Paper Puppy
TYPE: Collaborative work
(With Lihao Zhu @l1hao.zhu)
TIME: Apr-Jun 2023
MEDIUM: Book Design, Workshop, Sticker
This project introduces miscellaneous cardboard dogs born during a COVID campus lockdown in universities in mainland China which lasted until December 2022.
Confined and bored, some college students used the most accessible materials--shipping boxes--to create handcrafted pets, representatively, dogs. Cardboard dogs went viral on October 2022 on RED, a photo and video sharing app, and took domestic university dormitories overnight. Under the hashtag #宿舍养狗 (keeping a dog at the dormitory),#大学生的精神状态 (college student's mental state), and #纸板狗(cardboard dogs), various cardboard dogs emerged. Some were original, while others referred to tutorials and illustrations shared by other users or famous cartoon characters such as Pochacco. These dogs lived in dormitories and dormitory corridors; college students "walked" cardboard dogs on campus, put masks on them, took them to COVID testings, and even hosted dog pageants.
Cardboard dogs have become a medium for college students to destress and establish connections with their peers during the campus lockdown. Later, the materials for making dogs expanded to papers of all sorts and, thus, dubbed paper puppies.
Confined and bored, some college students used the most accessible materials--shipping boxes--to create handcrafted pets, representatively, dogs. Cardboard dogs went viral on October 2022 on RED, a photo and video sharing app, and took domestic university dormitories overnight. Under the hashtag #宿舍养狗 (keeping a dog at the dormitory),#大学生的精神状态 (college student's mental state), and #纸板狗(cardboard dogs), various cardboard dogs emerged. Some were original, while others referred to tutorials and illustrations shared by other users or famous cartoon characters such as Pochacco. These dogs lived in dormitories and dormitory corridors; college students "walked" cardboard dogs on campus, put masks on them, took them to COVID testings, and even hosted dog pageants.
Cardboard dogs have become a medium for college students to destress and establish connections with their peers during the campus lockdown. Later, the materials for making dogs expanded to papers of all sorts and, thus, dubbed paper puppies.
