TORONTO—Award-winning designer Tommy Li was in town last week for magazine conference MagNet. In his presentation, Inside the Mind of a Design Maverick, the Hong Kong-based designer showed several of his recent projects, including this one for Bla Bla Bra.
 

Known for his clever graphic systems, cheerful illustrated characters and cartoon icons, Li doesn’t call himself a graphic designer. “There are too many of those in Hong Kong,” he says. Instead, he goes by brand consultant. Although, he admits, there are a lot of those now, too.

His studio, Tommy Li Design Workshop, has a large clientele that includes MegartStore museum, Prosays’ cosmetics, Handmade Dessert restaurants and women’s lingerie brand Bla Bla Bra, for which it created a line of bra cartoon characters (above).

Li uses strategic design to help clients maximize profits and he starts each client project by doing lots of research. “If I don’t know the business, I won’t do it,” says Li. “You can’t sit down with a client for two hours and pretend to know their business.” It’s important, he says, to do as much research about the brand as possible. Only then will you be able to make a difference.

“People say, ‘If you redesign your logo, you can make a bad business good.’ I tell my clients, ‘Don’t believe it,’” says Li. “A logo is nothing, a trademark is nothing. It is only part of the construction. The packaging and marketing are a crucial part of the success of a business, not the name, not the store. It’s the whole thing.” Just making a cosmetic change won’t help, he adds. “It’s too lazy.” Contact: www.tommylidesign.com