Mahjong Cards: Playing East and West

Mahjong Cards: Playing East and West
Text by Andrea Fam
Graphic design by Joshua Lee

Joshua Lee, currently on the BA Graphic and Media Design course at LCC and specialising in Information Design, has married ‘East and West’ with his graphically enhanced versions of the popular gambling games, Mahjong and Poker; he decided to use the Mahjong tiles of the East and playing cards of the West as the elements of focus.

He was tasked with redesigning 7 traditional poker cards.  “Since mahjong is an activity that’s etched into the spirit of the Chinese New Year festive season, I decided it would be fun to have Mahjong tiles to represent the card,” Lee explains, “It also functions as a reminder of the tradition and keeps the spirit in place.”

The kingpin of the task in question is Yong Ping Loo, an LCC Design for Advertising, Graphic and Media Design alumni. He created this design opportunity, simply because, as he puts it, “Poker cards offer the most potential within an already existing and well known frame, to produce something really new and interesting […] more often than not, you know your friend is a designer but you wouldn’t usually get the chance to see his/her work. Plus the diversity of styles and countries involved (the collaboration is between 8 UAL designers hailing from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong) in this project had a promising outcome and it was worth it.”

These images represent a selection of Lee’s experiments with both the Mahjong tiles as the suits on the traditional playing card, and the reverse: the suits used as the characters and symbols on the Mahjong tile.

Lee’s choice of inspiration – the Mahjong tile as a parallel to the playing card– effectively highlights the symbiosis of the exchanges between the East and West today; the concept behind these visuals stand as a cross cultural marriage of both traditions as well as the acknowledgement of a globalised visual language.

See more of Joshua Lee’s portfolio and body of work on his website.

The aforementioned poker cards have been produced and can be purchased online.

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‘Protest in the City’: Joseph Heathcott in Conversation at Chelsea

‘Protest in the City’: Joseph Heathcott in Conversation at Chelsea
Text by Kate Nelischer

“Unlike Gaddafi, I won’t talk for three hours…but like Gaddafi, I enjoy protests.” Professor Joseph Heathcott makes his intentions clear.

The visiting Fulbright Scholar from The New School in New York City steered the last lecture of his stay at Chelsea College of Art & Design on Thursday evening. Accompanied in discussion by dean David Garcia, tutor Dave Beech, and PhD. candidate and Critical Practice member Marsha Bradfield, ‘Protest in the City’ attempted to uncover the roles that public streets play in demonstration and where artists can function within these processes.

“I’m an urbanist,” says Heathcott. “I study cities, and I think of them as great repositories and generators of human activity. There is an incompleteness of the city that I find fascinating.”

The associate professor of Urban Studies and Senior Director of the Participatory Citizenship and Community Activism Initiative recognizes the close relationships between architecture, urban design and community engagement. Having only been in London for a few weeks at the time, he eagerly participated in the education cuts protests this past fall along with UAL students and witnessed first-hand the unique role that artists can play in these processes.

“Artists should work towards the liberation of creativity.” He notes that although artists can participate in action within the streets, they also have a unique ability to reflect on these events and encourage the involvement of a broader audience by visually interpreting the intentions of protest.

Garcia echoes these sentiments: “Artists can give space for the public to imagine themselves in participatory modes,” he says, “Their work should be an invitation to discourse.”

All panelists acknowledged the valuable participation of UAL students in the student protests. Bradfield notes: “This protest is constituting a space for education – a reconsidering of what education is and what it means to this generation.”

This is a protest that Heathcott is proud to have been a part of. As he says his thanks to the University for their hospitality, he jokes of canceling his flight back to New York next week and squatting in his on-campus flat instead. “I’ve grown as a scholar here,” he says with a nod to the audience, yearning for just a little more time in the streets and protests of London.

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The Magic Flute: Exploring Symbolic Opposites in Textiles

The Magic Flute: Exploring Symbolic Opposites in Textiles
Text by Andrea Fam
Textiles by Hana Kitazaki

“My textile collection ‘The Magic Flute’, originally inspired by the opera with the same name, is based on the idea of the sun versus the moon. The two symbolic elements, sun and moon (day and night), are antipodes and seem never to share anything. However those two share the border, and as long as there is a border between them each element is partial without the other.”  These are the words that designer Hana Kitazaki, a BA Textile Design alumna from Chelsea College of Art and Design, has used to describe her designs.

Conceptually, one is drawn to reflect further on this ‘border’ on which the designer centres the theme of ‘The Magic Flute.’ The image of a horizon evokes the thought of Japan as ‘the land of the rising sun,’ perhaps spurred by gazing intensely at the fabric with the orange glow. An interesting notion, taking into account that the characters that make up Japan’s name mean “sun-originating,” and so we arc back to this series’ original concept: the sun contrasting the moon.

