Singapore Design March

The month of March promises to be an exciting one for Singapore’s design scene as exhibitions, workshops, awards, and a conference are just some events lined up for designers and design-lovers in the coming fortnight.

Kickstarting it this Saturday is The Design Society Festival 2013, which is put together by a grassroots organisation that has been holding an annual conference for local graphic designers since 2009. This year, it will expand beyond its one-day event and include fringe events organised by fellow designers to have a week long celebration of craft.

“Our annual conference has been running successfully for the last three years and we have received overwhelming support and feedback from the industry,” said Larry Peh from The Design Society (TDS). “We’ve received lots of feedbacks from overseas friends that they wished it can be filled up more events and activities to maximise their trip to Singapore. Hence, we feel the time is right to grow the annual event into a design festival.”

The design community also embraced the move as the society had little trouble getting festival partners. Amongst the fringe events, include letterpress and photography workshops, exhibitions on Barcelona design, book covers and typography, as well as a Design Trail at Tiong Bahru, currently Singapore’s most hip estate. Its collection of speciality stores and design shops will hold various open studios, talks and showcases during the festival.

Said Larry, “Tiong Bahru was chosen for the Design Trail as we want to share the creative and vibrant vibes of the estate and at the same time bring participants down memory lane in a whole new different way.  This cosmopolitan estate unlike any other in Singapore possesses a quaint art deco style with an eclectic mashup of speciality stores, design offices, boutique retail shops and a range of modern dining establishments and cafes, thus is a perfect venue for a design trail.”

For its conference at LASALLE’s Singapore Airlines Theatre this Saturday, professionals from various creative fields in Singapore and overseas will speak about “Craft”, including filmmaker Royston Tan and co-founder of Sydney and New York-based creative collective The Glue Society, Jonathan Kneebone.

The choice of this year’s theme allows the society to go beyond just design-related topics and speakers for the first time, explains Larry, and it hopes conference attendees can learn about the process of making things into reality.

He added that the positive response to its first festival has also convinced TDS to make the festival an annual affair, marking a milestone for the four-year-old society.

 SINGAPLURAL 2013

Following right behind the design festival is SingaPlural 2013, which will be ‘Celebrating Design’ during 8 to 15 March. This week long product and furniture design event is organised by the Singapore Furniture Industries Council in conjunction with the International Furniture Fair Singapore, a trade show organised for Asian furniture producers since 1981.

At this edition of Singaplural, which was first held last year, a series of workshops, exhibitions and talks will be held at the Singapore Expo and in *scape at Orchard Road. Highlights this year include the giving away of $10,000 cash to the winner of the  “Furniture Design Award 2013”, and “FutureCraft Workshop”, an exhibition of prototypes by 13 designers from Indonesia, Sweden, and Singapore who took  part in a workshop in November to find breakthroughs in modern day design using traditional materials. There will also be “Design Conversations” with European designers Ineke Hans and Luke Hughes, as well as Singapore product designers studio juju and Voon Woon on the theme “Unity in Diversity”.

Singapore gets first locally-designed coins

 

SG-Coins-2013A new series of coins are being introduced in Singapore, some 28 years since a previous revamp was initiated in 1985. The new coins issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) are to gradually replace the existing ones, which have a 30-year tenure, according to The Straits Times.

For the first time, the coins were designed by a local, Mr Fabian Lim. This third series of Singapore’s coins features national icons and landmarks — the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, public housing, Changi Airport, the port, and the Merlion —  marking the country’s progress over the decades.

$1 coins from the Flower series — SINGAPORE MINT

This departs from the current coins, known as the “Floral Series”, which were done by the late English painter and coin designer Christopher Ironside (1913-1992), who also created coins for countries such as Brunei and Kuwait. When introduced between 1985 and 1987, this series of coins were designed to be smaller, lighter, and more distinct from Malaysian ones as compared to Singapore’s first series of coins.

First series 10-cent coins — SINGAPORE MINT

Introduced in 1967,  the first coins in Singapore currency portrayed it as an exotic tropical island with marine animals. Designed by Stuart Devlin (1931-), a gold and silversmith who was born in Australia and is now based in the United Kingdom, these coins are apparently still legal tender today, although most have been phased out.

The changing visuals in Singapore’s coins over the decades, clearly mark its transformation from a tropical island to a Garden City, and today, a global city of landmarks. As Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS said in a press release, “Coins reflect the events, persons or symbols significant to a nation. The new series coins depict local icons and landmarks that are familiar to Singaporeans and reflect various aspects of Singapore’s progress as a nation.”

The latest coin designs also brings it in line with the nation’s current “Portrait Series” notes, which feature a portrait of our first President, the late Enchik Yusof bin Ishak, on one side, and on the other, scenes that depict themes of his life against the backdrop of the nation’s development. These notes were Singapore’s fourth series, and also the first designed locally when introduced on 9 September 1999 to welcome a new millennium. They were by artist Eng Siak Loy, who in 2007 was presented the President’s Design Award Designer of the Year.

To find out more about the evolution of Singapore’s money, check out this timeline by the Singapore Mint or information provided by MAS. There is also a very interesting blog about old currency in Singapore by here.

Picturing A City For All: Independent Photography and Democracy in Southeast Asia

Photography is a tool that has been used by many to interrogate and document life in a city. For the last five years, Zhuang Wubin has been researching and working on an upcoming book about the history of independent photography in Southeast Asia. FIVEFOOTWAY speaks to the independent researcher about the region’s photographers and how they have used it to keep their cities open.

What is independent photography?
I use this term to cut across all genres of photography. The photographer works on his or her own, and the project is initiated on his or her initiative. It can be any kind of photography, e.g. documentary, conceptual, contemporary, even photoshopped work.

But to define independent photography is not so straightforward. You might product a body of work about stateless refugees in the world. The first three works were not funded, but you eventually sold it. So when the work is sold, is it still independent? For me it is, because it is still created by you, and the selling occurs at the end.

After that, a non-governmental organisation may like the work and commission you to do something similar in a different country. I still consider this independent because it is something you initiated, and someone has simply funded you to take it further.

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