Living by design

12 Timespaces - A Concept Exhibition on Chinese Living Style opens the week-long Icograda World Design Congress 2009, which begins today and is being held in Beijing for the first time.

It will bring together 97 international speakers and 25 exhibitions to examine the relationship between life and design.

Set in virtual living spaces, the exhibition will display 12 designers' works that feature everyday products and show how ordinary items can be transformed into artworks. It will run until Oct 30 at the Digital Art Gallery of Beijing World Art Museum.

The evolution of graphic design in Chinese posters, magazines and newspapers is detailed in the exhibition Chinese Graphic Design in the 20th Century: A Documentary, which will run through this weekend until Nov 15 at China's Academy of Fine Arts. More than 300 items from 1949 to '79 will be displayed, reflecting how China has changed in recent decades.

The Contemporary International Poster Retrospective Exhibition will focus on avant-garde concepts in international graphic design, and examine how poster design can serve as a medium of communication. Three hundred award-winning posters spanning the past 30 years will be exhibited and can be seen until Nov 4 at the Visual Art Center of the Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University.