I and NY

StartFragmentNew York and IEverybody canmake his/her own icon about impression of NYIspent my time in New York City, living mainly in Queens; there I watched thecrowds of the new immigrants walking on the streets, but rarely saw the blondhair caucasians. Most common is Asians and Latinos etc. this immigration areais the so-called the largest one in the New York City area, according to thedemographics, almost half of the population were born in foreign countries, andthe other half of the population are the first generation of the immigrantsliving there. Therefore there are several of the residential areas withdifferent nationalities in the Queens area. The Flushing is the gathering spotof Chinese and Korean in Queens, where you can get the Taiwanese O-A Mi-Soa,the Chinese herb medicines of TongRenTang from Mainland China, and the KoreanGinseng Chicken Soup etc, even the subway No. 7 crossing from Queens toManhattan is generally called the “Orient Express”, not to mention the otherlarge number of immigrants with Turkish, Greek and Russian etc, backgrounds;when those first generation immigrates came to this country they were eagerlylooking for part time jobs to make money even before they could speak anyEnglish. Awhile ago the newspaper reported that the approximated number ofillegal immigrants are over hundreds of millions in the United States, amongthose the Mexicans are the highest percentage. The number of immigrants dependson the economic state of the country they came from, the poorer the economy inthe country, the more illegal emigrants from that country find their way to theUSA. Thesymbol of “IYNY”, designed by Milton Glaser, can be considered one of the mostwell known symbols known worldwide, and it is generally applied everywhere,also extensively modified to a variant of subjects; in addition it is thepronoun of New York City since hecreated this symbol in the 70’s. Especially after the “911” incident, NewYorkers seemed to unite around this symbol, wherever you go in New York City,this symbol can be discovered whether on the clothes, or all types of souvenirgifts. For the visitors, it is a must to least have a souvenir printed with thesymbol of “IYNY” otherwise it can’t be counted as ever visiting New York.Doeseveryone love New York? Even if they do, can the word “Love”, contain the tonsof the complicated emotions? The combination of New Yorkers is indeedcomplicated and comprehensive. Base on the statics, the immigrants of New Yorkcome from over a hundred countries, and among these more than half of them wereborn foreign countries. Each immigrant came here for different purposes; somewere escaping from their countries’ because of the turmoil of wars, some werehere for making money due to the difficulties of a bad economy within theircountries, some were here to fulfill their dreams, and some are here, attractedby the New York City from the movies. A variety of reasons make New York Citythe gathering place for people with different dreams. This recalls my memoriesof a report I saw in the New York Times, it was briefly talking about theseveral possible periods of the cities mood transformations; from the honeymoonworship to the homesick dislikes, then transforming to the peaceful mindset ofsuit in the environment. Every period has diverse points of views and thoughts,in fact, the environment never changed, but the mood of the people did. Formost of new immigrants, the adaptive period can be a long or short exam, tolearn a new language, to know a new environment, different life styles andrebuilt relationships; those are processing on the 2nd year in NewYork. Lots of new immigrants around are facing a difficult time to live in NewYork City due to, the expensive living expenses, the most expensive medical;also the living price index is the highest of the 10 major global cities. It isa capitalistic haven, which has beggars and the homeless covering most streetcorners. Certainly, the busker is also one of the important scenes here. Designcreation originates from life; once you’ve lived seriously in an area you canacquire all sorts of inspirations. When I first saw the symbol of “IYNY” on thestreet, I couldn’t help to wonder, with so many people from differentnationalities with so many differences and complicated emotions, how could ashort word like “Love” generalize above all? For this reason, I erased thesymbol of the heart, reassembled “I NY” and printed it on A3 paper, I brought abunch of marker pens and a camera with me to the street, and asked the peopleof New York and visitors to help me complete the image with the creation oftheir own symbols. During the process of this activity, the design wascompleted by the participants; all I did was just project manage the wholeprocess. Taiwanheld an international poster design competition in 2005, one of the subjectswas Urban Impression, from the Japan impression presented by the Japan DesignAssociation in the 80’s, to the Korea impression structured for Seoul OlympicGames, and then to the Taiwan impression which was exhibited by the TaiwanPoster Design Association. Since the 90’s, the designers of Mainland China alsobegan a series of design poster exhibitions and competitions relevant to theirurban impressions. The general designers used the way of their impressionstoward the cities or countries to layout the cultural sceneries and landmarks,by concretization or abstraction, those are the results painted by thesubjectively impressions of the designers. However the creation of “I NY”, thusthe impressions of New York City did not come from me, instead it was from thepeople living there or the local visitors. This is because I was living in thiscity so naturally I would have a subjective thought, thus presented my point ofview at last. With regard to the impression, created with the assistance of theNew Yorkers and visitors, is indeed the creation of the subjective thoughts ofeveryone, yet with variants in point of view from different angles, which alsoallows each designer the opportunity to discover more possibilities. This impression is indeed theemotions expressed by the people living here or the people that ever hadcontact here, of course most of people are not designers or artists, without any professional design abilities forhow to simplify images or symbols, nevertheless those are thesubstantial and bare personal thoughts. There was one person that drew a questionmark