Elisa Cindy of Indonesia aptly named her Professional Design final project “Chinatown Affair” – a multimedia toolkit to help visitors of Chinatown find their way around, and learn about interesting things to do.
The other unique selling point about her project is the visibility and highlights of some of the aspects and places of Chinatown that are rarely known among many people.
She says “Chinatown Affair” represents the constant cultural and human interaction in Chinatown and the word “Affair” was a controversial image that was used with an intention to raise eyebrows.
“Creating a layer of mystery to the entire branding has resulted in a notion of advenurous experience for me,” said Elisa.
Offering a Solution
The one problem that Elisa is trying to solve is disrupting the common stereotype that somehow Chinatown only consists of traditional and typical old Chinese recreation and commodities.
She attempts to do this by rebranding Chinatown, and hopes to open up a new perspective of it as a modern destination.
Her project specifically targets the government as the main investor and means of marketing, with the support of the community.
In the mutual interest of achieving a goal of helping the tourist attraction for Chinatown, Elisa said that some of the public spaces such as post office, coffee shops, food stalls, public library or even the public park can be used as places of displaying the guidebook, which the users can keep it for free.
“With further effort of marketing, the project can be published as a government advertisement and progressively become one of government’s tourism plan in strengthening local heritage,” Elisa said.
Elisa is confident that once the general public becomes more aware of the project’s presence, the brand can then slowly evolve into a more integrated version of image.
Inspiration
A tremendous amount of love for travelling and photography led to Elisa’s pursuit of having certain affinity for Chinatown’s heritage and unique places.
“During my travels to Chinatown, I came across places with unique design waiting to be acknowledged, and I have grown accustomed to the interaction of lives in Chinatown, and how the vintage feeling still remains unchanged amidst the modern era,” she said.
Elisa finds the research aspect to be the most useful experience because it happens to be the most crucial part of the branding process and it also helped her understand the need to create a relevant and a strong storyline.
As a word of advice to those students tailing in the same direction, Elisa reminded them that creating a good design is a must, but never forget to spend adequate amount of time researching and mapping out the design plan before starting anything at all.
Being an institution that’s located in a country where the cultural scene is diverse, Elisa believed that in order to produce a good design that would sell, one must certainly have a broad perspective in life and human interaction to the surrounding.
“Limkokwing University provides more than just great curriculum, it also provides a wonderful environment that nurtures design thinking and professional understanding of design,” said a very confident Elisa, who already foresees a promising career as a Jakarta-based graphic designer with a Limkokwing degree in hand!