Category: History

Huat Ah!

They were once found everywhere around the city. Tickets to the Singapore Sweep used to be strung across the counter of mamak shops (local convenience stores), neatly lined up on the tables of newspaper vendors and even peddled at the hawker centres by enterprising individuals. For a dollar, and eventually, three dollars, these slips of paper offered anyone a small chance to hit the jackpot. This monthly lottery, organised by the Singapore Pools since 1969, was one of the earliest forms of legalised gambling in the country. It was also its most visible—coming in eye- catching designs that even became a collector’s item.

This colourful chapter of the national lottery ended in July 2018, when the Singapore Pools began printing its tickets in the form of receipts like the company’s other popular lotteries, such as 4D and Toto. We look back at the Singapore Sweep’s design history to discover how its tickets were not just about form but function too.

1969: Singapore Sweep Goes National

SOURCE: SINGAPORE POOLS

Establishing a legalised national lottery was a controversial decision in 1960s Singapore as some feared it would encourage gambling. But the practical need to bring in revenue for the young nation and stamp out illegal gambling eventually outweighed this concern. In 1966, the Singapore Turf Club started a “Singapore Sweep” to raise funds for charitable causes. After the government established the Singapore Pools as its national lottery operator in 1968, the Singapore Sweep became part of this new organisation’s plan to raise funds for the construction of the country’s first national stadium. This is why a model of it featured prominently on this ticket printed for the lottery that was held on 28 February 1969.

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#ADesignLibrary: Designing With People, And Not Just for People

In my early encounters with @participateindesign (P!D), I recalled thinking they were a cross between a “ground-up People’s Association” and a “21st century SPUR”. These were the polar opposite models of community engagement in Singapore: the former a top-down state apparatus while the latter was a citizen-led think tank in the 1960s and 1970s that frequently challenged state planners with its alternative proposals, much to their chagrin. Against this antagonistic legacy between state and civic society, meeting P!D founders @mizahrahman_ and @janhlim in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. Their cheery dispositions, aptly captured in their bright yellow “brand” colour, were matched by a clear and simple mission to design with people (including the now more receptive state planners). Over the years, it has been inspiring to see their work grow and I even had the pleasure of editing their 2016 publication “Designing with People and Not Just for People”. It’s an important contribution for a new generation of “woke” Sinngapore designers keen to engage people in their work.

Mizah may have tragically left us too early, but her vision still lives on through this book and the P!D team like @jensullivann and @archited88. This #ADesignLibrary post is dedicated to all of you.

#ADesignLibrary spotlights lesser known design books, and invites public access to my personal collection of titles that focuses on Singapore architecture and design, Asian design, everyday design, critical and speculative design as well as design theory and philosophy. I welcome enquiries and physical loans.

#ADesignLibrary: A New Program for Graphic Design

Graphic design has traditionally been dismissed as “surface”, a subject more concerned with aesthetics more than anything else. Thus, a part of contemporary design education is often devoted to studying the profession’s history and theories to prove its deep connections with the world we live in. “A *New* Program for Graphic Design” by designer David Reinfurt (2019) is a “textbook” that sets out to do just that. Based on a series of three courses originally developed to teach graphic design to liberal arts students at Princeton University, Reinfurt takes us on an alternative path from graphic design as a commercial art to view it as an “interface” where various disciplines meet. He holds up the likes of printer-publisher Benjamin Franklin and designers Bruno Munari, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Muriel Cooper, to show how graphic design has also historically been produced at where it meets with printing, photography, art, mathematics, computing and engineering. Abandoning the authoritative air of traditional texts for education, Reinfurt invites students to explore the network of rabbit holes he has personally dug— and to arrive at their own conclusions on what graphic design has become.

#ADesignLibrary spotlights lesser known design books, and invites public access to my personal collection of titles that focuses on Singapore architecture and design, Asian design, everyday design, critical and speculative design as well as design theory and philosophy. I welcome enquiries and physical loans.