Inspiring urban development through the key visuals of Bangkok Design Week 2024

Each year, the ‘Key Visuals’ of Bangkok Design Week act as the first doorway to its concepts, opening to present the event’s core themes to the wider public using graphic designs and imagery. This year, the crucial role of designing the week’s key visuals was given to DUCTSTORE the design guru, a studio that has been driving forward Thailand’s graphic art scene for over 22 years, creating impactful national works like JORAKAY PAVILION ASA 2023, receiving accolades such as Taiwan’s Golden Pin Design Award in the Spatial Design category, being chosen to craft the key visuals of Architect Expo ’22 and Architect Expo ’24, and owner of design, fashion and creative lifestyle content platform IAMEVERYTHING. 

To find out about how the straightforward yet eye-catching visuals under the theme ‘Livable Scape’ were conceptualized, we hear directly from studio head Nontawat “Moo” Charoenchasri. The mind behind the artwork spoke to us on his perspectives of Bangkok, the role of a creative, and how Graphic and Architecture were combined to become the “Graphitecture” being used to wow attendees of Bangkok Design Week 2024. 

The creativity of one person can lead to citywide change

“‘Livable Scape: The More People Act, the Better the City’ seeks to discuss Bangkok as a whole, its development, its structure, and life in the city. What we want to communicate is that you can be creative wherever you are. You don’t have to be in Bangkok Design Week’s central neighborhood of Charoen Krung, because creativity can take place anywhere. 

I believe creativity occurs naturally and can’t be forced. Even people who don’t work professionally in a creative field can be creative in their daily lives. The purpose of Bangkok Design Week is to spark ‘Creative Thinking’ beyond just those engaged directly with creativity. Whatever you’re doing, selling, wearing, or wherever you’re going, you can add creativity to it. 

We are communicating this year’s theme as more of a call for people to step up and act individually because once enough people take action, development of the city on a large scale can take place.”

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“A Key Visual is an interpretation of an event’s concept through images and graphics, it’s a communication where you can include more subtle messages to make people think.”

“We started with the realization that there isn’t any neighborhood in this city with wide open spaces, Bangkok is characterized by its chaos and how massive it is. Viewing this year’s theme through the lens of an architect and the mind of a graphic designer, we originated the concept of ‘Graphitecture,’ melding graphic art and architecture. From there, we reimagined a map of Bangkok as overlaid and overlapping forms, we played with the figures and grounds of the map.

The lines represent the streets of each of the event’s neighborhoods. We looked at maps of each area and altered the forms we saw, stacking them onto Bangkok’s plan. We even took elements of the architecture found in each neighborhood to reflect their complex, chaotic nature, as well as their unique identity.”

“For the sub-key visuals and templates for other media, we made our designs so they could be easily used by others. We chose solid colors to represent each neighborhood along with elements we knew other designers could build on and have fun with. This is not a rigid corporate identity framework.”

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“Personally, I think a livable city is one where everyone can live with ease, where you don’t have to stress over your daily life. ‘Livable Scape: The More People Act, the Better the City’ comes from the fact that our city is still lacking but we can all contribute to making it better in the future. Public utilities, lifestyle, careers, all of these elements are related to one another, so you can’t just design a city that is aesthetic and expect it to be livable. If it lacks revenue sources, public transport, or facilities, it won’t work. We want to live in a city where people can access income, convenient transport, and live well.”

“Bangkok can be disorganized and even messy, but there is a charm to this chaos. Life in Bangkok is a struggle, it can be exhausting. You need to think before you do anything here, you have to plan around traffic, you can’t just stroll around. However, if it was a perfect place, no one would ever be moved to act. Tackling the problems of this city requires design, we need Creative Thinking to survive. These are the raw materials for the creativity that will better this city.”

“Bangkok Design Week is here to be a catalyst for movement, to invigorate people. I think it’s good that this event is happening. Many cities around the world have design festivals that provide opportunities to new creators to showcase their potential, promote the forming of communities, and inspire people to build networks for the development of their city.”

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Bangkok Design Week 2024

Livable Scape

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27 Jan – 4 Feb 2024

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