Aug

17

Designing for a Global Audience Online Class

Design Education

Workshop, 5×2.5h + Q&A
09:00 – 11:30 am PDT on Thursday & Friday (Pacific Daylight Time)

Designing for culturally diverse audiences both fun and hard. It’s also a skill you can learn to master. In this workshop, experienced and award-winning designer Yiying Lu will take you on a journey of exploring cross-cultural design through colorful logos, whimsical illustrations, and symbolic typography designs.

After the workshop, you will be more equipped to make the right decisions and be very inspired by Yiying’s energy and work.

How would you create an interface that works well across cultures, countries, and languages around the world? How would you adapt your visual language to other countries of the world? Where would you even start when trying to expand to the Asian market, or South America or the Middle East?

Join Yiying Lu, an award-winning artist and designer, born in Shanghai China, educated in Sydney, Australia and London UK, now based in San Francisco, as she explores the power of art and design to connect with audiences all around the world in this eye-opening class.

You’ll Learn:

Drawing from ten years of her own work as a cross-cultural designer, Yiying will show how to:

  • Explore the hidden complexity of cross-cultural design;
  • Color symbolism and meaning across different cultures;
  • Iconography, signs and symbols, figures & ground, principles of Gestalt psychology;
  • Blend typography to bridge cultural gaps;
  • Conduct research to understand audiences from all over the world;
  • How to tie everything together to create a design that connects with very different audiences across the globe.

All are invited to join Yiying on this creative journey — one that will empower you to recognize the unique position designers and artists have to bridge divides, bring people together and engage with cultures from all over the world. Every designer can be a citizen of the world. This class will show you how.

What prerequisites skills do you need?

This workshop is for everybody. You don’t need to be a designer to take this course, as this course will be equally helpful if you’re an Art/Creative Director, Business Strategist, Educator, Game Developer, Graphic Designer, Motion Graphics/Visual Effects Artist, Photographer, Post-Production Professional, Print Designer, UI and UX, Web Designer, 3D or 2DArtist, and Illustrator.

It will be useful to anyone who is interested in leaning a global mindset, design empathy to expand their service to global marketing.

This course can be helpful for startup founders, as Yiying has been teaching this at 500 Startups to founders around the world.

About Yiying Lu

Yiying has 10 years of cross-cultural design practice for global brands and businesses such as Disney, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Twitter, 500 Startups, and so on. In a series of practical sessions, she’ll share not only global designs from others but also her personal stories and lessons learned from her iconic global design work such as the Twitter Fail Whale, the pan-cultural emojis 🥟🥢🥡🥠🦚 on billions of phones, Conan O’Brien Pale Whale, and the Chinese paper-cut style Mickey Mouse for Disneyland Shanghai opening in 2016.

Yiying is currently an Adobe Global Ambassador and runs her own creative studio in San Francisco. She has extensive cross-border Advertising & Marketing experience with world-leading Advertising Agencies such as JWT, McCann, Ogilvy, TBWA, BBDO, and Saatchi & Saatchi. She was the first International Creative Collaborator of IDEO, debuted her first Co-Create program at IDEO Shanghai in 2017. Previously, Yiying was the Creative Director of the Global Accelerator 500 Startups, she uses design to help startup and corporate companies generate millions of business value.

What Do You Need To Bring?

You don’t need any special software, but we do recommend to prepare a pen and paper.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Our virtual doors open at 8:30, we start at 9 am PDT.

Day 1: What is a Cross-Cultural Design?

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
We live in an increasingly borderless world, where design plays an important role in connecting businesses with a much wider global audience.

In this session, Yiying will give you an overview of what is Cross-Cultural Design, why is it important, and show you some informative and entertaining case studies from international companies that will make you cry — and laugh.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 2: Color Symbolism and Meaning Different Cultures

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
Color is an essential visual language that designers use to communicate thoughts, feelings, and emotions to a global audience. The correct use of color can take your design work to the next level of professionalism, and help audiences resonate with your work better.

However, poor color choice can also negatively change the impact of your message. The same color can carry different symbolic representations shaped by cultures across the world

In this session, we will explore colors in understanding these diverse meanings that are vital for us to design for a global audience.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 3: Iconography, Sign & Symbols, Figures & Ground, and Gestalt Psychology in Design

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat, and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
In this session we will explore the power of Iconography, Sign & Symbols which sometimes transcend the linguistic barriers. We will also dive deep into how to apply gestalt psychology theory in design to effectively communicate with positive and negative space in our designs.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 4: Blend Typography to Bridge Cultural Gaps

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
Typography is another vital visual language in setting the overall tone of your design, conveying powerful content, and ensuring a great global user experience.

In this session, we will explore how to work with typography from other languages. Yiying will share the cross-culture design thinking methodology that enables and empowers you to create designs for another culture, even you don’t speak the language.

