Video summary
Ivy Lee, a designer at Google Brand Studio and former instructor at Parsons, presents a profound exploration of the visual and cultural landscape surrounding Chinese factories, highlighting the stark contrasts between production and consumption. She begins by examining the global supply chain of products like Apple devices, noting that while they are designed in California and marketed to consumers worldwide, they are assembled by workers in China who often do not speak the language on the packaging or afford the products themselves. This geographical distance is compounded by significant cultural, economic, and class divides, creating a disconnect where the end-user rarely considers the human labor behind the object, effectively erasing the people who made it possible from the consumer's perspective.
To illustrate the human reality behind these manufactured goods, Lee shares a poignant poem written by a female garment worker named Woa, who imagines the life of the wealthy customer while finishing her shift in a brightly lit workshop. This narrative underscores how workers at the bottom of the supply chain, confined to repetitive and physically demanding labor, still project their hopes onto the products they create for others who enjoy a vastly different quality of life. Motivated by this disparity, Lee spent two weeks working in a Chinese garment factory, experiencing firsthand the grueling conditions, long hours, and isolation that define the lives of many low-wage workers, experiences she captured through video and imagery to bridge the gap between designer and laborer.
The core of her research focuses on the chaotic yet telling typography found in these industrial zones, where visual communication is dictated by survival needs rather than aesthetic refinement. Posters, flyers, and LED signs in these rural-urban fringe areas often feature stretched fonts, minimal letter spacing, clashing colors, and intentional mistranslations to maximize information density and catch attention, reflecting an environment where design serves utility over beauty. Lee was fascinated by how this "anti-design" honestly reveals the socio-economic conditions of the workers, prompting her to create a graphic project that mimics these errors and language gaps to amplify the confusion and misunderstanding inherent in the global trade system.
Her research culminates in an exhibition titled "Being a Factory Worker," which intentionally adopts an anti-designed aesthetic through vibrant, messy typography and a clashing color palette to mimic the factory environment. A key feature of this exhibit is a two-way mural that reflects the viewer while simultaneously displaying videos of high-end products made by these workers, forcing the audience to confront their own reflection alongside the reality of the producers' struggles. By pasting hundreds of papers onto gallery walls and leaving production tools on site, Lee creates a tribute to the labor force that challenges viewers to recognize their shared humanity within the global economy, suggesting that understanding the other end of the supply chain is essential for a more empathetic society.
Read the full video transcript
hi everyone thank you for coming to my
session today my name is Ivy Lee I'm
currently a designer at Google brand
Studio I also taught Advanced typography
at
Parson let's get
started today I'll go through some of my
personal projects and research on design
and typography around Factory workers in
China and how social cultural
certification constitutes to a
vernacular visual landscape and
aesthetic decisions and also the
physical cultural and economic distance
between production and
consumption I wanted to start with the
assumption that the majority of us here
today own at least one or two products
from
Apple and in case you haven't noticed on
most of the Apple products you'll see
the following line of text
somewhere designed by Apple in
California a symbol in
China and as you may or may not know
Chinese workers at Foxon factories
pretty much assemble every iPhone in the
world along with other Apple
products so it's clear that the global
supply chain involves a pretty long
distance this distance between designers
manufacturers and consumers is first of
all
geographical California China and Apple
users around the world but what's
implied in this language is not only the
geographical
distance it's also a distance of
language culture economy and class the
text on the product is written in a
language that it makers do not speak
it's an expensive product that's not
easily affordable by its makers
it has to be probably designed in
California a product of the high
technology ethos of silone Valley to
justify the fact that it's assembled in
China the world's Factory of cheap
products because there is certain
presumption about products made in China
and we all know what it is
right whether those presumptions are
grounded or not there is one thing we
can be sure of if the geographical
distance between production and
consumption is something we can Bridge
it's a lot harder to bridge the cultural
economic and class
differences now I want to reach you a
poem it's a poem written by a female
worker in China and her name is
woa in the brightly lit packing Workshop
the iron I'm holding carries the warmth
of my
palm I shall First Press flat the
shoulder
Stripes so that they're soft enough for
a delicate
skin then to the
waistline such a lovely waistline made
for a loving gentle
hand for shaded Parkway to be the
witness of a
romance and finally I shall spread out
the dress and press each plead into even
width so that you may wait for a soft
Breeze by the lake on the
middle wrong as you wish but remember to
let the plead swing in the shape of an
ark like a petal of a
flower as for me I'm down with my shift
and about to go home to wash my uniform
soaked with sweet
and the dress I voted packed will be
shipped out of the factory to a mall to
