HUA! New Huaren Design Movement
What is Huaren? Huaren is a politically neutral term to call all ethnic and cultural Chinese people. In the past decades, certain visual cliches have been overused to represent Huaren culture in the modern art and design realms. As a young Huaren designer, Sharon Y. Yu sees this scenario as problematic as it highlights and will maintain the generalization of Huaren culture. Therefore, Yu’s “HUA! New Huaren Design Movement” aims to change this superficial understanding of Huaren design by introducing three fundamental ancient philosophies of Huaren culture, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, into a new set of design principles for young Huaren designers. Yu chooses Huaren movie posters as the main theme to demonstrate the new design principles on twelve posters. Each poster is included in Yu’s book of “Old Words, New Design: New Design Language for Huaren Design.”
The 12 New Huaren design principles are:
1. The Key of Visual Hierarchy
Each design only gets one emphasized element (it can be colour, text, image, form, etc). Except this chosen element, the rest elements should be minimized or removed.
2. The Path to Moderation
To archive the sense of moderation and neutralness, only use circular, square, and other regular polygonal shapes of canvas to compose your design, so the border can be less sensible.
3. The Art of Humbleness
Use images without altering and editing. Keep the original beauty of images to create the aesthetics of humbleness.
4. The King of Ren/ Benevolence
Design for love; design for others; design for people who are in need. Be a world volunteer by contributing design profession for social minorities and NGO/ NPO.
5. Fifty-Fifty Principle
Only focus on two major elements in one composition. Each element should have same visual weight and volume.
6. Power of Softness
The visual tone should be soft, calm, and friendly. No strong and aggressive atmosphere should be presented on the design.
7. The Way of Naturalness
・Use natural elements as the visual inspirations.
・Use day-to-day objects/ elements that we take for granted in our own culture as visual inspiration.
・Use day-to-day objects/ elements that we take for granted in our own culture as visual inspiration.
8. Qi: Rhythm of Design
Forget the principle of grid and compose design organically.
9. The Journey of Suffering
Hand-draw, hand-write, hand-print your design to experience the actual physical labor process. Make your design more crafting and with more human touch.
10. Cycle of Rebirth
Use reused and recyclable material on your design to create design (eg. Print your design on newspaper)
11. Equality of All Lives
Use non-harmful and eco-friendly material, such as non-toxic ink, seed paper, matte paper without extra coding.
12. Nirvana of Design: Emptiness
Minimize unnecessary information and element to enlarge the negative/ white space of your design.
SHARON Y. YU | Design & Art 
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