About the presenters

Kirsten Wong 黃銀芳 is from the early settler Chinese community. Her ancestors come from Jung Seng county (增城 Zang1 Sing4) in Guangdong, but she was born and brought up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Kirsten leads the New Zealand Chinese Association’s latest heritage project, Te Hekenga Taikoa 紐華源流, a forthcoming website on Chinese NZ heritage and community. She says it’s her “total dream job”, and one that brings together her love of community, heritage communications and her need to make the world a better place.

Jef Wong is a first-generation Aotearoa-born Chinese and has grown up in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. His family originate from Toishan,台山市 in the southwest of Guangdong province, China. He is the Executive Creative Director of Designworks and is responsible for driving and maintaining the overall creative vision and quality standards of the studio. Jef is passionate about creating an environment to enable an open exchange of fresh ideas, unexpected outcomes, and a collaborative and enjoyable way of working. Jef also believes in nurturing and growing the next generation of design talent at all levels. Jef has worked on a very diverse range of projects over his 20+ year career and his work has received numerous awards locally and internationally. He is a Fellow of the Designers Institute of New Zealand (FDINZ) and in 2022 he was honoured to be the recipient of the Designers Institute Black Pin, an award given to a member who has made a lasting and valuable contribution to the design profession and design culture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Encore screening of Hanzi: A Documentary on Chinese Typography

+ Creating a visual identity for Chinese in Aotearoa: A conversation about Te Hekenga Taikoa 紐華源流, a forthcoming website on Chinese New Zealand heritage and community

10A02 Theatre
Block 10 (Old Museum Building)
Massey University Wellington, Pukeahu Campus
Mon 29 April
Film Screening 5-6pm
Floor Talk: 6-7:30pm

This double-bill event warmly invited people to Massey’s newly refurbished Theatre, 10A02.

Thanks to our friends at Wai-te-ata Press, who we collaborated with in 2022, we were delighted to have the opportunity to present an encore screening of the 57-min, feature-length documentary, Hanzi (2017) directed by Mu-Ming Tsai.

Roll over Helvetica! Hanzi explores international design, visual culture and identity through the lens of modern Chinese typography. This film is not just about Chinese characters, exploring universal subjects such as "How does language shape identity? What role does handwriting play in the digital age?”, Hanzi encourages audiences around the world to revisit and rethink their own culture, language and identity.

Watch the documentary trailer here.

Creating a visual identity for Chinese in Aotearoa: Te Hekenga Taikoa 紐華源流

If you had to choose a visual look and feel that represented your community in all its wide-ranging diversity, how would you do it? In 2018 the New Zealand Chinese Association thought it would be a great idea to set up a Chinese New Zealand history website. The concept got a massive boost when the Government decided that Aotearoa’s history should be compulsory for all students.

This presentation gave us a rare glimpse into the creative cross-cultural design research and collaboration process with designers Jeff Wong and Liam Ooi from Designworks Studio and Kirsten Wong from the New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA). 

Designworks were asked to advise on the developing project, which led them to become a crucial partner in developing the look and feel of what will become the public’s “front door” to Chinese New Zealand communities. This presentation gave an insight into what they came up with and how they got there. Quiet hint: red and gold lanterns were not part of the storyboard.

Limited capacity. FREE and all welcome.

Liam Ooi was born to Pākehā and Baba-Nyonya parents in Ōtautahi Christchurch and now resides in Tāmaki Makaurau. His father journeyed from Malaysia to Aotearoa after passing an English entry examination he never intended on taking. As a Senior Designer at Designworks, Liam delivers large-scale identity projects that interrogate what it means to be a brand of and for Aotearoa New Zealand. From airports and hotels to sports players’ retrospectives, his work has generally interpreted the identity of others. It is only recently that the lens has swung back towards his own identity and sense of ‘Asian-ness’ he has always been proud of.

Liam is a Professional member of the Designers Institute of New Zealand (PDINZ). He believes the best work is focused, purposeful and inevitable.