Xuejie Zhou
As a graphic designer, I deeply enjoy learning new skills and techniques and I am passionate when exploring various modes of presenting visual outputs. In my projects, I use graphic metaphors to communicate themes and reflections on life that could easily go unnoticed. I find inspiration from life around me, expanding my perception and understanding of realistic images with/alongside abstract shapes—translating observations into practice.
Invading Green
While walking around the city, I always noticed many plants growing freely beyond the fence. Some of them grow in the crevices of the concrete walls, even though that provides little space conducive to plant growth. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, there is a vast of moss growing on stone walls and roadways. I wondered if, from these phenomena, plants were spreading and expanding as an invisible force in a city of steel and concrete. I began to think about the relationship between plants and man-made rules with these questions in mind.
In a broad sense, plants are very tiny compared to artificial cities. So, are plants breaking through the man-made spaces and expanding their survival space?
Invading Green shows how mosses can break through in these tight and limited spaces; by some invisible force, slowly creeping, unnoticed into our environment. The design of the type, before the moss growth, represents the narrow areas of man-made rules.
The Tulips Story
As someone with a deep interest and care for the plants in my life, I noticed the changes that occurred to a cut flower over time, watching as it began to lose its petals one by one. In The Tulips Story, the black pixels act as graphic metaphors that connect to the fleeting nature of memory. The multi-dimensional images sit in transparent layers that communicate themes and reflections on life that could easily go unnoticed.
“You wouldn’t plant a flower.
You said, I wouldn’t want to see it fading little by little
Sure,
To avoid the end, you avoided the any beginning”
——Written by GU CHENG
Last Corner in Glasgow
The publication records some traces I’ve collected on the street from obscure corners. These remnants have lost their original integrity through the catalytic process of time, but the remaining fragments can still be roughly distinguished by their former shapes and colors, which represent their existence.The random and unique traces have been become the boundary between the old and the new. I have abstracted and geometrized the original form of the remnants, presenting a visual contrast between the smooth, intact edges and the irregular, leftover marks.
