In recent years China has become increasingly more exposed to the influences of western culture, this has motivated me to explore the place of traditional Chinese cultural beliefs and virtue amongst contemporary Chinese children. The meaning of virtue refers to the concept of moral value. In the Chinese cultural context, “virtue”comprises moral values such as ritual, honour and cultural custom. The aim of this project is to raise awareness of traditional cultural virtue amongst contemporary Chinese children through the re-presentation of a traditional and illustrated Chinese myth ‘Nata Caused Havoc in the East Sea’. This re-presentation will involve a re-thinking and re-styling of the traditional illustrations and related design elements for application in a contemporary context.

In this research I will produce a portfolio of illustrations and related designs that embody the virtue of traditional Chinese culture to support the launch of a storytelling event that will operate in a contemporary library. This thesis in graphic design includes a practical project, which is a notional 80% of the final submission, accompanied by a 7806, word exegesis.

The project will be activated from a design brief and realized through a process of analysis, application and creative synthesis. The research project will explore how graphic representations can be employed to support a storytelling event in a library. The story is based upon the traditional Chinese myth "Nata Caused Havoc in the East Sea". The project seeks to contemporize and at the same time retain the traditional cultural virtue of both the myth and the storytelling event to target a demographic of six to twelve year old Chinese children.