A modern city with vitality, tolerance and a comparatively complete market economy system, Shenzhen leads the way in the design industry in China.

A modern design industry took shape in Shenzhen as industrial manufacturers expanded and the market economy developed. The earliest generation of Chinese designers were trained here. A magnet to arts graduates from universities all over the country, Shenzhen is still the first choice for young designers, making it a hub for Chinese design talent. Young or old, designers are allowed full exposure to media and modern design concepts from the West.

Home to most influential designers and leaders in the nation's design industry, Shenzhen has more than 6,000 design companies employing more than 60,000 designers. In 2005, the output value of the city's design industry reached US$1.9 billion, and that of the creative industry as whole accounted for 4 percent of the GDP. The number is expected to grow to 10 percent within five to 10 years.

The business scope of Shenzhen's professional designers ranges from graphic design to industrial design, fashion design, toy design, handicraft design, timepiece design, jewelry design, package design, architecture design, interior design, animation design, game design, communication design and software design.

Shenzhen designers frequently participate in both national and international competitions and exhibitions, often winning prizes. The events they have attended include the Chaumont Poster Festival, Helsinki International Poster Biennial, Mexico International Biennial of the Poster, Warsaw International Poster Biennale, International Biennale of Graphic Design Brno, Sofia International Triennial of the Stage Poster, Japan International Poster Triennial in Toyama, New York ADC and Tokyo TDC Competition, ICOGRADA Excellence Award, International Exhibition of Graphic Design and Visual Communication Zagreb, Moscow Golden Bee Award, Hong Kong Designers Association Awards, Graphic Poster, Paris International Poster Salon, Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition, and UNESCO Poster Exhibition.

The logo for the bidding of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was designed by a Shenzhen graphic designer.

There are many creative clusters in Shenzhen, housing a large number of professional designers and design firms. These creative parks include Tianmian Design City, OCT Loft, Luohu Creative Plaza, Nanshan Loft, Nanshan Digital Culture Industry Base, Shenzhen Creative Industry Park, Shenzhen Animation Town, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Animation & Game Fostering Base, Shenzhen Animation Street, Yijing Animation Park, Bao'an Arts Zone 22, and No. 8 Zhongkang Road. These parks are platforms of information, exhibition, education and communication, providing value-added services, such as copyright transactions and investment consulting services, to the designers and firms in the parks.

Shenzhen has successfully held three China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fairs. So far, the fair has become a major platform for the exhibition and trade of products of the cultural industries in both Shenzhen and China.

Shenzhen's design education system is all-rounded and covers a wide range of subjects, with both institutions of higher learning and training agencies offering courses. The Art and Design School of Shenzhen Polytechnic offers such courses as fashion design, industrial design and environmental design. Apart from the Art and Design School, Shenzhen Polytechnic also has a media and communication school, an animation school and an architecture and environmental engineering school. Two of these schools are offering courses of communication design and interaction design, and plan to introduce majors such as service design and management design in the near future. 

Shenzhen University also has an art and design school, a communication school, an architecture and urban planning school and a software school. There are such departments as art design, industrial design, animation design and art design theory under its art and design school. The Shenzhen Institute of Technology runs the Department of Applied Design, Department of Jewelry and Timepiece Design, and Department of Printing Technology while the Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology has a department of software engineering.

In Shenzhen University Town, Qinghua University Shenzhen Graduate School has set up an art and design center to offer research courses for students seeking a master's or doctoral degree.

In 2006, the Central Academy of Fine Arts established a teaching base at Guan Shanyue Art Museum to offer master's degree courses in arts.

Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts Shenzhen School, Shenzhen Xingzhi Art and Design Institute, and Shenzhen No. 2 Institute of Technology also have design-related courses.

In the next four years, Shenzhen will found a new international university, South China University of Science and Technology, and a professional design school has been listed in the plan of the university.

