His story is also the story of Hong Kong: Alan Chan, designer, on an East-meets-West career
- ‘I hate to throw things away,’ says Alan Chan, designer and ‘brand consultant’ who’s been imprinting his vision on Hong Kong, China and Japan for 50 years
- He recently paired 1,000 artefacts from his extensive collection with the work they inspired. ‘The past gave me the future,’ Chan tells Fionnuala McHugh
A few weeks ago, Alan Chan Yau-kin was asked by a millennial, too young to appreciate his reputation, how many logos he’d designed. He was – still is – scandalised. “Come on!” he cries in his Wan Chai office. “I’m a brand consultant! This book demonstrates who I am.”
Inside are lavish layouts of more than 1,000 objects, plucked from a collection of 10,000 stored in three Hong Kong warehouses that he’s amassed to aid his creative path. Examples of each are juxtaposed alongside subsequent Alan Chan interpretations and accompanied by his comments.
“I don’t know why other designers were not looking at our Chinese culture from this informed, historical perspective,” he remarks in an early chapter called “Where East Meets West”. (The text – a mixture of essay and first-person accounts – is by writer Catherine Shaw, who also provided valuable encouragement and diplomacy throughout the occasionally ticklish process with Rizzoli.)