How would you create an interface that works well across cultures, countries and languages around the world? How would you adapt your visual language to other countries of the world? Where would you even start when trying to expand to Asian market, or South America or Middle East?

Join Yiying Lu, an award-winning artist and designer, born in Shanghai China, educated in Sydney, Australia and London UK, now based in San Francisco, as she explores the power of art and design to connect with audiences all around the world in this eye-opening class.

You’ll Learn:

Drawing from ten years of her own work as a cross-cultural designer, Yiying will show how to:

• Explore the hidden complexity of cross-cultural design;
• Color symbolism and meaning across different cultures;
• Iconography, signs and symbols, figures & ground, principles of Gestalt psychology;
• Blend typography to bridge cultural gaps;
• Conduct research to understand audiences from all over the world;
• How to tie everything together to create a design that connects with very different audiences across the globe.

All are invited to join Yiying on this creative journey — one that will empower you to recognize the unique position designers and artists have to bridge divides, bring people together and engage with cultures from all over the world. Every designer can be a citizen of the world. This class will show you how.

Register for this workshop →

What prerequisites skills do you need?

This workshop is for everybody. You don’t need to be a designer to take this course, as this course will be equally helpful if you’re an Art/Creative Director, Business Strategist, Educator, Game Developer, Graphic Designer, Motion Graphics/Visual Effects Artist, Photographer, Post-Production Professional, Print Designer, UI and UX, Web Designer, 3D or 2DArtist, and Illustrator.

It will be useful to anyone who is interested in leaning a global mindset, design empathy to expand their service to global marketing.

This course can be helpful for startup founders, as Yiying has been teaching this at 500 Startups to founders around the world.

About Yiying Lu

Yiying has 10 years of cross-cultural design practice for global brands and businesses such as Disney, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Twitter, 500 Startups, and so on. In a series of practical sessions, she’ll share not only global designs from others but also her personal stories and lessons learned from her iconic global design work such as the Twitter Fail Whale, the pan-cultural emojis 🥟🥢🥡🥠🦚 on billions of phones, Conan O’Brien Pale Whale, and the Chinese paper-cut style Mickey Mouse for Disneyland Shanghai opening in 2016.

Yiying is currently an Adobe Global Ambassador and runs her own creative studio in San Francisco. She has extensive cross-border Advertising & Marketing experience with world-leading Advertising Agencies such as JWT, McCann, Ogilvy, TBWA, BBDO, and Saatchi & Saatchi. She was the first International Creative Collaborator of IDEO, debuted her first Co-Create program at IDEO Shanghai in 2017. Previously, Yiying was the Creative Director of the Global Accelerator 500 Startups, she uses design to help startup and corporate companies generate millions of business value.

What Do You Need To Bring?

You don’t need any special software, but we do recommended to prepare a pen and paper.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PDT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

• Thu, August 20, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PDT
• Fri, August 21, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PDT
• Thu, August 27, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PDT
• Fri, August 28, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PDT
• Fri, September 4, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PDT

Day 1: What is Cross-Cultural Design?

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
We live in an increasingly borderless world, where design plays an important role in connecting businesses with a much wider global audience.

In this session, Yiying will give you an overview of what is Cross-Cultural Design, why is it important, and show you some informative and entertaining case studies from international companies that will make you cry — and laugh.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 2: Color Symbolism and Meaning Different Cultures

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
Color is an essential visual language that designers use to communicate thoughts, feelings, and emotions to a global audience. The correct use of color can take your design work to the next level of professionalism, and help audiences resonate with your work better.

However, poor color choice can also negatively change the impact of your message. The same color can carry different symbolic representations shaped by cultures across the world

In this session, we will explore colors in understanding these diverse meanings that are vital for us to design for a global audience.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 3: Iconography, Sign & Symbols, Figures & Ground, and Gestalt Psychology in Design

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
In this session we will explore the power of Iconography, Sign & Symbols which sometimes transcend the linguistic barriers. We will also dive deep into how to apply gestalt psychology theory in design to effectively communicate with positive and negative space in our designs.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 4: Blend Typography to Bridge Cultural Gaps

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
Typography is another vital visual language in setting the overall tone of your design, conveying powerful content, and ensuring a great global user experience.

In this session, we will explore how to work with typography from other languages. Yiying will share the cross-culture design thinking methodology that enables and empowers you to create designs for another culture, even you don’t speak the language.

Yiying will show her personal design examples on creating logos and design campaigns with Chinese & English, Korean & Arabic numbers, Indian languages, and Arabic Numbers, Chinese & Arabic numbers, and so on.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 5: Design Research

8:45 am PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 11:00 am
In this session, we will wrap up our course by learning how to conduct cross-cultural design research to create both globalization and localization design for a global company in a new market.

Yiying will share tools, tips, and design experiences for you to take away and apply on your own cross-cultural design projects.

11:00 am – 11:30 am
Q&A with Yiying on the day’s material. Networking!