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The masks of Beijing Opera as inspiration for an advertising campaign

After an intensive analysis of the traditional colorful masks of Beijing Opera Jiawei Xu (M.A. Communication Design) has created own mask designs that form the basis for a new advertising campaign for the brand Nongfu Spring. New at HMKW: For the first time the master colloquium took place online via Skype.

Student:Jiawei Xu
Department:Design, Campus Berlin
Mentors:Prof. Rasmus Giesel, Prof. Jan-Henning Raff
Degree:Master of Arts
Year:

Winter term 2019/20

During an experiment Jiawei Xu chose 21 masks of the Beijing Opera and showed them to several test persons. Following this short analysis, she only drew details that the persons remembered within one minute. According to these results she reconstructed the opera masks.

With the new designs she started to create the advertising campaign “Show time” for the mineral water brand Nongfu Spring and thus integrated elements of the world-famous Mei Lanfang Theatre in Beijing. Moreover, Jiawei Xu designed some merchandize articles as a support of the campaign: e.g. T-shirts, bags, mobile phone cases and stickers.

Unusual times require unusal actions: due to the corona pandemic the master colloquium took place online for the first time. The mentors Jan Henning Raff and Rasmus Giesel as well as the student herself were happy that everything worked very well – despite the quite uncommon exam situation. Congratulations on your successful graduation, dear Jiawei!