Stefan's answers

Our favorite designer got a new website with some advices for all of us.

About Ikko Tanaka

认识田中一光（1930－2002）是今年初在日本偶遇他的海报回顾展。60-70年代已经制作出这么多一流的作品，人工丝网印刷的海报很有质感，艺术感浓厚。无意中拜见到大师的作品可以说获益良多，亦对自己今时今日也只能‘骗吃’的水准觉得惭愧⋯

回到新加坡后在苏格拉底猫发现《设计的觉醒》一书，价钱贵了一半但是还是买了下来，数个月后的今天终于把它读完。

田中先生除了是一流的海报设计师之外，也热爱书籍、杂志设计，还能写文章，演戏剧，煮饭，出色的领导人和先见者⋯ 多产量同时又高质素，简直是神级的人物。MUJI品牌的产生，田中先生亦是主要的幕后功臣，当时原研哉都还未加入行列。

这几个月都一直带着它，有时间就刨几页⋯ 对于日本从大战后慢慢复苏，一班充满热诚的设计师把平面设计的理念崛起、延伸和茁壮起来，的确令人兴奋。旅行时刚好读到这一篇文章感觉特别亲切：

“ 一个人的创想之旅（1987）

设计师工作的原点是观察。观察世界，观察人类，观察文化。

只是，这样的旅行一定要一人独自完成，万万不可结成团队。因为如果不是一个人行走，是吸收不到有助于设计的养分的。而越是单独行动，才越有机会更多地和人和物接触⋯ ”

然后想起其实Sagmeister也曾经写过类似的话：Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life, 突然为自己的旅程也感到兴奋起来。我不擅长表达自己的感想，search到这个人的读后感应该写得比我好: 齐婧妍。

很可惜好像田中一光，杉普康平，龟仓雄策，福田繁雄等等这种老一辈大师级的作品在网上并不齐全，比较简洁介绍田中先生的网站在这里。年轻的时候完全忽视这些最根本的设计之美，一直追求不实际的奢华的cool graphics... 而其实这些才是真正平面设计的内涵和底蕴所在。

要学习的，还有很多很多呢⋯

( By the way, the book I've read about Ikko Tanaka was in Chinese, I find it's hard for me to write this post in English, if you can't understand Chinese... use google translator >_< '' )

we can't depend on others to make things happen.

browsing copy

Last few weeks Roy passed me this book and got me to doodle on it for his 'Browsing Copy' project. The time line is really tight when it comes to me, so in the end I just go with the fastest method: cut, paste and spray. Since the original title is 'A Century of Thai Cinema', my idea was just to make the whole book feels like a movie countdown. Nothing marvelous...

Everything was a bit too rush, but I do enjoy the busyness. I should have think about more short term projects like this, at least I had a slightly more meaningful weekend.











For more browsing copies. www.browsingcopy.com

for those who are sleeping

Back then in W+K Shanghai office, there is a comfortable cotton sofa lies right behind my desk. Everyday there is people hanging around behind me, chilling out, chatting, resting, or even sleeping. I used to take pictures of all these sleeping people with my instant mini.

Before I left the company, I decided to compound all these photographs into a tiny booklet (I love book), and gave out as a souvenir for my lovely friends and colleagues during my last day at work.

Some of them told me that they were really touched after seeing the book, even their eyes were wet. I felt so warm indeed... that was the first time I truly felt that design could really touch someone heart... Thanks for all the beautiful memories.

I will always miss you all, hope we can meet again real soon...


上海的哥们，请继续牛B⋯

Universal Everything

Amplifying. Exaggerating. Pushing the boundaries.

Universal Everything. Definitely one of the most cutting edge studio in the universe. I'd actually bookmark their project site - Everyoneforever at the bottom left menu since i started this blog :D I was in love with their stuffs from the first time I stumbled upon their website.

