They are not ashamed of selling things with sex

Ofcourse, they sell everything everywhere with sex, the only small difference is that normally they try to give it a little bit a reason. For example the naked showering girl that is advertising the shampoo. But like here in this advertisement, you see that they also use naked girls to advertise photographical equipments in a way that you can't find any excuse for doing that, execept for that they just want to use a hot naked girl. I love the lack of irony!

They gives faces to everything

Feet, ice creams, drinks, cars, glue sticks, elevator doors, you name it and they give it a face. The result is that the city does not only exists out of the 17 million people that live in Hong Hong, but that there must be a similar number of products-with-faces-creatures living in this city and staring at you. It's a little bit creepy, but when you get used to laughing feet, it also becomes cosy, because they all look very friendly.

They don't like copying so much as in the rest of China

When I was at the Hong Kong International Art Fair I saw this painting, that used the pattern of Louis Vuitton for a painting. It reminds me of a lecture of Hendrik-Jan Grievink we had in class, where he told us that in China the copies they make of western logo's and products are way more popular and cooler then our originals. For example the HiPhone is much more popular then the iPhone and that is not only because it is cheaper. There is even a name for this: 'Shanzai'. I realized I saw barely anything of this in Hong Kong. Some days later I spoke about it with a Chinese designer, she said that in the rest of China copyright doesn't matter, because they think 'copy = right'. But that in Hong Kong which was till really recently not part of China, but a British colony, this mentality doesn't count. Probably because they were for so long a part of a western country, that now they simply use the normal western logo's and products.

They use pictures of pigs when it's really getting serious

Sometimes I found some advertisements that have a complete style switch from all the others: no screaming colors, no child garden things, but just a sober style in black and white. Most of them are for something like business meetings I suppose. But the strange thing is that a lot of these posters place a picture of a businessman and, the strange thing: a picture of a pig. And I must honestly say, that I still didn't figure out what the magic combination between businessmen and pigs say about Hong Kong. I really don't know.

They like funny, strange creatures to tell them what to do

It's a little bit in the same category as the last post, but you see it so many times that I couldn't ignore this: strange, funny looking little creatures praising a product or telling us what to do. And I must say that for me it works: when I see that really nice blue cat looking so sad, I would never do anything which could make him so unhappy anymore .

They like to be approached as little children

When you see posters that tell people what to do, you always see an extremely childish style and most of the times they depict all the people as little children. Even if it is about really serious things like Swine Flu-prevention. When I asked a student of the art academy if people are never offended by this childish tone of voice, he said that people, especially the old ones, like it extremely that everything is extremely friendly. But another reason for using the simple style with pictures is that the illiteracy in China is still very high.

They don't think pink is for gays

From all the colors of the rainbow it seems like their favorite is pink. They really give it to everything, also to a lot of things that we would never color pink because the color is too gay or artificial for it: buses, construction machines, flats, cooking stuff, food or as shown in this picture the package of a car item. The strange thing is when you ask people about it, they say it is really a little girl color, while in the reality EVERYTHING is pink in Hong Kong.

They like to use all the colors of the rainbow

In a city that has an average of 50 floors for people to live, but where they only can use the two lowest floors for advertisements, it's so full of graphic messages that a minimalistic black and white design wouldn't catch the most attention. That is why they use all the colors of the rainbow. At the Academy of Visual Arts I found this artwork where the student Li Suk Ling really tried to make a rainbow of all the colored advertisments.

They like to be in really big things

I never saw a city where I saw so many huge buildings as in Hong Kong. I know it is a cliché and everybody is saying that, but really: if you are there, it is a thousand times bigger then you would expect. Also the suburbs exist out of flats so big that you can put a whole Dutch village (like Terneuzen or something) in it. Their preference of being in big things, (the higher you live in a big building, how more status you have), is something you also can see in the graphic design. Like in this picture: that people can imagine to be in this ice cream, makes the ice cream much more attractive for the people.

They like to put things in hearts

In Hong Kong the heart is not only a symbol that is allowed to use around Valentine's day. They use it all the time to make clear that the thing inside the heart really is a thing you MUST love. I heard that even political parties put their leader in a pink heart in the hope that all the people will also put him or her in their hearts.

They like to know what is inside things

The first things I saw in Hong Kong were the horror looking chickens and ducks that are hanging everywhere in the windows of the restaurants with their feet and sad and dead looking heads still on it. When I asked my new made Chinese friend why they do it, he said that Chinese like to know what they eat, so then they know that they don't eat a diep fried alien or something. You can also see that need to know what's inside in the advertisements where they often put schematical pictures to explain really detailed what is inside every product.

They like to give things arms and legs

Like here, this advertisement looks a little bit like an advertisement for a healthy drink would look like here. But there are two big differences: we wouldn't like to have lettuce in our drinks. The other thing is that in a overall quite normal advertisement we wouldn't give the lettuce arms and legs. But maybe they also don't like the green healthy thing in the drink here and try to make it more attractive with giving it arms and legs in the hope now everybody will love this round vegetable.