Phunk Soul Brothers

Alvin I think we were all quite lucky to go through a period of time in design where the internet hadn't fully taken over yet, unlike today. It's very easy now for any designer to reach another person through sliding into DMs (direct messages) on Instagram. Previously, we really had to have design parties or design programs. And we travelled to different countries to meet different designers and connect with them that way. And a few highlights, I would say, would be our first show in New York City.

That's when we first got the experience of showing our art to the rest of the world and conversing and making contacts and connections with creative people. And then that led on to a few other cities like Sydney, which was really fun for us. I think it was the first time we spoke to a crowd of like, 3000 designers. That was quite mind blowing. And then after that, there were a few shows in Berlin, or in Tokyo, where we got to make other connections that led to other collaborations, like with Tanaami-san (Keiichi Tanaami), and we also did a project for the Rolling Stones in LA as well.

So I guess those people connections and travel events are probably what we miss quite a bit. I think the connections with how designers approach collaborations these days is quite different. It's both good and bad. The good is that you can reach the other person directly. But then you lose a little bit of serendipity there, which I find is the beauty when we go to events like these.

Jackson Like what the guys shared, the high points are really the chances to travel together and go to all these places to do amazing, crazy stuff. Probably the lowest point would be when we were moving our studio and we put all our stuff in a warehouse a few years ago, and it caught fire during Christmas Eve.

I was out of town and I got a call from William telling me that everything was burned. And he sent me pictures from the guys from the warehouse and it was just carcasses of whatever they had. All our artworks that we had kept for ourselves, our furniture, our collectible things, everything that was in the history was there, it was burned. So we had to move to a new studio and start afresh. That was very painful for us. But I think we learnt a lot from that about what really mattered to us, and moved on from there.

Jackson Yeah, many of the things got destroyed. Also, we kept a good archive of all our previous works from our museum retrospective shows. So that being burned, we had to basically re-collect. We were lucky, some people who collected our works or our friends, they started to send back some of the publications to us. So that was really nice of them.

William Yeah, I was thinking that really is one of the lowest points actually. But in a way it was quite interesting because it gave us a clean slate, because at that point, we were already 15 to 17 years in already. It's sort of like, yeah, burn everything down and start over again. I guess that's where we really go hardcore into doing art from that point onwards.

William PHUNK has never been—even right from the start—set up like a design studio in a business kind of setting. Right from the start, we got together because of the projects that we wanted to do. And all along, the model of it as a business wasn't that important to us.

So as we progressed, we actually don't do a lot of client servicing work. A lot of times when PHUNK works, it's always been on our own terms, and in the way we want. And it's always very collaborative with whatever brands that we're working with. So it's always sort of like, a brand and PHUNK doing something, and this is how we actually enjoy the kind of work that we do.

So just to answer your question, after our first 10 years, we started to think whether this was the way to go. Should we continue to work with brands or to move into something where we can create our own artwork, maybe become artists who create our own content and own ideas, to showcase the kind of thinking that these four people have developed over the last decade. So we had already started doing that, and it was through this fire that we literally lost all our baggage.

What we were left with were actually just some stationery, a few pencils. And when we moved into a new studio, we literally had nothing. I mean, seriously, like nothing. Because everything that we were supposed to move from one space is all gone, there's nothing left. This gave us a very clean slate, and then we started discussing amongst ourselves: where did we want to go from here? Did we want to buy back some equipment and do what we used to do? Or do something else completely different? I think that was the point where I felt that we really started to go very deep into art, doing paintings and more than just printing and doing 3D works and stuff like that. Yeah.

Alvin Yeah, so we actually have a gallery who represents us for contemporary art. On that end, we do a lot of museum collaborations and commission works, and also private collection works. And we try as much as possible to do one exhibition every year, although we are slowing down even on that, a little bit. Because we're old.

So that side covers the contemporary part of our projects. And there'll be corporate brand collaborations who come to us as well, for either design projects or to design a product. Like, for example, we did carpets before, with our letters. We also collaborated with Tiger Beer and all the alcohol brands before and stuff like that. And then on our own, we would individually participate and take part in art events, design events, and projects. And we also run our own design practices individually. So that kind of forms this entire circle of work that we do, because we know from day one that all of us, we are just very distracted people, we can't do just one thing. We're multitaskers and we love to get our foot into a lot of things and we will try things. We'll try new things. So in a nutshell, I think that is how we function.

Jackson When we first started, we started as a collective and the four of us realised very early on that the four of us weren't going to run a company together like a design studio. It didn't feel right for us, because each of us has different preferences on how we want to work when it's in a proper design studio setup, and also in different fields as well, because let's say I like curation, maybe William likes motion graphics, for example.

