Our August issue tackles a field that is especially worthy of consideration here in China: design. The cover package for this issue— titled “Designing China”— offers up a visual feast of design at the boundaries of art, with nibbles of everything from fashion to architecture. Among these are introductions of Steven Holl’s Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, Qiu Zhijie’s ongoing pedagogical project on “Design for the Poor,” Ying Yun-wei’s digital resurrection of ancient Chinese fonts, the working world of fashion design duo ffiXXed, 19 of the most notably well designed art books in China in recent years, and the disused spaces of Dashilar that are being revitalized for Beijing Design Week. Elsewhere we take a look at the Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s outsized sense of self, the new possibilities for buying art online offered by sites like Art.sy and Paddle8, and the formal concerns of abstractionist Wang Guangle and his young generation. To top it off, we consider the Shanghai-based “cybernetic” artist Lu Yang for our debut run of the column “New Directions,” and Singapore-based critic David Teh unveils the curtains of a brand-new age for global art in a visit to Art HK 2011.