Tag: Malaysia

How One Woman’s Search for Malaysia’s Design History Became a National Archive

The Malaysia Design Archive actually began in Havana, Cuba. In 2007, founder Ezrena Marwan visited the city for the Icograda World Design Congress, where, as she listened to Cuban graphic designers share how they were limited to creating propaganda by their country’s politics, Ezrena was struck by how different it was from her own experience as a graphic designer back home.

“We only design for commercial stuff, and we don’t really pay attention to anything else,” she says. “I was really inspired by how much they think about design, and how much it’s linked to politics and the land.”

She started collecting and documenting everyday graphics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and shared them online. That marked the beginning of the Malaysia Design Archive, a website that traces the history of this Southeast Asian nation through its visual culture.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

How the “Type Geeks“ of Malaysia are Using Typography to Change Sexist Chinese Language

After learning how sexist the Chinese language is, designers Tan Sueh Li and Karmen Hui put their typography skills to use. The two Malaysian women, better known as TypoKaki, designed new Chinese characters incorporating the radical for woman (女, pronounced “nu”) to redefine the traditional patriarchal language for the country’s modern women.

Take, for instance, the typical Chinese character for peace (安), which depicts a woman (女) who stays within the house by covering it with a top radical (宀). To express how women in Malaysia are often segregated in public spaces because of Islam, the duo hacked the Chinese character for space (间) to insert the radical for a woman instead.

 This is just one of 30 characters Li and Hui designed for Women’s Words, a tiny red dictionary created with fellow Malaysian writer and researcher Tan Zi Hao. Created for a feminist art event in Malaysia, it’s just one example of how TypoKaki has been using typography and design to explore Malaysian culture since 2012.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design 

Malaysia’s Graphic Design Rebels Join Forces on Politically Charged Posters

When they heard of an upcoming protest in Malaysia, a band of graphic designers rallied to do what they do best: design posters for a cause.

Calling themselves the Grafik Rebel Untuk Protes & Aktivisme (Malay for Graphic Rebel for Protest and Activism) or GRUPA, the hastily formed design collective released 110 protest posters online before a recent rally to push for government reform in Malaysia and the resignation of its prime minister. Organized by civil society movement Bersih (Malay for “clean”), this latest rally is known as Bersih 4.0 and came about amid allegations of a corruption scandal involving 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund, and the country’s prime minister, Najib Tun Razak.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design