Jack Yan

Jack Yan & Associates / Wellington / NZ
jack.yan@jyanet.com
 
Jack Yan founded Jack Yan & Associates as a virtual firm in 1987. A graduate of Scots College (where he was Proxime Accessit) and Victoria University of Wellington (LL B, BCA (Hons., 1st class), MCA), Jack is regarded as an authority in the areas of branding, identity, typography and cross-media branding, speaking and writing worldwide on these topics. He has interests in global branding, Confucianism, cultural issues, and how smaller firms can leverage their intellectual capital. An internet pioneer who has been publishing online journals since the beginning of the 1990s, some of his work in the late 2000s has looked at social media.
 
Client firms include or have included insurance brokerage Willis, UNICEF, Electricity Corp. of New Zealand, Colgate–Palmolive, SANE Australia, Colonial, Knight Ridder, Victoria University of Wellington, NZCS, and numerous non-profit organizations. He developed the Lucire brand from 1997, a Webby Award nominee in 2003 and the first fashion website to spawn international print editions. It was also the first international magazine to run sustainable style editorials.
 
He was one of Desktop magazine’s longest running columnists (1996–2010) and contributed to UK design titles, DZ3 and Fontzone (1998–2000). He is an occasional contributor to the English-language service of al-Jazeera Television. He has contributed to The Journal of Brand Management, and has been a guest lecturer at AUT, Victoria University of Wellington, Massey University, Whitireia Polytechnic (on whose design programme advisory board he sat for many years) and Natcoll. He has also spoken at AI (now the New England Institute of Art), Brookline, Mass., and the Proton Business School in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. He was one of the authors of Beyond Branding (Kogan Page, 2003) and contributed to Nation Branding: Concepts And Country Perspectives (ICFAI Press, 2009), and was the sole author on Typography and Branding (Natcoll Publishing, 2004).
 
Articles about him or his work have been published in CNN.com, The New York Times, Desktop, Elle (US and Taiwan), The Daily Telegraph, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Pioneer Press (St Paul, Minn.), Access, Professional Manager, Design Week, ProDesign, Vogue, IdN, MAP Magazine, Publish, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New Zealand Herald and The Dominion Post and broadcast on television in New Zealand.
 
Jack Yan is arguably Australasia’s best-known typeface designer. His expertise includes type work for multinational corporations, fonts for campaigns and specialist software. He taught New Zealand’s first typeface design paper at Massey University in 2000.
 
His personal site is at jackyan.com.
 
In 2009, he announced his candidacy for Mayor of Wellington, New Zealand, with the local elections to be held on October 6, 2010.

Speaking

Engagement in branding in the 2010s
As power shifts to consumers, brands can no longer expect a top–down approach to work. Instead, they must be on the same side as their audiences, adopting social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This presentation puts the latest social media trends into a branding context and framework, and leading to a discussion session on how to adapt them to the organization. (A version of this presentation also highlights the shift in personal branding toward more corporate behaviours, while corporate branding is trying to appear more personal.)

The business of branding
Branding is at the crossroads again. Every decade, someone says branding will become more caring, but what’s really changed? Some of the best branding techniques have, in fact, not even been used by groups dedicated to good—so what are they, and can they be adopted?

Trends in fashion branding
Fashion has an image of being a self-absorbed clique. In a lot of cases, that is true. What can fashion labels do to reverse this and which have begun making the change?

Writing

Poised for Success: the Indian Nation Brand
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 3, no. 1, 2009

Saving Detroit, by Not Making the Same Old Mistakes
Detroit has not ever used a brand orientation in its automakers’ marketing strategies, and it talks of trimming brands and numbers to allow it to compete. The author believes in being more focused on brands and not losing economies of scale, and building more of what consumers want. The tools are there, such as consumer-targeted blogs, but manufacturers need to use them.
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008

Online Branding: a Definitive Guide
In the world of Web 2·0, the process surrounding vision, research, exposition and image differ slightly, even if the ingredients of brand equity remain the same. Loose vision, informal research and tapping into consumer advocacy all play a critical role.
The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007