Chan’s practice that distinguished it from other graphic designers in Hong Kong is how it reflects the expanded role of the graphic designer, on which Chan has to a large degree applied graphic design across the design of products and interiors. Chan attributed this to his background in advertising and marketing, in which graphic design is not just exercised on the level of the customer’s visual or physical experience of the brand.
The Alan Chan Project Archives were donated to M+ by Alan Chan in 2020.
This archive is being catalogued. Information will be released periodically.
Details
Object Number
CA70
Archive Creator
Archival Level
Fonds
Credit Line
M+, Hong Kong. Gift of Alan Chan, 2020