So even though we like all the disciplines, each of us likes to specialise in different things. We wanted PHUNK to be pure, as the four of us don't have any employees. Instead of like what our peers would do as a design studio, we modelled ourselves as a band. We looked at people like the Beatles where there're four of them, but there're many people around them that work with them to make the works of four people amplify. That's where PHUNK becomes powerful – when we have people surrounding us, whether it's gallerists, our agents, or the teams that work around us today. What happens is we still share the same studio together. So PHUNK is at the core of it and our various studios like BLACK and TMRRW are our support systems.

William I think that as a band, like any other band, first of all, you need to have a common goal. Or even when it comes to taste and the liking of a certain direction and style, I think we sort of have that. When we met in school, we had this love of popular culture, or where the things are going. So I think that is how we actually got together. But as graphic designers in a metaphor of a band, what we brought in is our different preferences in terms of design skill sets. Like Jackson just mentioned, he likes curation and I like moving visuals. Alvin does a lot of graphic design and fashion-based sort of work. And Melvin is a very good illustrator.

We take it as each of us plays a different set of instrument, but we are in the field of graphic design. And I think all these things sort of fill up whatever we can't individually do. I can draw but I can't draw like Melvin. And I don't have that sense in terms of curation like Jackson or the sense of fashion of what Alvin does. We somehow manage over the years to work as one unit, and I think that is what makes us unique, like a band.

Jackson This is an interesting question, we've never really asked ourselves that. Whether we have a bucket list... Yeah, I guess we were constantly challenging ourselves, so we have no idea what's going to be next. It's definitely going to be something different from what we're doing now.

Jackson Yeah, I think we are easily bored, so we constantly change and do something new. And of course, I think now, you know, talking about new frontiers, there's a lot of people talking about digital frontiers. So maybe there's something that PHUNK might look into, but we haven't really talked about yet.

William For us it's also how the four of us develop with age. And with age, obviously, certain things become more interesting than others. So the new frontier could be more internalised in the sense that it's about how, as artists, we move on, rather than being a reflection of what the outside world is doing. So I guess that's part of the journey for us as well.

William I think as a group we've always talked about the PHUNK universe. That started almost 10 over years ago, when we started our journey into art. And that universe that we created is basically a warped reflection of what we see through the eyes of four Singaporean boys, and then to men. This universe has obviously evolved along with our age as well, so the work that comes out along the way also evolved. I guess it's ok to share our age – we are going to be in our 50s soon. So obviously, the way we see things, the way we approach things and with the influence of new technology, we will see it differently as well. And I guess our hope is to really, you know, for us to not just be based on external influence, but to be internalised as how we are, as we grow, to come up with something fresh and new, based on our perspective as artists.

Alvin I think we don't really have bucket lists, as much as we'd like to have. I think we'll always go with our current point of interest. And I think that's where the art or the design projects really spurs from. So we take that point of interest, and we usually spin off a project or we use that point of interest to work on something new. Yeah, I don't think we have much... William what were you saying just now, I kind of lost it.

William I think what Alvin is saying is that not too much of it is born from external influence, we are obviously very aware of what's going on and we will incorporate it into our work, but we are more finding our own narrative to express the work.

Alvin Our interest basically comes from within. The universe that we created began when we were young and influenced by a lot of pop culture, we were like sponges absorbing all these imageries and this library that we created. So I think now we just kind of use that as an internal kind of library to create our own universe.

Jackson I think the biggest contributor to our success would be friendship. It's definitely friendship, because we stayed friends for so many years. And when we first started, it's always about our friendship coming first before everything else. So I think that's very important. The other one is that we were at the right place at the right time. Because Singapore was opening up, the world was getting smaller because of the internet. The change of technology, that really helped us a lot.

Alvin I think PHUNK is more like a family. Definitely there will be like conflicts in friendships. But I think if you're family you look past those conflicts, and we just worked things out along the way. So I think that's at the core of PHUNK as well.

Through the years we started to grow and learn about each other a lot more through the 26 years of being together. So we can actually pre-empt a lot of all the times what each other is thinking. We have this inside joke about how we visualise things. We tend to have a very similar visualisation of, say, a banana or an apple. And there's this funny story of how we were in New York City once and we went our separate ways to do our own shopping. But we came back with the same APC black military shirt, and it's the exact same one, all four of us. We're not gay, by the way. We take that as something quite precious. Because we can really understand each other so well. We're not just colleagues. Most things happen quite naturally. And that's what we're grateful for.

Alvin We're LGBT supporters also, woke people!

William I think both Jack and Alvin have cleaned it out. Like they said, we grew up together. Obviously, we started as teenagers, then we became young adults. And then we've become middle-aged men, and then we got married. So this is a life journey. And along the way, all of us changed, you know, it's natural. Things we see start to change, obviously, that will inflict some kind of conflicts in along the way. But I guess we saw a bigger picture, and then we sort of worked things out internally. Because at the end of the day, we enjoy the friendship.

