Yuen Tai-yung was born in Cixi, Zhejiang in 1941. After finishing junior secondary school in Shanghai, he moved south to Hong Kong in 1957, working first in a cotton mill and a cloth firm and briefly as a personal assistant to the art director Fei Bo-yee at the Yonghua studio. He then became an illustrator at Longman and spent nine years at Grant Advertising, rising to art director; between 1975 and 1981 he held art-director posts at Z Productions and Malcolm Glenn Advertising Ltd, forerunner of J. Walter Thompson. His first film poster came in 1975, and the following year's The Private Eyes made his name; commissions multiplied, including work for the Fan Shih circle around Lai Ying-chow and Karl Maka. When Cinema City was formed he designed its posters on a freelance basis while also serving Golden Harvest, and in November 1981 Cinema City and Golden Princess jointly hired him as art director, handling both its posters and newspaper advertising. After Golden Princess wound down in 1992 he cut back sharply, his last pre-retirement poster being for The Bare-Footed Kid (1993). He emigrated to New Zealand in 1995, returned in 2007 and resumed painting mainly for pleasure. Entirely self-taught and especially strong at portraiture, he painted some 200 film posters from the 1970s to the 1990s, including Warriors Two, Knockabout, Aces Go Places, Project A, Esprit d'amour, Chicken and Duck Talk and Cageman, plus all 256 covers of Jademan Comics. He received the Professional Achievement Award at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2017 and the World Outstanding Chinese Artist Award in 2018.
With caricatured yet anatomically faithful portraits, Yuen Tai-yung gave 1970s-to-1990s Hong Kong films a vivid visual language and is known in the trade as the godfather of Hong Kong film posters. His designs were often remembered better than the films themselves, becoming shared memories for a generation of cinemagoers. His self-taught path also showed that visual design could flourish outside the established institutions.
Achievements
- 1976 · Painted the poster for The Private Eyes (1976), which made his name and launched his busiest period of poster work.
- 1981 · Was jointly hired by Cinema City and Golden Princess as art director, overseeing their poster and print advertising design.
- 2017 · Received the Professional Achievement Award at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards, recognising decades of poster art.