Category: Design

July 14, 2011

Shiok!

Wow. It’s so rare to see such a bold design from our newspapers here. It is so unexpected that at first, I thought I had picked up TODAY, a similar tabloid-sized newspaper that is usually bounded by an advertisement as its cover. But this is actually The New Paper’s (TNP) cover yesterday when it broke news that Singapore’s national football team was returning to compete in the Malaysia Cup after 17 years.

I suppose such a grand design gesture is appropriate considering how TNP has a strong following of football readers, and the Malaysia Cup has been a traditional staple of news content, from general coverage right down to its former comic strip What’s Hup.

Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 17 years for another cover that made me sit up.

July 10, 2011

Design For The Dead

British designer and typographer Paul Barnes talked about how letter carvings on tombstones in his country’s graveyards inspired his typeface designs at a lecture organised last month by The Design Society. Well, maybe Singapore’s designers can take some inspiration from the over 80,000 tombs found in one of the last remaining graveyards in this city-state — Bukit Brown Cemetery.

While doing research for a story about this cemetery that first opened in 1922, I discovered many highly decorated tombstones of the rich and famous of Singapore’s history. Most of these were tombs of the Chinese, so the designs reflected the rich symbolism of their culture. The stone lion for instance, is a very common statue that the Chinese believe will help to ward off evil spirits. You will find them outside temples and homes, and also next to tombstones. At the cemetery, there even a variety of designs of these lions.

Besides lions, there are also other statues to accompany the dead, including chamber maids, and this Sikh Guard below, who is also thought to be able to act as guards for the tombs. After all, the Chinese believe in afterlife and tombs are regarded as the homes of the dead.

Another distinct local flavour to some of the tombs are the colourful Art Noveau tiles that were popular with Peranakans and wealthy Chinese of the past. They also decorated their homes with such tiles.

Another form of design that reflected a mix in cultures were in these tombs that had both Eastern and Western symbols.

These are just a small sample of the many intricately designed tombstones in the cemetery, and you can see more pictures I took here. Make a trip down as the cemetery, before it is eventually exhumed for future redevelopment. It’s pretty easy to walk around and explore the cemetery, but you can also use this map created by the Asian Paranormal Investigators, especially if you want to find out which of the tombs belonged to the many pioneers of Singapore’s history.

July 3, 2011

Singapore’s New Creatives Mediascape

The world of content creation is changing, and I was reminded of this after reading The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism, and watching the documentary PressPausePlay this week. Both pieces of work touched upon how the digital era was changing not only how content was created, but also who was doing so and what was being produced.

This can be seen in Singapore’s media scene, which has traditionally been dominated by Singapore Press Holdings and Mediacorp. Both produce content for newspapers, magazines, television and radio — the traditional mediums of communication. They derive their revenue mainly from the content they produced, depending heavily on advertisers, as well as subscribers.

Not so for a new breed of media producers in Singapore. Besides individual bloggers, there seems to be an increasing list of publications produced by teams of people in the genre of lifestyle, arts, and culture. Take a look at Actually Magazine, a website on lifestyle and culture. The people behind it? The owners of fashion stores ACTUALLY…, ActuallyActually and Very Wooonderland. Then, there’s POSKOD.SG, an online magazine about modern Singapore that was started by a branding agency Studio Wong Huzir.

Besides starting publications online, some of these new media producers have also entered the world of print too. Branding agency kult has released the sixth issue of its illustration magazine of the same name, while design studio HJGHER is on its second issue of its lifestyle publication Underscore Magazine. Anonymous, started by the designers at SILNT, have also embarked on Bracket, a magazine that features the thoughts of some of the best minds in today’s creative world.

The one thing that is common about all these publications? None of them actually make a living off it. Instead, they are often passion projects of local creative-base companies who fund the publications with what they earn from their core business, which isn’t media. As The Story So Far notes:

“If the old formula of “adjacency” — selling ads and commercials alongside content — is fading, what will replace it? There are many possibilities, but few are likely, on their own, to provide the stream of dollars that advertising and circulation once did.”

While these publications may not earn their publishers money, there are other benefits. It is a vehicle of getting your brand out to a larger audience, creating something that expresses your values and beliefs. Both Underscore and Bracket have enabled their Singapore founders to be known overseas after the publications snagged awards and accolades.

Having their own publication also helps cultivate audiences and markets, especially if it is small and undefined. This is probably why government boards have also created their own online publications such as the National Heritage Board’s Yesterday.sg and the National Art Gallery’s The Canvas to promote their respective causes.

But it’s not just commercial companies that are redefining Singapore’s mediascape. There are also groups of Singaporeans who have harnessed the ease of publishing nowadays to pursue their own interests, forking out of their own time and money. One of the oldest must be The Flying Inkpot, a theatre and dance review that has been around since 1996. For film buffs, there is SINdie, which reports on Singapore’s independent film scene, literary lovers can turn to Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Ceriph, while academics and critical thinkers can try out the multidisciplinary e-journal s/pores.

The magazines I have listed here are only just a small sampling of what there is out there. If you know of others I may have missed out, do let me know!