After working for close to a decade in various studios, Jonathan Yuen started Roots, his own space in an increasingly noisy world of design.
His childhood ambitions were in this order: artist, scientist and businessman. But little did Jonathan Yuen expect to be working as all three when he became a graphic designer.
Like many in this profession, Yuen loved drawing as a child, but it was after encountering computers in the high school of his Malaysian hometown in Penang that he got hooked on to computer-aided design, and dreamt of a day when he could create animations and special effects for Hollywood movies.
This dream changed when he learnt his family could not afford to send him overseas to study. Computer animation was new in the ‘90s, and not taught in Malaysia then. Instead, Yuen took up graphic design in Kuala Lumpur’s then Limkokwing Institute of Creative Technology, which was close to his interest as it offered a specialisation in multimedia design, and more importantly, home.