The Creative Expo Taiwan identity inspired by the sun

This year's Creative Expo Taiwan took place from April 16 to 25 at three locations, spread 12 kilometres across Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei.

The theme of this year’s expo was Supermicros in English and “Shu-ju Miao” in Mandarin Chinese, which literally means Data Temple, implying the worship of technology.

Graphic designer, Yen Po-Chun was enlisted to create a brand identity system, communicating the core concept and connecting all of the various exhibitions held at the three locations.

Po-Chun explains, “I acquired a core concept of ‘the power of gathering up’, followed by the concepts of deconstructing ‘data’ and ‘temple’… The common theme that I find in both western and eastern beliefs is light. People worship the sun, believing that as long as it rises, there is hope. Light is a very important symbol in religious beliefs. 

"The little white dots represent 0101, the base-2 numeral system in digital electronics, each and every individual, and each and every tiny belief. Dots representing data are converged into rays of light and the two concepts are thus combined."

The expo program demanded some flexibility from Po-Chun’s identity to accommodate the various exhibitions taking place at all three locations, but at the same time it was important for everything to stay connected.

Therefore, Po-Chun set a brief for each exhibition’s curator, guiding them in how to design their exhibition posters. He used the light beam as a basic structural device, allowing each curator to throw in different colours and textures.

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This resulted in a series of six loosely connected exhibition posters (above) plus one bonus poster, which tapped into the Taiwanese “salmon chaos” trend in early March and went viral on social media.

Thanks to Taiwan’s successful handling of COVID-19, all exhibitions and performances were held at indoor venues where visitors were required to do a temperature check upon entry, sign up for contact tracing and wear a mask while inside. Nearly 380,000 people visited throughout the 10 days.

Creative Bloq is an official media partner of 2021 Creative Expo Taiwan. Check out our past coverage: meet the coolest characters at Creative Expo Taiwan 2019.