culturebase.net - a unique online source on contemporary international artists

Pan Jian Feng is a graphic designer. He is the founder of the company DumDumDesign and is currently working as the head of design in McCann-Erickson Shanghai, China. Pan studied Visual Communication in the United Kingdom and in China. He has over ten years of experience in arts and design practice and is interested in experimenting with typography. In 2000, he set out to show in his project, ‘Longevity’, that ‘there are no boundaries in the visual world – black is sometimes white and vice versa, Chinese is sometimes Western and vice versa. To do so, he explored multiple ways of depicting ‘Longevity’ by mixing the Western alphabet with traditional Chinese characters. For, he has said, ‘The main task of a Chinese contemporary graphic designer is to try and find their own visual identity, which is not a simple hybridisation of traditional pattern and text.’ In 2001, Pan won three awards during the Shenzhen Industrial Design Exhibition and Evaluation Week: ‘Best Webpage Design’ for Birmingham Museum Interactive Design; ‘Best Graphic Design’ for the Shenzhen Truecolour Pub website and ‘Best Visual Identity Design’ for Shenzhen Truecolour Pub. Pan has worked as a curator both in China and overseas. In 2001, he was one of the key curators of the UK touring show, ‘Made in China – Contemporary Chinese Design’, organised by the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester, UK, which focused on design in architecture, graphic design, household objects, fashion and ceramics.