Tag: AIGA

State Meddling, Government Funding, Drawing + Passion–Singapore’s New Illustration Scene

Illustration Arts Fest posters featured the works of André Wee and Caleb “bucketcaleb” Tan.
Credit: Illustration Arts Fest

What started ten years ago as drawing sessions for a group of illustrators in Singapore has grown into the inaugural Illustration Arts Fest (IAF), marking a milestone for Singapore’s illustration scene.

The event is overseen by festival director Michael Ng (better known as Mindflyer), and takes place over two weekends that bring together local illustrators and comics creators for workshops, talks, and a marketplace. According to Ng, it’s the “ultimate climax” for a loose network of illustrators that he co-founded with Lee Wai Leng (Fleecircus), and Andrew Tan (Drewscape), the Organisation of Illustrators Council (OIC).

“Who are the illustrators? Nobody knew a few years back,” says Ng. “Clients and friends are finally realizing we have interesting illustrators at home, and that you don’t have to go to Japan or America or England to see something different.”

➜ Read the full story in AIGA’s Eye on Design

Design Studio Somewhere Else’s Craft-led Transformation of The Singapore Architect

COURTESY: SOMEWHERE ELSE

When branding studio Somewhere Else was commissioned to transform Singapore’s oldest architecture journal into “the architect’s magazine,” there was one major rule: photographs were barred from the journal’s cover and kept small inside.

This principle was set out by The Singapore Architect’s new editor Hoo Cheong Fong, who believes that only fools think about architecture through photographs.

Under different editors and designers over the last five decades, this publication put out by the Singapore Institute of Architects had become too “commercial” instead of “craft-based” for the newly-appointed Fong, an architect by training, and his editorial team.  “The way they presented architecture unfortunately was not through the eyes of how an architect presents architecture,” he explains.

➜ Read the full story in AIGA’s Eye on Design

Is the Fight to Revive Traditional Letterpress a Losing Battle?

A handmade Chinese type specimen book—every letter is individually pasted—from a now defunct printer in Singapore.

Ask any letterpress lover why they favor the old-school printing method, and they’ll likely tell you it’s less about the look and more about the feel. But that tactile impression was actually considered terrible printing in the past. Traditionally, letterpress aimed to print without showing any relief—a principle that has been conveniently forgotten amidst the contemporary revival of this centuries-old craft.

This is just one of the misconceptions traditional letterpress studio TypesettingSG was set up to address. In 2014, after learning how many newly established letterpresses in Singapore were unaware of the history and were giving a new generation of printers an incomplete introduction, designer Yao Yu Sun quit his design job and started his own studio in order to provide a more thorough education.

➜ Read the full story in AIGA’s Eye on Design