"I think my design style is a conglomerate of my history,” said Jaxon Hsu when #Trending asked him this week about his latest illustration work in a new book from independent feminist publishers Modjaji Books called A to Z of Amazing South African Women.
He was born in Taiwan, raised in Joburg, studied advertising in Taipei, and did his master’s degree in New York, where he was a film maker and sneaker designer, before settling in Cape Town to work in the clothing industry – and illustrate on the side. “Illustrating is my outlet,” he said.
The success of Hsu’s illustrations in the simple coffee-table book of monumental South African women is to unite his subjects’ diverse histories and achievements into a unified style – and then make them pop with colour, entrenching an iconography.