jonathan mak

I'm a 20-year-old design student living in Hong Kong. I try to do good work, and the world agrees on occasions.. My portfolio Ask me anything.. I started this project: Spread A Little Joy. Subscribe via email

[jmak]

Happy Chinese New Year everyone.

Hoping to resuscitate my tumblr soon. Not even  with side projects on any scale. Just bits and pieces of graphics like in the "old days", for a start...

Find myself constantly judging everything I/people around me create, to the point that I can't produce much of anything at all. It's been a painful and depressing year.

Just want to be happy and start making things again.

obligatory links to my facebook / instagram which are updated way more frequently

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[jmak]

photos

[jmak]

Merry Christmas~

Hope to do more illustrations and gifs in the coming year!

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[jmak]

Tim Cook comes out

[jmak]

M for Move

My other post with the crazy gifs is probably much more likely to catch your eye, but here's the animation itself.

[jmak]

Motion graphics with music and stuff

PMQ is a historical spot in Hong Kong that just reopened as a gathering place for creatives in Hong Kong.

I was asked to interpret one of the characters in their name however I want. So it's M for Move.

I made a short animation they promised to show in public, but they never did. So here it is, PLEASE WATCH IT COS NOBODY IN HONG KONG HAS *SOBS*

They did print out my design but what's the point if my M isn't moving ; ^ ;

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[designeverywhere]

ATypI 

[jmak]

Happy to see something from my portfolio shared on a design blog.

Did this for a Chinese typography course ages ago, but I thought I did a sloppy job photographing it. Surprised to see it getting a fair number of notes on tumblr! (My professor was a bit lukewarm about the design - glad people like it ok!)

[jmak]

I was featured in the last issue of Go Out, an outdoor lifestyle magazine. They usually interview hiking and photography enthusiasts, and I consider myself neither of those things. So I was very flattered and surprised to be asked.

I'm just glad somebody liked my photos enough to reach out to me :,D

P.S. Go to my Instagram to check out my punchable face

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[jmak]

Scenery distilled — Tibet edition

More to come — click for higher-res images

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[jmak]

I've designed a poster for a poetry journal (聲韻詩刊）in Hong Kong. I'm working at a digital studio these days, so it's fun to help a friend work on some prints every now and then. These are a few of the many versions throughout the process. Let me know which one you prefer.

(The last batch is just some color palette tests. Choose from the 4 main ones!)

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[jmak]

My designs are a small part of an important social movement/campaign in Hong Kong right now.

I'm a bit wary of designing graphics related to social issues. It goes against why we think the internet is so great, but I sometimes feel if they aren't actually printed our and spread around, all I get back is a bunch of likes and no real change. It feels a bit masturbatory and slacktivism-ish. So I'm very glad and grateful about how things turned out this time.

Background info:

July 1st is the handover anniversary when Hong Kong got returned to China as a former British colony. But it's also the time when hundreds of thousands of people take part in the annual rally, to make their voices heard.

I was never that into politics, but our city's future has never looked dimmer under the threat of the mainland government. March we must.

This year is more special, because there was a referendum before this, about our city's universal suffrage. It's not recognized by our government and has no real legal power, so some people are saying this is just a feel-good effort with no real impact. But Hong Konngers aren't known for their political activism, so seeing more than 700000 people giving a crap about this at all is pretty amazing. Even if we lose everything to the Chinese government, we're not going down without taking a stand.

Credit: Nike shoe icon by Luboš Volkov, available under a Free for Commercial Use license.

[jmak]

Soccer fans! I made this animation for my friend Jason Kwan, who started a site with his friends called A-Fan-Of.com that let's you vote for your favorite team, which then gets visualized into flags in different sizes based on their popularity.

Even if you don't follow the World Cup (I don't), it's still fun to click around and see the flags bump into each other. Go play with it!

It's been quite a while since my last post. You can go to my YouTube channel to see some other motion graphics I've made, and go to my Facebook / Instagram where I update far more frequently. But I'm seriously gonna publish a few posts about some of the more major stuff I've done for the past few months. (Working at pill & pillow has been fun~)

P.S. Screw the 1-200 people who unfollowed me during my hiatus (unless they're all spam accounts. Yes, that must be it)

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[jmak]

MAY THE HORSE BE WITH YOU

(Happy Chinese New Year)

Hi. I'm still alive. Many things have happened since my last post. I have graduated (done with my final year project!), and am currently working at pill & pillow, a digital design studio.

I've been having trouble balancing work with all the stupid personal stuff I used to upload here. But it's not like I've stopped entirely —  I've actually been fairly active over on Facebook and Instagram, and the reason this blog has been so neglected is because I saw it as a "proper" site to be maintained rather than a dumping ground for every visual thing I did.

But I guess I was being too perfectionist/protective about this tumblr's "quality". So here's some horse shit.

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[jmak]

My graduation project is done*, and I'm back from the grave. Hi.

In other news, I went to Tibet for 22 days.

More photos to come (I'm on Instagram by the way).

*Not entirely. It needs extensive polishing for the upcoming exhibition.

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[jmak]

Facebook Home!

An unused illustration I submitted to a magazine whose theme for that month was "Home", suddenly with newfound context. If Facebook wants to use this officially, I'll be quite alright with it.

P.S. I probably shouldn't break 2 months of inactivity by reposting old work, but couldn't resist. Knee-deep in my graduation project at the moment, trying to stay afloat. Bits and pieces of new design and photography coming soon!

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[jmak]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

❤❤❤❤❤❤ HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

#foreveralone ❤

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[jmak]

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's common practice to write the word "fortune" onto a diamond-shaped paper and put that on your door for Chinese New Year and what I've done here is that I turned it into a  star shape thus implying another common Chinese New Year greeting/phrase "May your star of fortune shine bright and far!" you know what never mind the joke is not that intelligent to begin with and the translation is just making it worse happy new year you guys.

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