CoLAB and social design in Hong Kong

We’ve all had enough Hollywood movies shoved down our throat to have a mental image of soap and women. Thankfully Hong Kong is serving up a new view; equally sexy in its outlet but fully clothed and socially engaged. Design-driven social projects has been the forte of HK for the past few years, with new projects hitting the streets constantly. So…Soap is a project initiated by soap maker Bella, who wanted to take care of her family by creating handmade organic soap. She wanted to share this possibility with other community women, and the project turned into an organization of local soap makers all over town. Design bureau CoLAB made the overall design concept including the recycled bottles, website, a custom made trolley and youtube-video, creating a real buzz-effect.

We met up with Hung Lam from CoLAB to chat about how design can make a difference.

Image by CoLAB

Image by CoLAB

Image by CoLAB

Image by CoLAB

Design can be used as a lever for social enterprises, says Lam. As Social enterprises doesn’t have any resources their products are often ugly looking. Others face the issues of being without a good image and presentation, and people won’t trust you. Designers can help them improve their appearance. The ultimate goal is to help improve the community.

After working together in their own design studio CoDesign for several years, Eddy Yu and Hung Lam founded CoLAB. While CoDesign focuses on branding and identity design for commercial and cultural clients, CoLAB is a platform where they use design to help social enterprises and young design talents.

Typical in HK is that everything is commercial; clients and people generally want things fast. Beautiful but fast. The design process is not that known. Yu and Lam figured that CoLAB could also be a way to show people that design is a way of thinking, and not just about the esthetics and moneymaking.

Image by CoLAB

CoDesign now balances their time between commercial and social work. For Hung, those to are entwined; all their work influences each other. You see commercial aspects in the social work and vice versa. His hope with every project is to have all three aspects–commercial, cultural and social–combined.

On question if there’s any other studios in HK doing similar things, he says that a common thing is to do some charity. CoLAB on the other hand is not about helping, but collaborating. So whether they work with young talents or with social enterprises, they’re all on the same level – just bringing different qualities to the table. But now, Hung stresses, more social enterprises start seeing the effect of good design and start caring about it and ask designers for help. This in turn influences more designers do social work. So showing a good case [movie] will benefit others. Hung hopes to see more of these kinds of projects in the future.

Image by CoLAB

We’re in Hong Kong covering the design scene so be on the look-out for more in the coming weeks!