Han Ximin

1824295095@qq.com

SHENZHEN was officially designated as the City of Design on Dec. 7, 2008, becoming the first city in China and the sixth in the world to win the title.

On that day, the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO held a news conference in Beijing to announce that Shenzhen had become the 16th member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and won the title of City of Design. The confirmation letter was signed by then director-general of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura.

At the official website of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network office, it reads: “The designation of Shenzhen as a City of Design was the result of recognition by the international community of Shenzhen’s achievement in innovative and creative industries, as well as the professional capacities and capabilities of design enterprises and designers in the city.”

Shenzhen Daily, an English-language media outlet, had participated in the preparation for the application work since the city set up a leading group for the application in April 2007.

“Shenzhen Daily did all English paperwork related to the City of Design application, including reports, books, video manuscripts, and the mayor’s official mails, plus the documents between Shenzhen and UNESCO,” Gu Xiaojin, then editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Daily, who was also a member of the application group, said at an interview Wednesday.

As the application needed a lot of paperwork, Shenzhen Daily sent an employee to the Information Office of the Shenzhen Municipal Government and completed the urgent work of translating over 100,000 Chinese characters into English.

The application report, in Chinese and English versions, was completed within a month from editing, design and printing.

The company of well-known Shenzhen designer Han Jia-ying designed the report with an international style, which is large format, hard bound with a paper sleeve. Artron Art Group, a well-known printing company in China, designed another style with a Chinese touch, which forms a bamboo tube shape with the report inside.

“The two designs were too good to be decided, so we finally submitted both designs to the office of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in Paris in May 2008,” Hu Hongxia, editor-in-chief of the Daily Sunshine, who also participated in the City of Design application, said at an interview.

After receiving the title of City of Design, Shenzhen designated Dec. 7 as the Creative Design Day, and December became Creative December, during which a lot of design-related activities were held.

Beijing and Shanghai also won the title of City of Design in 2010 and 2012, respectively. To date, the members of Creative Cities Network reached 295 cities across the world, including 16 cities from China.