Cultural differences of East vs West (in pictograms).
East meets West according to artist Yang Liu
How do you talk about love on opposite sides of the earth? Does beauty change over distant longitudes? Is the boss bigger in Stuttgart or Shanghai? In this best-selling pictogram panorama of Chinese and Western experience, designer Yang Liu reimagines the fascinating contrasts between Occident and Orient.
Understand the world in just a few words.
Graphic artist Yang Liu has a sharp eye for cultural comparison, honed by personal experience. In 1990, at the age of 13, she moved from Beijing, to Berlin. After exactly 13 years there, she started an illustrated project to document her dual experiences in China and Germany.
Already an online phenomenon, East Meets West is the first volume in designer Yang Liu’s successful infographic series. Conceived and designed with perceptive wit and her signature graphic simplicity, Yang Liu’s pictograms convey the obvious and sometimes not so obvious discrepancies in life on opposite sides of the globe.
Drawing on her own experiences of China and Europe, Yang Liu explores a rich range of differences between Eastern and Western experience, from sleeping patterns to the role of senior citizens, from leisure activities to attitudes towards beauty, property, and public space. With their clarity, insight, and fundamental fondness towards both cultures, Yang Liu’s work has become not only a social media and magazine darling, but also a favorite with professional training programms around the world.
Originally created as 47 simple blue and red posters, Yang Liu’s nonjudgmental series playfully captures the difference between cultures: from workplace hierarchy to restaurant etiquette. It has since been shown at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Germany, and was published in 2007 by art book authority Taschen with the title East Meets West. 📚
The Artist: Yang Liu
Yang Liu was born in 1976 in Beijing.
She studied at UWE at Bristol, UK and gradueted with Master degree from University of Arts Berlin, with Prof. Holger Matthies, she has worked with Derek Birdsall, TM & Co London and Berlin, with Chermayeff & Geismar New York.
Founder and Creative Director of Yang Liu Design Berlin.
Dean of the Department of Communications Design at the Berlin Technical Art University Berlin.