I always thought that such advance design studio must be teamed up by a huge bunch of great designers, animators, or even scientists. I was wrong, just found out that Universal Everything is mainly run by this one guy, with his laptop and mobile phone... unbelievable. Matt Pyke, the founder of UE, worked for The Designer Republic for 8 years, and started his own studio in 2004. He only hired a studio manager, and then work closely with talented people from different fields on different projects.

They always pushing the works to the edge, being different from the norm. I really love what he say about "I like not knowing about 3D animation probably... partly because I'm rubbish at it, and partly it keeps that childhood innocent... ". (Maybe simply because I'm actually doing web design now -_- but I have no proper knowledge in it as well, hehe...) Have a look at his lecture, very inspiring.


Also read his interview : Here.

the pursuit of happiness

It's Stefan Sagmeister again! Learned a new word today:
Sabbatical (n) - a period of paid leave granted to college teacher for study or travel, traditionally every seventh year. 休假年

This is almost my 5th years in the industry after graduated (although 1 and half year in between I worked as a freelancer together with Chris, and was doing my robonut stuff as well). There are officially 2 more years to go for me to have a good reason not working for anyone. Should plan ahead for this and we shall never give up on our personal projects =)

lovely malaysian designer / part2

Since I've already started the thread, and also added a new tag called 'Malaysia'. Let's talk about some more talented designers from Malaysia. (It's only up to my personal taste and knowledge, it'll be nice if you have any names to suggest, drop me a line.)


Kawakong / www.kawakong.com


"like the others, we have mission too. for us, design is categorized into two sections, 1.‘design for client’ and 2.‘design for us’; and our mission is to make the gap closer each everyday."

Kawakong just have their new site up! This lovely and incredible friendly couple really inspired me a lot few years ago. While I was just a fresh grad who only draw illustration/characters, and thought those were cool design! I got to know Chung and Ming around 2005, they commissioned me to put up their website by my very limited knowledge in flash... yes, I'm the one who did their v1 website years ago, haha... I was so impressed by their works, how can these people make those boring graphic design looks so good... and their personal illustrations too, which were so amazing.

I have to admit because of them, I started appreciate graphic design as it is. And slowly realize that Nice graphic ≠ Good design.

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Alvin Chan / www.alvinchan.nl


This is a very mysterious man for me. I never heard about his name, only stumble upon his website via some design portals quite recently. Flipping through his works and his bio really gave me a shocked. He worked for Studio Dumbar, Koeweiden Postma before, and currently is a Design Director for Nike Europe in Netherlands. Impressive!

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Tattfoo Tan / www.tattfoo.com

He called himself a social sculpture artist. Tattfoo is one of a kind that blurring the border between Art and Design. From what I know he used to lectured in Dasein long times ago even before I enrolled. He is currently based in New York, did a lot of conceptual projects and write a lots @.@ It takes time to understand the concepts behind each projects, but it's worth to look at all the interesting projects that he has produced.

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to be continue...

lovely malaysian designer

"Sueh Li is a graphic and type designer from Penang, Malaysia. She stay and study in The Netherlands since 2007. She is a graduate from the Type and Media Master program in Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She is currently based in London."

Real good designer from Malaysia, wow... she makes me want to pack my stuff now and go study Typography again! Check it out. www.suehlitan.com

green green grass

- by grass studio

Grass Studio, is where I first started my career as a graphic designer right after my graduation. Working with the talented lecturer Herbie and colleague at that time, Lian Siah, is definitely one of the greatest experience in my life, I've learned a lot from them. No Grass no me.

Grass has the spirit of being alternative, has guts, and seems like getting better and better all these years. I'm so proud that I used to be one of the team, 各位老细大恩大德细佬实在是感激不尽。

Recently Herbie is putting up all Grass's works online, it's suppose to function as an open report from Grass to Dasein Academy Of Art, it'll be good if you can post your thoughts and comments on the blog, coz they are gathering some feedbacks from public. Go Here.

And also I re-uploaded the old Grass site as well, Have fun~

Our neighbour designers

Stumbled upon a list, a damn long list of Singapore creative and design studios. I was so impressed, and at the same time i do feel ashame...

