Established in 2018, Dawang is a New York-based contemporary streetwear design brand that draws influences from the East and West created by Chinese-born designer Daisy, Jingwen Wang. Dawang is committed to celebrating a modern interpretation of traditional Chinese aesthetics and reclaiming the term Chinoiserie under a modern lens.

I recreated Dawang’s brand identity to exemplify its edgy urban punk style and embrace its Chinese roots. The bilingual nature of the brand is elegantly represented by two carefully chosen Western and Eastern typefaces in the logo and the contrasting color scheme.

The accent signs above two letter “A”s indicate how you should read the brand name in Chinese intonation while the Chinese characters in the bracket below educate people on how to write it. It’s also intended to be used as a design element that can be switched out from season to season to create a flexible brand system.

The two main colors, red and blue, are extracted from the clothing designs and the neon green color is added as an accent color for attention-grabbing elements. The logo itself is kept black and white because we want the focus to be on the letterforms themselves to emphasize the hip of urban punk designs.

From print to web, the whole brand identity design utilizes a basic 6-column grid system to ensure consistency and flexibility. Plus signs, little squares, and square brackets are implemented as additional decorative elements for similar reasons.

Because of the rich cultural and personal stories Dawang embodies, I incorporated some cinematic design aesthetics in its advertising materials. For example, the poster designs refer to movie posters and even the website and photography choices reflect a theatrical feeling.

The identity system design will be updated in their next season’s launch. I hope this redesign help Dawang attract more attention to its Chinese roots and gain popularity both online and offline.