obsessions & anything in between
I was digging through some old files to recover a certain image for a certain type of project for a certain client. Guess what I found!
I remember sticking these drafts up on the glass door sometime ago and photographing them. As you can see, I had a great time with my limited photography skills. Still one of my favorite projects so far.
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Got this out last month. Pretty much my first time dealing with mass consumer and food related design or graphics, which I have entirely no experience in.
Primary typeface is Linotype’s Clarendon. FF Zapata as secondary typeface for the logo.
Yeah by now you can tell that I’m displaying drafts and mock-ups here. Also, go there and try the food. My colleagues say the pasta taste good. It’s somewhere near One Utama.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Tonight at the One World Hotel, the Media Specialist Association celebrates the Malaysian Media Awards. Which also means, I’m celebrating the fact that one job is done.
Primary typefaces used are Gill Sans and Times New Roman for the booklet (design by Lilian). But as for the Invitation card, only uppercase Gill Sans was used.
Thinking of fusing the two makes sense as to the working relationship that Eric Gill and Stanley Morison had. Eventhough they didn’t work together on Gill Sans or Times New Roman, they still have much in common*. I do agree that our eyes get familiar with the shape of Times New Roman and it has been overly used. But the other side of the world holds interesting applications of the typefaces and also a very historical and appreciative approach to the application of the typeface side by side on a piece of paper.
The overlapping of the curved device at the corner of the ID was inspired by Art Deco movements. Yeah. Toned down into a more clean and minimal design, catered towards todays love for simplicity. Refer below to see what I mean.
The certificates uses the same look with the exception of the typefaces and the introduction of a more crisp and energetic typeface, Carter & Cone’s ITC Galliard designed by Matthew Carter. It felt right when Galliard’s Mannerist background stands side by side with Art Deco’s vibrant, abstract and striking visual nature.
The certificate identifies itself not only through the use of colors but also the overlapping of the colors manifesting categories of which each certificate represents. Gold winners over Silver & Bronze, etc. Clearly, the overlapping effect’s source of influence can be clearly seen below on Hermann Keimel’s Muenchner Plaket Kunst poster from 1931, Germany.
Above is an image of a book cover by Man Ray, Le Surrealisme et la Peinture by Andre Breton, 1928, France. See the influence of the rounded strokes at the upper right and lower left corners of each item?
To conclude, I don’t really embrace the whole Art Deco movement but there are times I do believe, historical references are important and can be useful in adding value and also to solve design problems. Also either as tributes or appreciations.
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*Historically, Gill Sans was designed much earlier than Times, 1928-1930. Taking also into consideration that Morison was actually one of Gill’s clients and that Gill Sans has actually drawn lots of influence from Edward Johnston’s sans serif for London Underground back in about 1916. We’re talking about absolute British here.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Primary typefaces: Super Grotesk A, B & C
Paper: Cover, Milk skin. Text, Edixion Matt White 120 gsm
Cover Specs: Gold Stamp + White Stamp
Pages: 124
Printing: 4 colour
Grid: 9 Columns
(Click on the link below for more pictures)
Popularity: 10% [?]
Work for kancilawards.com is almost over. Just a little tweaking here and there, inserting the TV ads, rechecking it often in case any Turkish hacker conquers the site. Now, the headace starts on the Kancil Awards annual.
Last year, we started out by getting the showcasing of the works done first; meaning sorting out the works into a position where the works do not repeat themselves across. Irrespective of which category(s) they might win in, they stick to the rule that one work only appear once. Works awarded Gold would have a full spread while the others get smaller and smaller in scale of winning. And then, moving on to the look of the annual.
It started as a huge almost A3 size annual conceptualizing a newspaper. It was turned down because by last years jury chairman because it will appear sloopy on the bookshelf and he wanted something more appealing to the eyes. Something more prestigious? Something that members of the 4A’s will be proud of to show the best of Malaysian Advertising.
We had a fair amount of time last year to get the annual delivered just in time for the Kancil Awards. This year, time is a factor. Due to heavy work in trying to produce collaterals for the awards, in the midst of that collecting all the artworks and making sure that they are all in place; while liaising with various parties, I realize how short the amount of time we have:
Two weeks to complete an annual.
What’s done for now is only the look of the annaul and some production specs for the cover of the annual. Some outtakes of cover sketches are shown below. If you want to know the designs of the final cover, wait for few weeks.
