A professor and doctoral advisor at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, as well as the Executive Deputy Director of the Chinese Ancient Characters Art Research Center. He serves as Deputy Chair of the Visual Communication Design Department and holds a Ph.D. in Design. He is a member of the China Artists Association, a director of the Beijing Industrial Design Promotion Association, and notably participated as a torchbearer in the Beijing Olympics relay.

He chaired the Visual Communication Design category for The Beauty of Chinese Characters’ Global Youth Design Contest and delivered a lecture on Chinese character design at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He designed the first oracle bone script font and cursive script font, pioneering research-based design education and proposing the Rhythmic Structure (律格) design theory.

In 2017, he organized the exhibition Recreate Oracle: Ancient Characters in the Context of Modern Design in Beijing and, in 2018, launched his first national touring exhibition, Chinese Characters & Rhythmic Structure: Chen Nan’s Perspective on Chinese Character Art & Design, at the Hubei Museum of Art.