Liu Yang

Is this a man's world? Bright, bold pictograms from Yang Liu revisit the roles, relationships and age-old cliches of male and female experience. Imagine a setting in which a man wearing a dress might be as habitual as a woman in trousers. Where a woman exposing herself in public wasn't sexy, but as creepy as a male flasher. Where professional status and success presented the same prospects for both sexes. In this first in a new series for TASCHEN, leading graphic designer Yang Liu tackles one of the hottest, and one of the oldest, topics of all: he and she. Drawing on the experiences, challenges and many perspectives on men and women she has encountered in her own life, Yang Liu distils the vast, swirling question of gender to bold, binary pictograms. Dealing with a whole host of situations from the bedroom to the boardroom, Yang Liu's designs are as simple and accessible in their presentation as they are infinite in the associations, evocations and responses they elicit. Combining age-old stereotypes with topical discrepancies, this fresh approach to the roles and relationships of men and women is above all an effort to synthesize a notoriously thorny issue into a fun and refreshing graphic form, and so to lighten and enlighten our mutual understanding and tolerance.

Time travel: A pictogram journey through now and thenIn this third installment in her pictogram series for TASCHEN, leading graphic designer Yang Liu brings the way we were face to face with the way we are. Hot on the heels of the bestselling predecessors, Today meets Yesterday deploys the same vivid pictogram pairings to explore the transformations, and the challenges, of our ever-evolving world.Liu has made her name with a combination of graphic precision and incisive observation of behavior patterns. In Today meets Yesterday, her eye for tastes and trends takes ambitious scope, juxtaposing past with present to explore fundamental shifts in society. Along the way, we encounter the tussle between competing ideologies, historic and current global dangers, our interaction with the environment, and the wholesale impact of technology on our ways of ways of living, learning, and loving, from online retail to the rise of the smombie. With an eye on everything from geopolitics to concentration spans, Liu s panorama incorporates the details of daily experience as much as the momentous happenings in history. Through Facebook, food waste, collectivism, and much more, Today meets Yesterday casts the familiar situation in a crisp and discerning light, bringing fresh awareness, as well as some ironies, to who we are and where we came from."

As children, the world is our playground, our parents are both almighty heroes and merciless adversaries, and our homes are the territories where big and small battle for dominance. As adults, we lament the innocence, boundless wonder, and simple pleasures of childhood. In this fourth installment of Yang Liu's best-selling pictogram series, the award-winning designer encapsulates the delights and debacles of family life with her characteristic measure of wit. Combining minimal infographics with incisive and touching observations about human nature, the crisp pictorials draw upon Liu's Chinese heritage; as in traditional calligraphy, the simpler the depiction, the deeper-seated the truth that is expressed. With graphic precision, Big meets Little takes on the daily happenings of a family home by visually pairing the perspectives of grown-ups and our tiny counterparts. Simultaneously playful and painfully accurate, Liu distills the parenting narrative into bite-sized, insightful lessons. Over 128 pages, the clothbound volume cleverly contrasts the reality of parenthood with the glossy family portraits we're often sold-though not without a dose of tongue-in-cheek humor.