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Currently, the whole studio is busy with things concerning the Kancil Awards Festival which is scheduled to be held from the 1st to 2nd of November 2007. Lets just basically say that every event collateral is our responsibility in this case. Mr. Bodoni did the event identity and Kay & myself were basically just sitting around attending meetings. Ah Chuan was busy helping out in the website stuff. Pui Kam was busy handling the souvenir booklet which is to be given out during the Kancil Awards Night.
The one thing that Mr. Ling is actually paying a little extra attention to is the Kancil Annual. Compared to last year, this time round we only have about less than a month to complete the entire book. Which is tough due to the hassle of getting all the artworks into soft-copy format either via original files or screen-shots or photographed. Jen Ling will busy with another project at that time but we are all hoping that it will be done then and that she can lend us a hand in the annual as well.
By the way, check out these quirky illustrations drawn by Thang Wei and Jelli, designed by Jiad Li:
If you get it, it’s pretty funny.
Popularity: 11% [?]
It’s pretty interesting when the designer gets a say in the content of what he is actually designing. Given a space to sort out ideas and generating content instead of merely arranging a layout. I think it would be fair to mention that this is another different level of design, differing from the idea that designers only receive the finalized text and go through the entire process of seeking approval from the client based merely on making things neat, legible and nice.
British American Tobacco Malaysia approached a few agencies to pitch in search of an agency to take on the task of redesigning their internal magazine, Contact. We got our hands on the job with a pitch that emphasizes more on the idea of an internal newsletter that acts more like a community builder instead of a very work oriented technical booze. Emphasizing on topics that displays about what colleagues are like, how they work in the office, things that they love doing most, family moments and also displaying shared experiences across.
Pretty much a job that took about a month and a half to complete, we took the task of hunting for a translator, attended countless meetings, arranging interviews, attending luncheons, taking photographs for events, giving suggestions, building ideas and finally, start designing.
The first issue I encountered is that this is the fact that it has to be in two languages, English and the Malaysian national language, Bahasa Malaysia. Borrowing from the idea from the later Colors magazine, distinguishing them with colors. English shown in Cyan while Bahasa Malaysia in black. Headlines were also distinguished by colors of BAT’s Corporate Signature blue for English and Signature Yellow likewise. It gets tougher as the headlines and sub-headlines, info-graphics, charts and pull-outs come into the picture.
A typical magazine would always open up with a section dedicated to News and Announcements. Rather than the typical given name, we thought that it would be interesting to give it a little twist, naming the section “On the Surface”. Since it is usually the first hit that a reader will read through. To push it even further, we built on the idea of visually displaying the text on the surface of a notice board.
Moving on, large companies usually have certain initiatives where employees are informed about each other’s whereabouts and current job positions within. Previously, this article was presented in a pretty serious monotonous way where ID images were shown with absolute seriousness in copy when read. So, instead of a typical spread showing plainly pictures of the promotees or new hires, the client requested for a more human touch. We then created various questions which were then sent out to all of them to be answered to give readers a better idea of their personality. We named the section ‘Voices!’ and bummed speech bubbles for each employee shout-out.
A new article was introduced featuring ‘A day in a life’ of a Process Specialist. I went with the copywriter to conduct the interview in a very loud, filled with machines factory hall. Its pretty interesting to see the entire process of how the inspections is actually being handled in there. Plugged with heavy-duty ear-plugs, I was actually trying to figure out pretty important stuff that I was being told by doing analytical lip-movement reading.
We also suggested names for various sections: Where to Eat? was changed to Escape! (Since food is one of the best things in life).
Some other spreads:
Primary Typefaces: Gotham Rounded, ITC Stone Sans, Helvetica Neue & some hand-drawn typefaces! Printed on matt art (text) and art card with matt lamination (cover). 52 pages total.
Post production, what was needed is a loud event to create a huge ‘bang’ effect to create absolute awareness about the magazine. Realizing that they had pick up trays all over the company for employees to pick up the magazines, we figured out that it would be pretty interesting to have a shout-out to persuade people to grab a copy of the magazine from the trays. Since we wanted to get rid of as many issues as possible from the trays, the results were:
Upon launching the magazine, instead of just plain boring banners announcing the launch, we proposed them to go roaming: Loud-hailers, clanging cymbals, lucky-draws, spontaneous games, etc. brought directly to each department over Virginia Park. We got good feedbacks on this one. Everyone had a great time during the launch, instead of the typical stage, speech and stomach thing.
It’s rewarding to build ideas across the corporate platform and seeing them slowly evolving from one to another. Simple ideas turn complex. Corporate jobs can be fun really. The client brought Kay & me for lunch at Alexis afterwards. (Thanks Eileen & Janice!)
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@ FiFFteen in Goa, 2006 
