We were lucky to catch up with Yiyuan Li recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Yiyuan, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever done is probably a passion project which I call it Toy Come Out Plan-Story of Anakin. It’s the project that brought me into the magical world of lighting design. I did the project when I just started to have more interests in lighting but I was not able to find opportunities to get my hands on really designing a show. So one day I had this idea to do a series of photography using the Lego sets and figures I have to retell some stories and see if I can use lighting as the main part of storytelling. I was a big fan of Star Wars so I had a lot of Lego sets related to it. The lighting set up was really simple, it’s a bunch of gooseneck lamps, some diodes in different colors and my gel book. I made a spotlight by rolling a piece of paper and taping it in front of the flashlight on my phone. There were a lot of struggles but they were all solved by some really creative thoughts. Throughout the whole process I really learned how powerful lighting can be in storytelling and I was also determined that this is the thing that I want to do for the rest of my life!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a lighting designer for live performances! I got into the world of lighting design actually by accident. I do a lot of street photography and I draw a lot in daily life, so I always thought that I would either become a photographer or an illustrator. But when I was in undergrad one of my required class is a theatrical lighting related class and I worked on a show the professor was designing as the lighting programmer. By turning lights on and off, I found it’s so appealing that you just put up all these different pictures in front of the audience which is like such a perfection combination of photography and drawing. So I got absorbed into this world so quickly and never get tired of it. As a lighting designer, I found myself super interested in and not bad at finding meaning in abstraction, transforming and revealing the space to create totally different environments through the use of light. In my most recent production The Moors, my biggest challenge as the lighting designer is to create 3 totally different looks to show the change of the location to make the storytelling clear. The first one is the look of the interior of a grand English house. The second one is the wilderness of a moorland. And the last one is to dive deep into one of the character’s fantasy of giving a rock and roll concert. Totally different from each other. What I ended up doing is to have some directional scrape on the architecture of the house to make it look like lights coming into the space through the windows. When we go out to the moorland, we lose all the architecture we see and instead what we see is a template wash coming from above to highlight the floor pattern in a completely different way. The angles of the lights are so much more harsher and simpler so I was able to really narrow down the space to make the moorland cold, dark and merciless. For the rock and roll fantasy, I tried to make the experience more like a immersive cabaret situation so I ended up using a lot of wash lights that are more exposed to the audience to include them in the scene. And that was a pretty successful collaboration I was so happy and honored to be part of!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist to me is I’m always so honored and excited to be part of a storytelling to make certain voices heard. The effort to tell or even to find a story that deserves to be heard so badly but no one has paid any attention to it before is just very meaningful to me. And beyond that, I got chances to meet more people in the community who also care about and are curious to hear different voices, what else can I even ask for!

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I’m a HUGE fan of Wong Kar-Wai. I have seen his every single film multiple times and his works are just such a big impact on me especially when it comes how to use design as a tool to help the storytelling including the composition of the shot, the use of color ect. I can talk about him for a whole day haha.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://yiyuanlidesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_lyy66xx_/

Image Credits
All the photos are taken by me (Yiyuan Li)