Shenzhen has established extensive contacts with foreign designers and design agencies over the past few decades. The annual Fiyta Cup Watch Design Competition has been held for four consecutive years, the judges of which were all world-renowned designers, including German master designer Luigi Colani, DaimlerChrysler's chief designer of Benz Motors Harald Leschke, and Swiss wristwatch designer Jorg Hysek.

The Shenzhen Graphic Design Association (SGDA) holds the Graphic Design in China competitions and exhibitions in Shenzhen every two years. Its jury panel is also international. The biennial of 2007 heralded a grand cultural event in the city, Creative December, which attracted designers from all over the world.

Learning from the experience of Hong Kong's Business of Design Week, Shenzhen held the Brands and Designers China Initiative 2006, aiming to push forward industrial development through design.

Now a large number of foreign designers have set up design workshops in Shenzhen and are cooperating fully with local designers. They have also widened their cultural and creative horizons by brainstorming with each other. As a result, many industrial design products have sold well in domestic and international markets. For example, the total output value of the city's jewelry design accounts for 70 percent of the national total while 80 percent of the world's Christmas trees are made in Shenzhen.

There are only six Chinese members in the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) founded in Paris in 1951. Of the six members from China, four － Chen Shaohua, Wang Yuefei, Han Jiaying and Bi Xuefeng － come from Shenzhen. In 2004, the SGDA attended the AGI Beijing Congress; in 2006 it also sent delegates to attend the congress in Tokyo.

The SGDA established contacts with the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA) when the ICOGRADA convened a meeting in Beijing a few years ago. Now the ICOGRADA is making preparations for its 2009 congress in Beijing. The SGDA has been authorized to co-host the congress with the Beijing Graphic Design Association. It is now making preparations to apply to join the ICOGRADA and plans to hold a meeting in Shenzhen during the ICOGRADA 2009 Beijing Congress.

Moreover, the SGD will co-host the "Characters Sportifs" international exhibition with the Echirolles Graphic Design Center of France, the International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, Poland, and REAGA.

Officials of the Shenzhen Municipal Government and designers in different fields firmly believe that the robust development of the Internet economy will make design markets more and more finely segmented and communication more and more easy and thorough. They also believe that it will bring changes to the trend of brand marketing. With the globalization of the economy and the arrival of the experience economy, design communication in the fields of marketing, communication, advertising and design faces new challenges. The media is developing from static to dynamic, from dynamic to interactive, and from interactive to alternative. Fundamental changes are taking place in the cultural environment of brand building, and thus culture becomes a key factor of commercial success or a city's economic development.

Shenzhen took the lead in the nation to put forward the slogan of "building a culture-based city". In 2004 it proposed building the city into a "City of Design," aiming to boost its economic development through developing the design industry. It has held a large number of big cultural events to cultivate its cultural atmosphere since 1999, which included the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair, Creative December, the Reading Month, as well as the Shenzhen Sino-Foreign Masterpiece Theatrical Performance Season. Through these cultural activities, Shenzhen's cultural environment has improved; its communication design and branding strategies have been boosted.

Shenzhen also advocates cooperation in branding strategies between enterprises and domestic and foreign design resources as well as new media. It also calls on enterprises to integrate branding strategies with brand design and make high-level decisions from the perspective of design, making design cover all the links of production, marketing and services. Meanwhile, the city advocates developing lasting competitive advantages by improving innovative abilities. Now the government is helping enterprises to promote international branding strategies starting from branding communication.

Shenzhen has been implementing the Planning for the Development of Cultural Industry which helps the Hi-tech linked industries like creative design, animation and games, digital video and audio, and new media. In order to become a central and vanguard city for cultural industry, Shenzhen has been opening wider to the outside world to facilitate international communication and provide designers from all over the world with design opportunities and space for creativity.

The city leaders believe that Shenzhen has much in common with Montreal in terms of multiple cultures, and thus will make its own plans for the development of the design industry by learning from Montreal and taking advantage of Shenzhen-Hong Kong integration.