Fan Shizhong, a fourth year Visual Communication student from Hunan University School of Design and has received awards from Red Dot, iF and more than 20 other design awards domestically and internationally during his higher education studies. In 4 May 2014, Fan Shizhong became the Top 10 student of the year in the 9th Chinese University Student of the Year List, becoming the first student in Hunan University to receive such honorary title.
Currently, Fan Shizhong is working on the design and perfecting of the Lotus Prize trophy. This will also be his graduation work and feels he has a huge responsibility on his shoulders – “I’ve worked on the detailing till 4am this morning”.
The piece is irregular shaped but very balanced in design. The multiple sides give us room for creativity. The back has some water ripple like circles and water drops. “The design element should be as simple as possible – this design has only one element, which is water, to correspond with the lotus theme”. Fan Shizhong believes that the trophy given to designers should be even more unique so he has spent a lot of effort on the designing of the trophy.
This government hosted ‘LotusPrize’ International Industrial Design and Innovation Competition has launched in March and is currently in the phase for calling for entries. Hunan University, the university Fan Shizhong is studying at is the competition’s main implementer. “The executive director for the competition is my graduation tutor – Vice Dean Prof. Ji Tie. He knows that I have rich experience in participating in international competitions so he has invited me to design the competition trophy and draft up the competition guidelines” said Fan Shizhong. The trophy design for past competitions has all been different but from this year, the competition committee has decided to use the same trophy for future competitions. For this, I have drawn up many concept sketches.
“This will be the last competition that I will be involved with”. This decision is quite difficult for Fan as he is an ‘expert on awards’. The Lotus Prize is an international competition and I want to make it as influential as Germany’s Red Dot. It is estimated that we will receive over 10000 design works internationally. Our juries are all recognized industrial designers and this will be a rare opportunity to be commented on by them. Fan has his own dreams to pursue but at the moment, all he could think of is the completion of the trophy design.
(Hunan Daily Journalist: LIU Yinyan, Correspondent: YANG Yin)
Original Title: ‘Fan Shizhong: Chinese Design on the International Stage’, published on 19 May 2014, Hunan Daily. This article has been slightly edited.
Original Source: http://epaper.voc.com.cn/hnrb/html/2014-05/19/content_825385.htm?div=-1
