Category: History

S’pore’s Third Attempt to Set-up a Design Centre

Singapore will soon have a National Design Centre at 111 Middle Road. Consisting of a Design Gallery, Design Shop, and a Design and Innovation Academy, it will provide a “one-stop centre for design”, helping to promote design to the industry and businesses, said Minister Lui Tuck Yew at the President’s Design Award Ceremony on Friday.

It is not the first attempt to give the design community here a home. Back in 1964, the Economic and Development Board started promoting design to manufacturers as a way to make Made-in-Singapore products more competitive and exportable. It started a Product and Design Centre in the then John Little Building to showcase good design products so as to show businesses the need to use design.

In 1967, the centre was handed to the Singapore Manufacturers’ Association (SMA) and renamed the Product Display Centre. When SMA moved out of the building in 1973, it set up a display centre for Made-in-Singapore products in its new offices at Colombo Court Building. A year later, the government’s design promotion efforts were transferred to the Singapore Institute of Standards and Research (SISIR) where it was to remain till it became the work of the Trade and Development Board (TDB) in 1985.

The end of the 1980s saw a period when the government aggressively promote design when it began organising the International Design Forum and gave businesses money to use design. In 1992, the TDB opened The Design Centre at North Bridge Road. Consisting of three levels, The Design Centre had TDB’s design promotion offices, a design shop, an exhibition space to showcase good design, and a library stocked full of design books.

Many design students then paid the small membership fee to use the library as it was the only source for design books other than browsing at Basheer Graphic Books and Page One. However, just three years after it opened, the centre closed down when TDB moved into its offices at Bugis Junction. Many of the books were transfered to the National Library Board, and if you flip through a design book in the library today, you may just find a chop on the page that says “The Design Centre”.

So will this new design centre be third time lucky? Will it outlast what seems like the government’s cyclical support of design in Singapore? I sure hope so.

PAULARTSG

From Campaign Symbols To Campaign Containers

Two of Singapore’s oldest existing national campaigns icons are no longer just carriers of messages but have now become canvases for engaging the public in the latest incarnations of these public education drives. For almost three decades, Singa, the Courtesy Lion has been championing courtesy wearing just a t-shirt, and more recently, a pair of shorts. However, the Singapore Kindness Movement latest Project Singa has transformed the mascot to become a superhero, a student, a cyborg, an employee, or an award statue. Like the designer toy Qee, how this national icon looks is now entirely up to your design.

For a start, an initial collection of 34 Singa figurines have been designed to reflect the campaign’s partners and core messages. A Design-A-Singa competition has also been launched and 13 local artists were invited to customise their own Singas that will be showcased from 12-15 November as part of World Kindness Day.

The other icon that is now open to public “doodling” is the litter bin as part of the Clean and Green Singapore 2011 Carnival, which originated from a campaign to keep Singapore clean since 1968. The public can now enter the virtual world of Litter Munchers to design their own litter bin and see what others have done in the gallery too.

Personally, I think the designs of the litter bins aren’t as lovable as or distinctive as the Singa figurines, and it’s probably because Singa itself is a well-designed icon. In contrast, the litter bin is rather generic-looking. Aesthetics-aside, both initiatives do give the public a sense of ownership over the campaign icons, and that’s a great way to better engage them. It’ll be interesting to see how the icons evolve as more people design their own Singas and litter bins. Will these campaign icons one day lose their original meaning and become just empty containers?

Nostalgia For Sale!

I recently visited BooksActually’s new store in Cineleisure and was a little surprised that it sold few books, but lots of retro knickknacks instead. These range from the useful such as old notebooks and wooden rulers to the entirely kitsch such as fish-shaped soya sauce bottles and bird warblers.

Shopping at this BooksActually store reminded me of walking through Sungei Market (Thieves Market) with its range of curiosities and old stuff, except the store was more a curated exhibit rather than a market. Instead of discovering gems amongst the garbage, and haggling with an Uncle over the price, the objects have already been “sourced”, cleaned, and even price tagged for my purchase. A similar store that comes to mind is The Little Dröm Store, which is located near the main BooksActually store in Telok Ayer Street.

Though the items in both stores bring back memories of my past, I just find it hard to buy anything from them nowadays. I used to buy authentic artifacts from the past such as posters, pins and books. However, now that they sit on my shelves collecting dust, I question what use do these items have in a contemporary context? In paying for authenticity in these items, I have in fact commodified my memories for something that is just a simulation of it.

Increasingly, I’ll rather spend on an object created out of inspiration from the past, rather than something found from my past and put up for sale. Examples of what I’ll rather buy are items found in the newly-opened FARM Online Store. Take the Merlion Shopper for instance, a polyester version of the Merlion print plastic bag created by Hans Tan. Stocks of the original plastic bags would have been been “sourced” and sold at the stores peddling retro stuff, but this bag has actually been “redesigned” to contemporary times. Same goes for the 1960s National Museum Tote Bag.

On a side note, the Merlion Shopper probably sounds familiar because it first debuted as part of the exhibition Singapore Souvenirs held during last year’s Singapore Design Festival. The Kueh Tutu eraser from the same exhibition is also on sale.

An item I’m really keen on getting is Michael’s Lost Monuments Poster, a beautiful poster that appeals to nostalgia but has been placed in context.