THE WAYFINDER
Publication
Collaborated with: Hongkongers in Britain (HKB)
Year: 2021
This project is initiated by the mass migration wave happening in Hong Kong after a series of democratic demonstration and political instability. As the immigration route is offered to the British National (Overseas) visa holders from Hong Kong, a lot of Hong Kong family have been gradually moving to the UK since early this year. I wonder a lot of them are not mentally ready for the move and do not know much about the British environment. Thus I decided to collaborate with Hongkongers in Britain (HKB), a well-known HK-run-charity in the UK, to publish a publication which aims to provide settling information to the new comers. This production consists of multiple first- handed phone interviewed materials and original photographic elements where the whole production is done by myself, a Hong Kong diaspora.
Special thanks to HKB for publishing this booklet and supporting with guidance, in order to empower the HK community in the UK.
PUBLICATION CONTENT
INTERVIEWEE RECUITMENT
The whole set of publication consists of two parts, the first part, THE WAYFINDER, aims to provide regional information for the consideration of moving to that city and official data provided by HKB; the second part, FOLLOW ME, focuses on the idea of welcoming new-comers, featuring people who have just moved to the UK.
To make this project more than a graduation project, I decided to propose it to a Hong Kong organisation based in the UK, Hongkongers in Britain (HKB) for the opportunity of publishing to the community. I recruited volunteered interviewees on behalf of HKB to facilitate the content writing for this publication.
In order to make a clearer framework to get a better focus on certain group of audience, I have also examined the correlation between the encountered difficulties and the age of the interviewees. All the interviews were conducted through virtual meeting, each of the interviewee were also asked to write something to show encouragement to the new-comers-to-be/ audience.
ART DIRECTION
THE COMMON GROUND
I intended to use elements that build a resonance with the audience that they feel connecting to throughout the whole set of publication. This is a publication dedicated to my home-people, nothing echos better than the common ground we always have, the culture, the language, the experience.
The colour usage - red, white and blue. Not only they are the colours on the UK flag, it also happens to be the colour of the Hong Kong traditional bag that are mostly used for moving home belongings, nicknamed as "red-white-blue or 紅白藍 in cantonese".
The recurring post-it notes - Since the 2019 demonstration, post-it notes have became one of the ways to voice out opinions in a public context, it is symbolised as a connection within the community,
The road-signs - A road sign has a meaning of direction guiding, which matches with the meaning of the publication, an informational guide. By using the element of road signs in the informational guide, It can be a metaphor here.
QUEEN'S road EAST to west
Thanks to the British coloniaation in Hong Kong, one of the legacies has connected the 2 places, the common street names. Both places have their own Queen's Road, the whole idea came from " What if the 2 Queen's Roads are connected? People moving from Queen's Road "East" to "West"?" The symbol of the migration wave, thus also becoming the signature cover of this publication.
"Queen’s Road East" is also a popular cantonese pop song in the early 90s, where it's lyrics describe the first ever migration wave from Hong Kong to the UK back then.
