Dream in Ukiyo-e
A classic, recomposed for today.
Exhibition Key Visual
Venue
Shanghai Himalayas Museum
Agency
FORUNART
Role
Visual Designer
Deliverables
Key Visuals
Year
2021
Location
Shanghai, China
Challenge
Dream in Ukiyo-e was an immersive exhibition at Shanghai Himalayas Museum. Rather than simply presenting classic Ukiyo-e works, it reimagined the world of Ukiyo-e through light, digital imagery and spatial experience.
The key visual had to carry that same shift. It needed to feel instantly rooted in Ukiyo-e, yet already open into something more spatial and immersive, giving audiences a sense of that world before they stepped inside.
Key Visual
The key visual draws on recognisable Ukiyo-e elements: waves, figures, landscapes and the moon. I recomposed these motifs through shifts in scale, layered imagery and light, reworking them into a contemporary, immersive visual language that gives familiar imagery a new sense of depth and atmosphere.
Application
I extended the key visual across portrait and landscape formats for the museum’s building hoardings, bus shelters and metro screens around Shanghai.
Outcome
The key visual became the face of the exhibition, used across every placement from street advertising to the museum itself. Billed as a world premiere, Dream in Ukiyo-e drew crowds from opening day, was covered by national media including Xinhua, and had its run extended from March to autumn 2022.
*Metrics reflect overall campaign performance.
Reflection
“Respect the original”
“Show the experience, not just the theme”
“From screen to street”
Working with images as famous as these, I was careful not to change too much. The motifs stayed close to the originals, and the new ideas went into depth, layering and light. Finding the balance between respecting a classic and making it feel new was the hardest part of the project.
Our team designed five directions, and every one of them showed Ukiyo-e, but what the exhibition really had to sell was the feeling of stepping inside it. Looking back, I think mine was taken forward because it carried both: it was instantly Ukiyo-e, yet it already felt immersive. A key visual has to carry the core promise of the brief, not only its subject.
This was my first commercial work appeared across a city. On screen, every detail was visible. On a building hoarding or a station screen, people gave it a few seconds at most, so the information hierarchy had to be clear at a glance. Deciding what a passer-by reads first became as much part of the design as the image itself.
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Brand · Digital · Experience