Yiying will show her personal design examples on creating logos and design campaigns with Chinese & English, Korean & Arabic numbers, Indian languages, and Arabic Numbers, Chinese & Arabic numbers, and so on.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 5: Design Research

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat, and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
In this session, we will wrap up our course by learning how to conduct cross-cultural design research to create both globalization and localization design for a global company in a new market.

Yiying will share tools, tips, and design experiences for you to take away and apply on your own cross-cultural design projects.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

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Jul

25

Happy Creative Hours with Yiying Lu

Uncategorized

Why?

Due to the pandemic, people are increasingly siloed and isolated from one-another working at home through video conferencing these days.   

Loneliness, lack of in-person connection, and “Zoom fatigue” all contribute to the growing drain felt by everyone stuck working at home for long hours. 

Overworked amidst lack of change in the physical environment, people seldom are given opportunities to flex their creative muscles. They also feel an increasing need to activate to recharge the creative side of their brain amidst their long hours focused on more structured tasks their jobs require from them.

Who?

This program is created and led by Award-winning designer and TEDx Speaker, Yiying Lu. Yiying has been named one of the “Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business”,  a “Top 10 Emerging Leader in Innovation” by Microsoft, and a winner of Shorty Awards in Design. She has also worked as a creative director at 500 startups. She brought design education and practice into the venture capital community, which helped hundreds of startup founders and corporate executives raise millions for the companies and shape up to contribute. She was the first global Creative Collaborator for IDEO Shanghai, where she debuted her first human-centered co-create design program in the corporate environment. Since then, she has been running similar workshops with larger corporations such as Apple, Salesforce, and Google.

Having worked with hundreds of startup founders and larger corporations, Yiying noticed a common thread in great team culture across these businesses: a strong emphasis on People First. Through this, she ensures creating engaging experiences to connect people, empower people, and inspire people.  

How?

The length of the program: 
Two options: 15 people for 1.5 hours OR 20 people for 2 hours

The structure of the program:
Part 1: Introduction: Yiying leads a pop-corn style introduction: e.g., Who are you? Where are you based? What’s your favorite dumpling? (20 min)

Part 2: Yiying shares her design process behind her creative work, such as how she designed the dumpling emoji, which is now used by billions of global users. (25 min)

Part 3: Yiying leads a (15-30 min) creative drawing session (no prior drawing skills required). It encourages the participants to reflect on the good and bad of their everyday work on our well-being. 

Part 4: Yiying facilitates attendees sharing their completed drawings and stories with the whole group (30-60 min)

Testimonials:

“I recently attended a virtual Co-Create Workshop led by Yiying for the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area (AABA)’s in-house committee. The workshop was fun, engaging, and thoughtful. It allowed us to use art media to reflect upon our daily work and improve our mental wellbeing. Everyone attending had a blast. We also did energy check-in before and after the event. The overall energy level rose from 5 (measured at the beginning) to 10 at the end of the event (10 being the highest). I found Yiying’s Co-Create Workshop—not only entertaining and educational—but, most importantly, therapeutic and energizing. I highly recommend that organizations and corporations look to improve their employees’/members’ morale, energy level, and mental wellbeing, which is vital towards the success of their employees/members during these trying times.”
—— David Tsai, Attorney, IP Litigation Partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, Former President of AABA – Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area

“I really believe that artists are a part of the continuum of science. To this, communication through art is effective to convey complicated ideas to the world. Also, the impact of the creative workshop led by Yiying Lu provided a valuable morale-boosting experience. This was very helpful as we are all stuck at home tackling many serious things, where we don’t have many moments of levity or lightheartedness. With our attention focused on this work seven days a week, it can be draining. Ultimately, this experience was both a vital and effective break from that tedium and it is very uplifting.”
—— Daria Mochly-Rosen, President & Founder of SPARK GLOBAL Translational Scientists without Borders at Stanford University School of Medicine

“Yiying recently led an energizing virtual creative design workshop with participants from around the world. Everyone felt uplift by the end of her session. I wholeheartedly recommend Yiying for her cross-cultural creative expertise, global design leadership, and co-create design workshops, which can add tremendous value to organizations and corporations for their business and corporate culture.”
—— Clive Lee, EMBA Global Asia / MSocSc / BEng Founder, Phoenix Foundation Promoting Resilience 

“I’ve known Yiying for some time and have had the pleasure of working with her to organize a Drink and Draw Event for the Asian American Bar Association (AABA). Yiying hosted a fantastic workshop for the AABA In-House Committee. Working as an attorney, I don’t have much time to get in touch with my creative side. This workshop is a great stress relief from working during these crazy pandemic times. Thanks again Yiying – I highly recommend everyone to attend her events!”
—— Hai-Ching Yang Senior Corporate Counsel for Governments & Nonprofits / Industry Partnerships/ Privacy Compliance 

Results:

Video

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