Honestly, I can't even think of more than 10 Malaysia design studio which is really great in quality and pioneer in the industry. Those who know how to promote themselves and act to be famous usually cannot do good works; those who are doing good works are never exposed and also never have their website updated. There are many young and passionate designers around but only selling their works in flea market. And we got some established studios but are just too old fashioned and not energetic enough, we also got very good advertising people, but they usually only care about their awards and fuck care the design industry.

Is there something to do with our market or uneducated clients? I don't know... of course there are tons of talented Malaysian designers around, I don't know why our design industry is not moving any forward. We check many good stuffs everyday, we know what is good and what is bad, but why we can only produce so-so works most of the time. Maybe we're not trying hard enough, maybe we should stop doing 'good, but not good enough' stuff, maybe it is due to our country leader don't have any art sense, maybe we Malaysian only want to be relax... I don't know. Maybe I'm not even qualified to talk about this, of course I'm blaming myself too.



- werk magazine by workwerk



- high and dry by &larry



- 20/20 movement by black design


- brill by couple



- chocolate research facility by asylum



- a catholic view on marriage+sexuality by H55


Damn... you should check out the Singapore's creative list.
Never able to see every single one, but some i do really like:

http://www.workwerk.com
http://www.andlarry.com
http://www.theasylum.com.sg
http://www.phunkstudio.com
http://www.equus-design.com
http://www.kinetic.com.sg
http://www.blackdesign.com.sg
http://www.h55studio.com
http://www.10am-asia.com
http://www.couple.com.sg
http://www.silnt.com
http://www.jonathanyuen.com (this is Malaysian)


If you have any good suggestion on really kick-ass local design studio/ individual, please send it to me, maybe we should compile one Malaysia creative list too (atleast 1-10). We still have a long way to go...

Onwards by James Jarvis

All time favorite illustrator James Jarvis' latest moving image Onwards in collaboration with Syhnola.



And part of the video is actually inspired by David Shrigley's work, who i admired a lot too:

'I had been an admirer of Shynola's collaboration with David Shrigley in their promo for the track Good Song. I liked the way it maintained Shrigley's drawn aesthetic in its transformation into moving image, so I contacted them to see if they would be interested in working with me on the idea. Richard 'Kenny' Kenworthy agreed, and worked heroically on the film.'

Always love James' works for being so whimsical and humorous. I still remember and inspired by his talk during IdN My favorite conference in 2004, about his theory on 'logically illogical' or 'illogically logical', which i think is still reflects on his works nowadays.

By the way the music by Caribau is lovely too.

Ten Graphic Design Paradoxes

Another article by Adrian Shaughnessy which i think is worth reading.
Kinda like his thought because he is always being honest and constructive. He mentioned something in his recent article which i feel relevant to me:

"For designers, verbal skills are as important as visual skills."
"Ideas usually fail not because they're bad ideas, but because they're badly presented."

Years ago i keep insists 'good design can always speak for themselves'.
But after awhile i realize that is not utterly true. Knowing how to present really helps a lot in selling an idea, and that is why some suck businessman-designers can win the business whilst some good otaku-designers cannot.

I'm completely suck in verbal skill and presentation. Damn it, although i'm not really enjoy talk cock about my design... but better be modest and keep learning.

Read Adrian's full article here.

Grid is great

I was always fascinated with typography. During my college time, the lecturer only teaching us "look at this, look at that." for whole semester, in the end i still have no clue what is typography all about.

Thanks to the internet, now we can grab any information online. The thing that I've learned recently and really excited about (after years working in this field), is how to set a baseline grid! Shame on me...
So basic yet so important. Check it out!



The grid is the foundation of any solid design, I wish i've learned all this years ago... Anyway, here are more stuff about grid system too.



The grid is just so great~

Sexiness

Just finish reading this seductive book - 固态阅读, a book about Irma Boom's design. She is definitely one of the best book designer in the world. Totally amazed by the thinking and efforts behind every single book designed by Irma, from the big idea, layout, typeface, binding, paper, ink, and so on, every single details had been taken care of. By reading her actual books will get stimulation of various senses...

