Together with Hyun Bin

A Birthday Project

Because Crash Landing on You is my one beacon of light in 2020, I’m volunteering with Hyun Bin’s Taiwan Fan Club. On Monday we launched five projects for his birthday (0925)—there’s a scrapbooking project with dozens of blank templates for fans; a fundraiser, to donate in Hyun Bin’s name, 9250 receipts (it’s a thing; google Taiwan Receipt Lottery) and 925kgs of rice to charities of all causes across Taiwan; plans to send Taiwanese goodies to his staff at VAST Entertainment; a SNS birthday countdown, and a Hyun Bin Monopoly (no, seriously. rules include taxes on his endorsements/dimples; scenarios include RJH stepping on landmines; and of course, jail’s at Alhambra.)

Taiwan and Korean fandoms are so different, and there’s so much to learn. For every fan contribution, there’s a FC gift/incentive, which involved hours upon hours of liaising with illustrators and vendors and his management to print bubble tea cup holders, canvas bags, golf balls, enamel pins… and Monopoly money. For every project, yet more time is spent discussing the ad copy and look and feel of graphics (which will be developed into a paid media campaign, both traditional and digital—apparently generating exposure for your “bias” is serious business in K-fandoms) so that’s more expertise needed in deciding on media spend and targeting strategies, etc.

Ever wondered how grid layouts were created on Instagram? Here I use Photoshop's slice tool (because I had to work on the overall design on Photoshop anyway), although there are definitely iPhone apps to make the job easier.

Instagram grid to the left; birthday scrapbook templates to the right. With every project, I try to propose multiple designs--because there cannot be a "best" design if options are lacking. Prior to publishing, I also test the output on mobile devices and a dummy account on Instagram to make sure everything's peachy. The only problem is: from hereon posts have to be made in multiples of three, heh.

Everything is, of course, in Chinese, because Taiwan. So there also goes an achievement unlocked: first website in Chinese. Everything is then translated into English and Korean. Also, how beautiful is the copy?

因為玄彬
每一個我成為我們

當我們同在一起
即使世界偶爾脆弱
也能攜手勇敢

今後繼續
與玄彬同在一起

The team has amazing writers; I only ever joined them because I was crazy touched by the letter they wrote him.

There’s so much to learn—and I’ve truly learned as much from fandom (… and spent as much time, welp) as I have from school/work. There’s a long way to go yet in learning how to be a “selfless” fan because all this is truly 徒勞無功/thankless work with absolutely no monetary reward and little chances of acknowledgement from the birthday boy himself (zero social media presence, etc.) but hey, at the end of the day his employees get to snack, and charities get a lot of love, and a lot of rice.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood to donate to charities in Taiwan… sites.google.com/view/hyunbin-twfc/