Category: 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 

One Graphic Designer Challenges Viewers By Not Showing Any Work at His Retrospective

At the mid-career retrospective of graphic designer Hanson Ho last month, visitors might have been surprised to see not a single piece of work he created in the past 16 years.

Instead, the gallery walls were adorned with a salmon-colored semi-circle, a grey square, and framed black rectangles, amongst other simple shapes. These are the building blocks of the elemental and modernist creations by the Singaporean designer, better known as the founder of H55 studio. When Ho thought about looking back at the output of the studio he founded in 1999, he decided to pay homage to the aesthetic fundamentals of his practice instead of staging a “meaningless” show-and-tell exhibition.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

Print: Here to Stay

That you are reading this report on a print design event online via a digital screen speaks volumes about the state of printed matter today. Once the default, print publishing has been challenged by the Internet and digital technology over the last decade – best summed up by the now cliché proclamation that “Print is Dead”.

Yet the medium has not just survived, but is enjoying a revival as witnessed by the well-attended “Print Design: Books, magazines, zines – here to stay!” event held recently at the National Design Centre. Veteran graphic designer Kelley Cheng of The Press Room, emerging design duo Sarah & Schooling, and magazine retailer Magpie’s founder Annabelle Fernandez were invited to make sense of print’s longevity. The quartet of print lovers offered a behind-the-scenes peek at how they produced and distributed printed publications before diving into a discussion moderated by Adib Jalal, director of Shophouse & Co, the organiser of this event.

➜ Read the rest at IndesignLive Singapore