See more, or buy the book here.

finally think simple act simple

Started from middle of 2008, It's already more than a half year i've been planning to work on my portfolio site. Doing personal stuff always can't see an end, everything seems not good enough and the changes are like forever...

Finally make up my mind and put everything all up. Let's check it out :D
www.thinksimpleactsimple.com




In fact at the very beginning i was thinking of make up a fancy flashy site, well actually i'd already did... with a lot of helps from lovely 'Abang Jay' from Kinetic, really sorry Abang i throw away all your efforts >.< ( for girls please consider this lovely guy, add him in facebook ).

To not waste Abang's effort completely, i decided to put this incomplete version online too ~ www.thinksimpleactsimple.com/beta



The end is just another beginning. It's time to work on next project... XO

Fame

"If you want to be famous, the first thing you have to do is stop wanting to be famous." - Adrian Shaughnessy

This is one of the most important quote that influenced me a lot few years ago, by Adrian Shaughnessy in his very first book - How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul.

Read Adrian's interview here.

I'm not gay

After years working as a graphic designer, I feel bored by flipping at those purely graphic art, advertising or illustration magazines. In contrary, I am slowly into other fields like industrial, interior, architecture, fine art and so on. Looking at design from other fields actually keep my mind fresh when I'm working on my own.

I don't really want to admit this... But i do attracted by fashion design recently. What i means is really fashion kind of fashion, not only about printing graphic on a T-shirt. Probably started from my Tokyo's trip 2 years ago, i was really fascinated by all the fashion brands like Undercover, Head Porter, Neighborhood, Visvim, A Bathing Ape, Beams, etc. By visiting their stores are totally different experience from what we read from magazine, although i'll never be able to afford one of those...

And then slowly I learn more about those Hi-fashion labels like Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, agnès b, Maison Martin Margiela, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Bernhard Willhelm and so on. All the names that I used to see on magazine every time but have no idea what the heck are they really about. (I still have no clue though)

Looking into how a fashion perfectionist taking care of every single details in their cloths, branding, and also their fashion show, I realized why my printed tees can only sell for $10 while Comme des Garçons's can sell for $1000. It's the same theory where some 'designers' charge a logo design for $10 while some can charge for $10k.

I'm not a Hi-fashion person, we doesn't need to buy all those cloths to appreciate a fashion designer's work. Just thinking that if we can appreciate other's design, others might try to appreciate ours too. I used to be a raw and ragged person and proud of wearing a fake Ape Sta. But nowadays i started caring about what to put on my body. Sure is not those big name, but will try to examine the details, cutting, and craftsmanship a little bit more before I'm wearing it.

I'm not a gay, maybe just one tiny step closer to a metrosexual...

the ___ cards

A senior and also good friend of mine Jonathan has new project again!
I really hate this guy coz he always did brilliant works and keep reminding me how suck I am. The ___ cards

I love Jap / part2

Jun Takahashi 高桥盾 / Fashion
The mastermind behind Undercover. Jun Takahashi is a multi talented genius, his gift from street fashion to hi-fashion, drawing to sculpting are undeniable. I'm still regret i didn't buy a Undercover's tee last time when i visited Tokyo... also check out his blog.



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Wonderwall / Interior
Bathing ape, Collete, Uniqlo, 100% Chocolate Cafe, Beams T... Yes, almost all the chic, designy, good looking store that i can ever think of, are designed by Wonderwall inc, founded by Masamichi Katayama 片山正通



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Kazunari Hattori 服部一成 / Graphic Design
If you ever flipped Tokyo Art Director or Type Director club's annuals, you would probably have seen Kazunari's works before. The regular winner of both awards, his design is so simple yet unique, check out his latest exhibition.



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Tadao Ando 安藤 忠雄 / Architect
The master Architect, the one who designed the church of the light. Ando did not receive any formal architectural schooling. Instead, he trained himself by reading and traveling extensively through Africa, Europe, and the United States. Really love his trademark 'dotted' concrete wall.