For such a long time, commercial brands are closely connected with various aspects of daily life, and the role of commercial brands has also secretly changed in urban life. The most typical commerce in each city not only provides rich consumer content for the area, but are becoming promoters of several cultural hobbies due to the clustering effect of consumption. In this sense, to grasp the youngster's hobbies is to capture their consuming preferences, in the homogenization trend of urban consumption. KAI joins hands with Shenzhen's most fashionable commercial brand, Mixc World, to create a brand-new value identity for young creators through an illustration competition.
1st competition of MIXC WORLD WITH ART Project
24 days for calling up
13 online lectures
24 groups for competing communication
2454 paintings throughout the country
The first MIXC WORLD WITH ART - Youth Creation Project (Illustration unit), initiated by the cultural creative agency KAI, new youth creativity communication platform Zuibishe, has been officially launched on Aug,15,2019. As the first national competition based on MIXC WORLD WITH ART Project, we hope this would provide an incubation platform for the nationwide talented young artists to create, to communicate, and to display.
Urgent Call in One month?
As the first national illustration competition, how could we to make an instant and strong call for the illustrating lovers nationwide in 1 month, especially during the summer vacation time?
WE HAVE
Innovative commenting system
-Connect young creators with top illustrators
How could the Mixc World(where the event is held for the first time) attract more young candidates?
KAI decided to amplify the professional value of the jury regarding the event planning, and invited four top illustrators Victo Ngai, Craig & Karl, eBoy, and Rick Berkelmans to form a professional jury, and offer one-on-one work comments for the finalists.
For many young creators, the competition not only created a window for self-expression, but also allowed them to gain the most practical creating experiences from the A-grade illustration artists worldwide. This was the strongest motivation for them to join the competition.
Victo Ngai（Hong Kong, China）
Forbes 30 Under (Art and Style) youngest honoree
Graduated from Rhode Island School of Design
Her works have been recorded into the top illustration annual for 8 years
Frequent winner of numerous international illustration awards
Craig＆Karl（America, England）
"KING OF COLOUR"
Craig based in New York and Karl based in London are an unusual group
Spending 20 years creating their unique and explicit designing style
Their imaginative color match grants them the "KING OF COLOUR"
eBoy（Germany）
“Father of pixel art”
Founded in 1997, the experimental art group eBoy consists of the 3 German artists Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteigand Svend Smital, as one of the earliest group creating art and publishing via the internet, and the pioneer using the pixel art for creation, thereby known as the “Father of pixel art”.
Rick Berkelmans（Netherlands）
Lomo artist from the street to the world
Rick Berkelmans, a Dutch illustrator, printmaker, designer, and the founder of his creative studio HEDOF.
He has ever held his exhibition in Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. His striking illustration works full of candy colour, suspicious characters and wonky shapes keep his intensive collaboration with the famous brands IKEA, Google and Nike, etc.
Work of Gold award winner: Boilingman “24H-ours“
This work has strong vitality and infectious interest. The characters’ designs are pretty interesting. The black elegantly applied in the painting attracts people's eyes to rotate with the clock, well presenting the author's conception. I like the word game that the author plays on the "H-ours", while if some of the moments and details can be more abundantly portrayed, it will encourage visitors to stay longer for this work, and have a further understanding of it.
It has a special style and unique creativity. We do like the bold colour with melding elements from various dimensions, giving the painting full energy. The author has integrated the abundant content extended from Mixc World as the reference element for creating when combining rightly with the theme of creation.
We like the color and pattern shape of this painting. It’s painted in a candid expression. To us, it's like reading the author's thoughts through this scene, where his ideas flow through the paintings moment by moment, bit by bit. "Buddhist Youth" is an interesting notion, and we wanna learn and talk more about it.
I am pretty interested in this illustration, as it clearly shows the exquisite skill and awesome ideas from the author. I’ve ever watched many other works in this competition and even from the entire illustration world, while compared to others, this work seems incredible and unique with its precise layout but relaxed style. All the weird details, the form of expression, as well as the surreal size of the pattern, fuse in a quite smart way. I think this work is highly outstanding since it shows the intuition in a unique and modern way, meanwhile, it is in good taste and full of fun.
Log in to the official website of Youth Creation Project and appreciate all the shortlisted works.
https://mixcworld.zuibishe.com/gallery
Click into the works, and learn about the author’s idea for the creation and the comments from the professional artists jury.
/ Becoming a part of daily life
Apart from the online influence, how would the competition step into our daily life, with the space superiority of commercial brands?
In the Grand Anniversary Party of the Mixc World, we officially opened the "Youth Creation Project LIVE YOUNG Time Limited Exhibition", at the Cloud Salon on the 6th floor of Mixc World. Over the past 36 days, it has attracted more than 20,000 visitors.
Based on the spatial features of the cloud salon in Mixc World,
KAI selects colorful sunshine boards that can show the youth and vigour,
to build the customized exhibition space.
Visitors at the exhibition
Kids in the creating interaction area at the exhibition
/ Awarding Salon as an interaction platform
On November 2nd, the Youth Creation Project held an awarding salon and invited Wang Zhong, the event consultant and the Dean of School of Urban Design from Central Academy of Fine Arts, and eBoy, Mixc World’s annual collaborative artist in 2019 and one of the jury members of the Youth Creation Project, and the winners of Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards, to bring opportunities for communication and interaction to the illustration lovers.
Boilingman: the Gold winner of the Youth Creation Project
Dean Wang Zhong has a profound conversation with the young creators, exploring perspectives on the art creation and commercial crossover.
Big group photo in the awarding salon
KAI strives to help Mixc World connect with the community of young consumers, and promote youth culture represented as illustration art to move forward. It shows a brand-new idea and approach for the current commercial brands to explore new types of community relations.
What new attempts will we bring in the next? Let’s see!