It's hard to find people that you can claim to know each other in your late teens, and you've been doing work continuously with for the last 26 years. I think this in itself is quite precious, we sense that and we know that. So I think we always see the bigger picture, and that bigger picture offsets those more minor or pettier things that happen along the way.

William I think the appetite of designers these days and when we started are pretty much the same, I think the driven ones are still very driven, you know, the ones that want to do something. The only difference I felt is obviously the time and place. The technology back then and the technology now. Because of those influences, I think the expectations have shifted quite greatly. Back then, as Alvin mentioned, we used snail mail to communicate, and then came emails later on. So I think we appreciate the sense of time that development takes, that things will happen, but it takes time.

But I think with technology these days, I think a lot of them, they're good, they can do something. But the expectation of things happening instantly is very obvious. It's like, if I don't make it in six months' time, I will just try something else. But for us it's not one year, because it takes a couple of months or even half a year to finish a project. So it's nothing, a couple of months. For me, that's the slight difference.

In terms of the general design scene, I think it's very healthy especially when you see there's so many design schools springing up, and universities. I think it's going a very good direction in that sense. But it's just the way that the more students there are, the elimination process is also bigger in the sense. Only a group of them will survive in this field.

Alvin I think there are definitely more choices these days than our time when it comes to design and art—there’s many more schools now. So I think that the talent out there is, well, compared to what we had prior is definitely stronger and more. I think they are very skilled in what they can do digitally as well.

I totally agree on the time factor, like I mentioned before, the way we used to connect is so different. So I think it's also about the way of connecting, and about instant gratification. And we are true process believers, we believe the process sometimes is as important as the end goal. So in terms of that, there's nothing wrong with being able to reach someone instantly on Instagram or through an email to reach out for projects. But it's also cultivating that relationship or that friendship, to lead to the project, which is hard to find today. Even we ourselves fall prey to that, we also like to take the shortest path to reach out to someone. But I think it just changes the design process a little bit.

But in terms of talent pool out there, it’s definitely vast, bigger. My advice to young designers would be to take a breather, take a little bit more time to decide on what you want to do. And maybe try not use DM on IG for a year and see how it goes. If you were to do a collaboration, try that and it might change the process and you might find something new out of it.

Alvin Because most of the younger designers I work with, most of time that's the approach that they take. So it takes an older guy like ourselves to tell them that maybe there's another way of seeing.

Jackson When we first started, they said that Singapore is a cultural desert. Obviously it's changed a lot in the last two, three decades. There's much more opportunities now for Singaporean designers and creatives. But also at the same time it changes the expectations, because when we were younger, nobody expected anything of Singaporean designers to achieve anything. But now the expectations are high, designers expect to get well paid, to win awards, to be recognised. And you're starting to see a lot of younger designers or creatives getting anxious. Even when they're in school, they're already anxious about whether they're going to make money or whether they're going to be successful.

My advice to them is to take it easy and just really enjoy the work that you're doing. Because when you enjoy something, and you do it well, the success and the money will come to you. But if you start to fixate on the money and the success, and not enjoy the process, nothing will come to you.

Alvin Maybe a question that interviewers have never really asked us would be how do we see ourselves at 80 years old, maybe?

William I don't know. I suppose, if I'm not dead. Yeah, I think over time, since you brought up how we see ourselves with PHUNK and our family. I think the first 10 to 15 years, we spent too much time together, because we almost literally see each other daily. After the first 10, 15 years, we started to consider, maybe we shouldn't see each other so often. Because I think we need to start to develop our own life outside PHUNK. Otherwise you know, it's very hard for us to actually have any relationship with anybody. Because all we did for the first 10 years was just to hang out with each other everywhere we go.

William Even back then my girlfriend would ask, "What are you doing this weekend?", and I'd say “I'm gonna hang out the PHUNK guys to discuss some stuff.” And I think she probably thinks, "Are you sure you guys just hang out with each other to talk about stuff?" Yeah, that's what we do all the time, you know?

Like I said, it was very hard to develop relationships with others because we always functioned as a unit back then. And everything that we did revolved around what PHUNK is doing. And because that was a time where we have a lot of projects that we always thought about. So yeah, that's why I say it's very hard for us to first develop any meaningful relationship outside of PHUNK with other people, if we see each other all the time.

Jackson Like what William said, as long as we're not dead. It's a lifetime membership.

Jackson More or less?

Alvin I asked that question because during COVID we experienced death as well. Jackson's mom and my dad just passed away within the past year. So going back to just what we've said about us being a unit and all that right, I guess, when we grow old together, at least we know we have each other to depend on. Of course we have our wives. Because we are not gay.

Jackson Thanks very much.