Hesign

Whilst on my travels in Berlin I went to an agency called hesign run by Jianping He (on the left). He has two agencies of the same name one based in Berlin and the other in Shanghai.

He was a lovely man who has a very witty nature about him. He always sees his problems as being funny and he will make his creation out of it.

I don't have the pictures to hand but he showed us a presentation that he had made using his own photographs which nobody has a copy of to explain some of his ideas. One example would be that he said a client rang him up and asked him to create a publication and after designing it he realised he didn't have enough paper so he made the book but using around the size of an A5 piece of paper and half this size constantly throughout the book, so the end result of the book looked as though it was a wedge of paper almost like a 3-D isosceles triangle. It looked fantastic, very unique. Also he explained that he was supposed to be putting on an exhibition in Shanghai to show the public his publications that he had made, his contact that was putting the event together rang him a day later and told him there wasn't 50 people turning up there was 5000! So again he realised that he didn't have enough books and he didn't want lots of people touching his work so he took his books down the road and had them put in what looked like a transparent pillow so people were unable to touch them. They were all then set out in a contemporary room spaced apart on long white tables. In my opinion this looked fantastic.

Here is one of his books that he created in 2006 which has been a massive hit to many graphic designers.

Overall he seemed pretty impressed with our portfolios and said that if we were ever in Berlin again then to pop back and E-mail him some of our ideas sometimes. He also had a guy from Scotland that was a interim for him which has opened my eyes a bit to perhaps gaining experience in another country which is what I plan to do with my future anyway. So I would definitely class this as one of my top portfolio visits as perhaps making a bit of a contact