Consultant Alan Chan puts a personal spin on the year ahead

Designer and brand consultant Alan Chan Yau-kin opened Gallery 27 with the aim of promoting creative graphic art and bringing it into our daily lives.

To banish the notion that art directors are commercially driven, Chan asked nine designers to each create an experimental graphic artwork for an exhibition entitled "Art by Art Directors".

The exhibition opened in the Wan Chai gallery on Friday.

Based loosely on the theme "2013", each of the works represents the artists' vision of the year.

The local participants are Henry Chu, Javin Mo, Michael Lau, S.K. Lam and RMM magazine. The others are Guang Yu and Liu Zhizhi from the mainland, and Yoshihiro Yagi and Ren Takaya from Japan.

Chu was at the opening with his wife and baby daughter. Titled Grow, the new-media artist and web designer's work represents his wish for their daughter to have a healthy life.

"When Chan asked me to do something static and non-interactive, I found it quite a challenge as I usually work on stuff that moves," he said. "But then I came up with something involving my daughter, who was born last November. Our 2013 will definitely be all about her. I wrote a program that generates the texture of hair and applied it to her photo. The result was quite unexpected."

Other work includes Mo's SARS10, which features 299 surgical masks to symbolise casualties of the 2003 pandemic and serve as a tribute to the selfless medical professionals.