One of Liu's books from her pocket-size series published by Taschen.[Photo provided to China Daily]

She started to record her reflections on what she perceived to be some of the differences between the East and the West.

Examples are: Some people in the West get suntanned while in the East, some people carry umbrellas when they go out in the sun; and Western gatherings tend to be smaller in size than Eastern ones.

Finally, when she published East meets West, the first book of the series, in 2007, it became a huge hit online and offline. And according to CNN, it has been used for cross-cultural training programs in companies.

Anna Corpron of the design company Sub-Studio, who has worked with Liu in New York, has called Liu's work "bold and iconographic".

Liu, whose style of designing is inspired by ancient Chinese aesthetics, said: "The soft and flexible water-like Chinese worldview will indicate ways to settle problems of globalization."

Liu has been a professor of communication design at BTK University of Arts and Design in Berlin since 2010.

She also does poster designs and is involved in exhibition designs for museums, and in book designs.

She has designed the cover for a book by German visual artist Gerhard Richter.

Her design for From Oracle Bones to E-Publications: Three Millennia of Publishing in China, which was published by China's Foreign Language Press, was listed among the country's best-designed books.

Liu, who has no plans to expand her business yet, said she occasionally goes away on long holidays.

"I need to stop to ponder what I really want, and I need friends and time - to do nothing but just sit and chat," she said.