Stella Lin Hui-yin sounds more like a philosopher than an award-winning creative talent when she explains how some of her whimsical multimedia presentations were inspired by nothingness.
'I want to give new meaning to zero,' says Lin, a visual communications graduate from Polytechnic University, of a presentation entitled The Transformation of Zero.
'It has no absolute value, but it can be powerful in an intangible way. For example, changing the way how you see the world will not change the world in a physical sense, but the world is no longer the same because you have changed how you feel.'
Lin, 23, was among the winners at the latest Hong Kong Young Design Talent Awards, an annual contest organised by local tertiary institutions to identify and encourage emerging creative talent. The contest, part of the Business of Design Week programme, confers four awards, two CreateHK prizes for design students under 30 and two in the DesignSmart category for practising designers under 30.
CreateHK and DesignSmart winners each receive HK$200,000 and HK$500,000, respectively, to support further studies or an internship abroad.
As part of her winning portfolio, Lin also made a video, A Lacuna in Telephone Directory, which sought to illustrate the function of a phone book by combining illustration, calligraphy, photography, video-making and bookbinding.