a
boutique in afternoon or
evening waiting just for you the girl
who I don't know but love
dearly I found this poem extremely
touching and wanted to translate it into
English and share with you
all as she works as w Works in a garment
Factory doing repetitive labor with her
life confined at one end of the supply
chain she doesn't stop Imagining the
life at the other
end the life of the girl of the similar
age as her who bought the dress she made
and who's able to fully enjoy the beauty
and love of
life when we get hold of a product it's
easy to forget that there are a lot of
people behind it who made it possible
through designing it making it packing
it transporting it selling it and
shipping
it even as designers who seem to know
more about the physicality of things
than some others we usually stand at the
consumer end of the supply chain and
know next to nothing of how products are
made and by whom they're
made in order to better understand the
production end I went to work for two
weeks in a garment Factory in
China my experience in the factory was
brief however the constant noise the
pain from working and standing for long
hours the lack of sleep the tedious and
repetitive labor the distance from home
the laughter and complaints illustrate a
life that's different and yet similar
from my everyday experience as a
designer living away from my home
country this is a video I made the for
from the images I collected during my
factory research and it's played with
the sound recorded when I was working in
the factory
[Music]
speee
[Music]
what intrigues me the most is the
language and typography appear around
factories what's the visual and textual
language around industrial spaces in
China how does the language speak about
the absurdity in the living and working
conditions of the low wage
Workforce factories in China are usually
built in the rural urban French areas
where most workers will
live therefore the visual landscape here
is largely in alignment with the
economic level of those Fringe areas and
the content of the visual landscape is
determined by the survival needs of the
residents people who live there probably
couldn't care less about graphic design
but they still have the needs to produce
Flyers posters and scrolling LEDs for
job postings and for storefronts and
prints for ether lodging places uh
clothing shops and and other basic
needs there are also covered ads for
prostitution abortion and fake IDs and
the government slogans mostly to tell
the residents not to commit crimes
Beware of the frauds and don't sell out
their National IDs for quick
money this living needs determine the
visual landscape and design
decisions type is said in default FS
scaled up underlined outlined colored
highlighted and sometimes all at once in
order to catch your
attention and type is often stretched
and has minimal leting and pretty much
no margin to fit in as much text as
possible and the carelessly placed
topography and contrasting colors are
the major formal elements being used
as long as information is conveyed
there's no need for imagery and
drawings one of the only exceptions will
probably be the prostitution business
where visual seduction of female body
is clearly they're not the best design
in the world but I'm fascinated by their
truthfulness in how they reveal about
the environment and the living
conditions of the factory workers
following their design decisions or the
complete lack of design decisions I
started to create graphic elements that
borrow the form and content of the
factory
environment I try to commit as mly type
crimes as possible I use both English
and Chinese in those Graphics but it's
not necessarily a one toone
translation here in the work English is
used in an inaccurate Manner and
sometimes intentionally mistranslated to
amplify the
confusion Mis transation no translation
and grammar mistakes are part of the
work in order to imitate the lack of
mutual understanding and the language
gap between production and
consumption the final outcome of this
project is an exhibition called on being
a factory worker
it aims to bring forward the disordered
but Lively visual landscape surrounding
Chinese Factory workers the exhibition
is designed to be anti-d designed
through a vibrant clashing color palette
and a joyful messy and overloaded usage
of
typography an essential part of this
exhibition is a two-way mural that
reflects the print from the wall while
simultaneously displaying a video about
high-end products made in China the
twoin miral further reveals the social
economic disparities between uh the
producers and
consumers looking into the mirror the
viewers would also see themselves
reflected in the artwork and perhaps to
think about their life situations in
relation to factory
workers my friends and I worked together
to we paste hundred pieces of paper onto
the gallery wall from floor to ceiling
while intentionally leaving the tools
used in the production on site making
this exhibition both a tribute to the
labor and a documentation of
it as designers artists and especially
those who are away from home were
repetitively making through our physical
labor and often underpaid and overworked
and miscommunicated misrepresented or
mistranslated the more I research on
Factory workers the more I find myself
not too different from
them as an essential part of the global
economy we all perform our tasks to keep
the world moving and sometimes it's it's
probably necessary to take a look at
what people are doing at the other side
of the world and at the other end of the
supply
chain this page summarizes the major
theoretical Foundation of my research
the consumer Society by Jim belard lays
out the theoretical structure of
consumerism and made in China is a filed
study about women Factory workers in
China by Anthropologist p n and techn
mobility in China by Carol Wallace talks
about the U labor migration in the
digital
age and this is the end of my
presentation thank you