I Am Brand New China: Terry Liu

Brand New China is not only about Chinese brands. It’s even more about Chinese people. It’s about the faces behind the brands we travel with, but also those we work with and got to meet over the past years living in China. Amazing and unique individuals (and definitely not the stereotype they-all-look-the-same Chinese) with their own dreams and aspirations.

Therefore we are experimenting with an interview series called ‘I AM Brand New China’. To show those individuals that we believe are representative of a ‘Brand New China’ by being extra-ordinary in their ambition, dreams, humour or simply quirkiness.

We’re excited to talk to these people, and we’re hope you’re excited to read about them, and by doing so learn more about the dreams of Chinese people.

The honour of being the first ‘brand new person’ goes to Terry, who we got to meet while preparing for our trip.

What is something you have done that you are most proud of?

Rainbow Danger Club “Souvenirs” Album Art Project. Although it’s only a graphic job (not animations like I usually do), it has stood out in every way.

I’ve being anticipating a project like this since I was a boy. I started out following the band for more than 1 year before I offered them the project. Their music is very much about a little boy’s imagination outside his normal life, but with a dark twist from an adult’s perspective. The lyrics are full of forgotten objects, adventures and infinite curiosity. That opened up a lot of inspiration, and kind of channeled back to the boy I once was. It seemed wrong not to do it, and quite effortless right from the beginning of the process.

No matter how much people like it, or hate it, or neither, this project definitely represents my quality as an artistTerry

To mirror the character of all the family members, I came out with the idea of using the lyric foldout to show a slice of the house. I put every object that I could think of into sketch, then followed by cutting out the shape, scanning, and exploring all the colour, texture and content in Adobe Photoshop. No matter how much people like it, or hate it, or neither, this project definitely represents my quality as an artist, and I’m proud of the result everyday.

If you could give one piece of advice to your childhood self, what would it be?

I would say “Dare to try”. Growing up in China, I always wonder more than what I’ve been told. For whatever decision I made, I questioned them repeatedly, sometimes too much.

Dare to tryTerry

After all the years of learning and struggling, I regret not to make mistakes earlier. Taking actions are always better than just wondering. Even if I failed, I got a better vision of what I truly want. Failure is the best teacher, but if you never try, you’ll never even have a chance to meet your real teacher.

What is the most ambitious thing you want to achieve in your life?”

As same as every creative worker, my ultimate ambition is to do whatever I want to do. Living as a part of commercial business, I’ve learnt that no matter what project you work on, you’ll always have to compromise and scarifies. Serving commercial clients, this is only natural, and it’s not a bad thing. But there’s a little person inside myself that tells me I have wilder ideas which just can’t cope with the reality.

My ultimate ambition is to do whatever I want to doTerry

If the client is myself, and I can be more like an artist than a designer, I’ll have enough space to reach deeper on the project that is interesting enough for me to invest all.

However, I do want to point out that one can always make things like this to happen all the time. But when reality gets in, it seems easier to just give up, and I’ve done it many times. In all, I do hope one day I can achieve a project like this, and do it more and more after.

Oh, and traveling the world! There’s too much to see in the world, and too much excuses to not do it. So I guess to actually go to all the interesting new places will have to be an ambitious thing to do.

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Terry has made the motion graphics in our video episodes.