Category: Culture

Self-Publishing: Graphic Design’s New Muse in Singapore?

Singapore graphic design studios like fFurious, PHUNK, Asylum, and Kinetic may have different styles and approaches, but there’s one thing that binds their practices: music.  The founders of these studios grew up listening to bands like New Order and Joy Division that had record and CD covers designed by the likes of Peter Saville and Vaughan Oliver. They also watched  animation graphics on television channel MTV and browsed magazines such as The Face and Ray Gun, which were designed by Neville Brody and David Carson respectively.

These studios, established in the late ’90s and early 2000s,  have acknowledged the influence of music on their designs, whether it was introducing them to the profession or inspiring them to work on music-related projects — PHUNK originally started as a music band and still refer to themselves as a ‘visual rock band’; one of Asylum’s goals was to design record covers such as 4AD, and they  started a music label; the founders of Kinetic were also in the band Concave Scream and work with local band The Observatory; while fFurious designed album covers for Singapore music bands and also worked on legendary local music magazine BigO.

But with the slow death of albums, the design scene today, however, seems to have found a new muse. In the last few years, many younger designers have gotten involved in self-publishing. Just this weekend, Galavant, an annual magazine focusing on collaborative and curated content from around the world, was founded by photographer Dilys Ng and designer Nathalia Kasman. The inaugural issue uses a mix of poems, short stories and images to explore the theme of “Absence”.

It is a familiar format found in UNDERSCORE Magazine, Casual Days, Ceriph, kult, Bracket, and Terroir Magazine — independent publications started in Singapore by designers or design-conscious founders over the last three years. By and large, these publications focus on literature as well as arts and culture from Singapore and around the world. And as I’ve written elsewhere, these magazines share a similar outlook and ethos.

Could self-published projects become the definitive element in the portfolio of Singapore’s future graphic designers? It fits into the global trend of designers becoming authors, and magazines have proven to be one of the best mediums for projecting a distinctive “voice” with images and text.

Two Singapore studios are already taking self-publishing further than just magazines. Epigram has been working on annual reports and occasionally published books since it founded in 1991, but last year in July, it started a separate entity Epigram Books to publish its own books, including literature, photography and children’s books.

A much younger entity is Studio Kaleido, which is behind Ceriph. The magazine preceded the studio’s founding last year, but since then, the founders Amanda Lee and Winnie Goh have gone on to initiate several publishing projects including GRAPHME, a zine lab, while busying themselves with design work too.

Of course, the one major difference with publishing a magazine as compared to designing a record is it is continuous. You got to regularly come up with the next issue. So it’s not very surprising that many of these magazines are annuals, and the most prolific is quarterly. Will these publishing efforts sustain in the following years? Read on.

This is Home

Forgive me for sounding a tad patriotic. Maybe it’s because National Day is just around the corner.

It’s just that, for some time now, I’ve been bugged by my fascination with discovering, documenting, and even, defining a “Singapore design”. It’s a topic most designers stumble over, several hate, and a category few like to be pigeon-holed in. And as I’ve dug deeper, I’ve been asking myself: “So what?”

What value is there in “Singapore design”?

It’s most probably not going to help designers win jobs or awards. No one out of Singapore will really understand, or even care.

But, maybe, that way of looking is missing the whole point.

As I watched Mr Bean perform during the Olympics opening ceremony in London this morning, it struck me that I could identify it as quintessentially British humour, and I actually felt proud for a community who found themselves and are so willing to show it off to the world.

Comparing Great Britain’s opening ceremony for the Olympics with what China put up four years ago when it held the event, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei said:

“This was about Great Britain; it didn’t pretend it was trying to have global appeal. Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind of international event. Beijing’s Olympics were very grand – they were trying to throw a party for the world, but the hosts didn’t enjoy it. The government didn’t care about people’s feelings because it was trying to create an image.”

Self-confidence. Yes, that’s exactly what being able to define “Singapore Design” means to me. Being able to say with pride that Singapore has its own community of people here embarking on creative endeavors. And what matters is not how much they can impress the world out there, but the people whom they share their home with. That I can say the guy who designed this is my neighbour, a friend, someone whom understands this place that I live in, and not some star architect from a foreign land.

At the end of the day, I don’t need someone outside of my home to say that I am good, but it matters to know that I am doing good for someone at home.

Where are Singapore’s Goods of Desire?

Hong Kong retail store Goods of Desire opened in Singapore two weeks back and I finally checked it out last night. The label, founded in 1996, sells an eclectic collection of goods ranging from clothing to homeware that are designed to be “quintessentially Hong Kong”. One of their most distinctive design approaches has been to appropriate everyday things from the city to create goods that represent Hong Kong.

I walked out of the store wondering, where is Singapore’s Goods of Desire? It’s not a difficult concept to execute and many Singapore designers have used a similar approach to design an array of Singapore-inspired products. One of the early pioneers is Casey Chen, who created the Taxi Lamp (2002) and the DynaGlo Lamp (2005). There’s also &Larry, who has designed various “Objects” that express Singapore’s identity. More recently, we have Singapore Souvenirs (2009), where a group of industrial designers explored 37 new concepts of what a Singapore memento could be. This has become a permanent project of design group triggerhappy.

Besides representing Hong Kong, Goods of Desire also designs products “to live better”, promoting a certain lifestyle. Again, Singapore has a generation of young designers doing just that. Uyii produces bags by hand because “in this world of mass production, there is a place for special designs with handmade touch”. Similarly, local label wheniwasfour wants to “play a part of the demographic that enjoys ‘slow living’, simple happiness”.

What is missing in Singapore at this point is some kind of “super label” that connects all these creations. Currently, small shops such as S U P E R M A M A and little dröm store carry many of these products, and design studio FARM, also commissions, produces and sells such products via its online store. However, to take these designs to the mass market, and even internationally, there needs to be a certain volume and presence.

I don’t think what Singapore lacks now is creative talent — there are many more labels that those I’ve listed — but rather someone or an entity who can offer the commercial expertise and financial backing. Just as Hong Kong has its Goods of Desire and Japan has MUJI, it’s only a matter of time before such a concept store emerges from the shores of Singapore.