Hana’s descriptive words evoke a sense of the sublime – an ethereal experience. This correlates with her research on ‘The Magic Flute’, where she discovered the opera was influenced by Enlightenment philosophy.

In examining Hana’s textile designs, one is taken by the affective co-existence of the rigidity of the solid geometric lines with the softness of her pastel colour pallet and the fluidity of her chosen fabric. The colliding and imbibing of these elements with each other seems a nice translation of the couplet sung in the finals to both the acts of the opera: “Dann ist die Erd’ ein Himmelreich, und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich”, translated: “the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods”.

See more of Hana Kitazaki’s work on her website.

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Justine Melford-Colegate: Foreign Palettes

Justine Melford-Colegate: Foreign Palettes
Text by Kate Nelischer
Photography by Justin Melford-Colegate

“Iceland is quite an unpredictable country in terms of light and weather,” says Justine Melford-Colegate, currently studying for a BA in Graphic Design at Camberwell. “That is the main reason why I decided to create active colour palettes in my photography.”

Deep, dark reds of moss burn through the sharp sides of the rocks. Bright green evergreen tops peek out from beyond the creamy grasses. Chalky ochre weeds weave their way through the misty horizon and dark blue stones create ripples in the still black water. It’s almost impossible to believe that these are natural colours.

But Melford-Colegate assures us that they are real. These natural phenomena do exist, and she’s brought them to life here in London through her Foreign Palettes series.

Melford-Colegate’s recent photographic excursion to the arctic country led to the foundation of her third year project.  Much of her work focuses on the subjectivity of the perception of colour, a theme that she used to direct these photographs. Igneous rock croppings, rough landscapes and winding waterways were captured during the dark winter weather of her journey. She chose to use 35mm film to ensure that the images were the truest reflections of the colours experienced first-hand, and went on to reinforce this colour spectrum by creating ‘journey lines’ in After Effects and follow the palettes through the canvases.

Iceland’s stunning vistas have been portrayed in this series through film, sound and physical collections in addition to these photographs. The interpretations highlight the vast ranges of colours spanning across images and objects; each rich tone creates a striking juxtaposition against the grey skies and barren topography.

The virtual documentation of Melford-Colegate’s 8-day trip shows the Scandinavian nation in new, unexpected, and alluring lights – much more persuasive than any travel advert.

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Chelsea to New York: FIT Internership Winners

Chelsea to New York: FIT Internership Winners
Text by Joe Young
Photography by Don Ackerman

Year 1 BA Graphic Communication students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design were recently given the once in a lifetime opportunity to win 5 places to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City for 4 months between August and December.

The brief was to come up with a piece of work which takes inspiration from some of New York’s most famous features such as the Statue of Liberty, the Pretzel, the New York Taxi Cab, the Grid Map and the Dollar Bill. The aim was to communicate exactly why they should each go to New York.

The winners, Don Ackerman, Joseph Egan, Sofia Clause, Miriam Abrahams, and Julia Salotti produced a variety of unique ideas from training to swim the Atlantic from Land’s End to New York, ‘living’ in the city for 24 hours and even bungee jumping! The winning work is featured below.

Don Ackerman

See photographs above.

For more of Don’s work, visit his Tumblr.

Joseph Egan

For more of Joseph’s work, visit his Blogspot.

Sofia Clause

For more of Sofia’s work, visit her Tumblr.

Miriam Abrahams

For more of Miriam’s work, visit her Blogspot.

Julia Salotti

For more of Julia’s work, visit her Blogspot.

CHELSEA TO NEW YORK!

Words Joe Young

Year 1 BA Graphic Communication students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design were recently given the once in a lifetime opportunity to win 5 places to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City for 4 months between August and December. The brief was to come up with a piece of work which takes inspiration from some of New York’s most famous features such as the Statue of Liberty, the Pretzel, the New York Taxi Cab, the Grid Map and the Dollar Bill. The aim was to communicate exactly why they should each go to New York. The winners, Joseph Egan, Don Ackerman, Julia Salotti, Sofia Clause and Miriam Abraham produced a variety of unique ideas from training to swim the Atlantaic, from Lands end to New York, ‘living’ in the city for 24 hours and even bungee jumping!

The winning work is featured below.

Don Ackerman

See the photographs above. Visit for more examples of his work: http://derbsign.tumblr.com/

Joseph Egan

http://vimeo.com/19796901

Visit for more examples of his work: colourblinddesign.blogspot.com/

Sofia Clause

http://vimeo.com/19902306

visit for more examples of her work: http://bagdc1sclausse.tumblr.com/

Miriam Abrahams

http://vimeo.com/19935590

visit for more examples of her work: miriam-abrahams.blogspot.com

Julia Salotti

http://vimeo.com/19950446

visit for more examples of her work: forevermakinglists.blogspot.com/

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