Small But Steady

I didn’t go to Australia per se, I got my degree from Curtin University but it’s through a program that my college at that time piloted. So, I took the degree course, but from Malaysia. So, I don’t have to go to Australia and spend more money, hence I completed my degree in KL.

I only worked in KL for 8 months in a single agency, so I can’t say much about that. But in terms of like lifestyles, and hmm… the kind of work, the kind of clients both places have, definitely, there is quite a bit of differences lah.

Hmmm… (laughs). That is a good question. Hmmm… I have been for like almost 20-plus years… yeah, I would consider myself a Singaporean designer… I mean, a lot of things are definitely influenced by context… in terms of local context and also like all the things that I see, all the things that I learn, all the things that I draw inspiration from… a big part of it is definitely from my surroundings. So, I guess, yeah, I am a Singaporean designer (laughs).

I wouldn’t say yes or no… because I think each designer, whether they are young, aspiring, upcoming… I think each will eventually find their own place in the grand scheme of things? Some may have a more global mindset, so it’s okay that… you know… their works are more globally situated. Some are more interested in, say, their own cultural and history… a bit more rooted, you know? So, instinctively they will draw their inspirations from their surroundings, so their work will be pretty much rooted in the local context. That is fine as well. So, I think - to each his own, with all these things around us, it’s up to them if they want to grab it or not.

Okay, our process is kind of quite fluid in that sense… it really depends on the scope and budget (laughs). Yeah, so hmm… bigger budget, bigger scope… we will definitely have a lot more steps, a lot more details that we need to work on. But whether it is a big branding project or small, they will all follow a few key steps in a sense lah. The very important thing in the beginning is to always talk to the stakeholders of the brand, try to understand their side of the story, and listen to them. Before COVID, we always have face-to-face meetings, see their body language, understand them as a person, as a human being, and then try to understand how they see the brand, and try to reflect the kind of direction that they want, to try and capture the personality of the brand. Then from there, the next part is really to try to internally generate keywords that capture or encapsulate this whole conversation, or the bigger workshop that we have done for them. From these keywords, we try to have ideas that kind of, like, piece all these keywords together, then from there we translate the ideas into visual forms; and from there, the design can kind of carry on, yeah. So that is kind of like the basic process that we did for all our projects, in terms of branding.

Yeah, I would say so. We love to meet the clients, so when we can’t meet them and do everything face-to-face, I would say that the magic part of it is kind of lost. I mean, in the end, we will have to make do, as we definitely have to do what is necessary. But I think meeting face-to-face will always give us a bit more understanding.

Hmm… the SG Bicentennial, hmm.. at that time, JWT wanted to form a consortium, so Jon Loke, the ECD talked to me and they wanted us to handle the brand identity bit of it, so we kind of went in with them to pitch for it. When we got the project, I was definitely excited, but also cautious in a sense, because it is a national branding project, and that was probably the biggest project we have done so far. But luckily, we worked closely with the client, Gene Tan, and his amazing team, and also, with the support from JWT, we were able to go through the whole process very smoothly. I would say it is quite smooth, for a big project like this.

Hmm, yeah, I mean the key steps as I have mentioned earlier, are more or less the same. It basically gives us the right understanding of what and who we are crafting the branding for, you know? And then the rest kind of follow the process as necessary. Again, it depends on the scope of the branding project, then we just kind of adapt and scale accordingly.

Hmm… honestly, I’ve been through a journey and then along this journey, you know, I have done this and that. But I will always see myself as kind of just starting out… I always have the feeling that I still have more to do and things that I want to do. So, I think it is a good feeling that.. hmmm… I don’t see myself as like, “Wow I’m successful” or that I have made it; because I always feel that I still have more to learn in that sense lah. Yeah, so, it is like this Chinese proverb, it basically says that you might never climb a mountain your entire life, but in your heart, you should always have a mountain. So, the whole idea is that, you always have to keep challenging yourself. So, I don’t see myself, like, I have made it, you know?

I guess if you are asking whether these awards help the studio to grow, I would say no. Actually, all our clients who came to us… they never see the awards as part of the reason (laughs) why they came to us. It is always about our work that they kind of resonate with, and that is why they come and then they talk to us, and then they understand how we approach a creative process, and then they want to work with us. It’s never never about the awards. Although we always kind of present that “oh, we have been awarded this, this, this…”, but to them it is just passing remarks. But personally, these awards are a kind of validation for myself. It’s just, kind of like - as you do, as you grow, or as you charge along, you just want to see that in the grand scheme of things, where you stand in the community; whether locally, regionally, worldwide, where do you stand with all your peers, all your seniors, and your juniors. So, awards are just a way to give myself a bit of validation that, “okay, I made it to this stage.” It’s a pat on the back, like okay, you did good, or you did the right thing. So… hmm… yeah. But I guess awards are just a bonus in terms of what I do everyday lah. For every project, we put one hundred and ten percent into it, so, sometimes when the results turn out good, and if we think that it is award-worthy… then we just give it a try lah! And if we get something, then that’s a bonus!

I guess the biggest challenge is always trying to think like, for the next 3 months, how do we bring in the projects. You know, for the studio, we are always trying to plan like this - 3 months, 3 months at a step, and then in the longer term… I’m not the long-term kind of a planner, but I always like to see how things kind of evolve or change. I will just think in the next three months, how should I react to it… yeah. That is always the biggest challenge for me.

Presently, for the past 2 years, it’s actually just myself and my producer, Stella, who happens to be my wife as well … she joined me (laughs) two years ago. She is a graphic designer as well, yeah so, she joined me right before COVID, and before that, I have four designers who worked with me throughout the years - Ho Gai, Stacey, Xin Ying, and the longest one is Pamela. Each of them joined me at a different time, so it’s all this while, it’s more or less a 2-person kind of studio.

For any new project, I will always do the initial part of it. In terms of the creative process of like, realising the whole conceptualisation, exploring the art direction… etcetera etcetera, I always work with my designers… you know, we have discussions… we have explorations and stuff like that. When the project starts running, depending on the scale of project, the type of project, and the experience of the designer, sometimes I will let them run it. So, they will talk to the clients directly, you know? Like I said earlier on, I strongly believe that designers should talk to and interact with the clients. It is also kind of like training for them. Until shit hits the fan, and then I jump in and (laughs) try to salvage.

Yeah, so far okay, yeah, so far okay.

It’s hard to kind of pin point a favourite project because each project has a good experience… especially, you know, all the projects that you see, that we put on our website, and Facebook… it is kind of hard for me to say if I prefer this project over the other, because each of them has its own experience and outcome, and the different things I learnt from each project. But I guess if I were to say, amongst the most recent projects, I’m really kind of glad to work on this spirit brand, Malt, Grain & Cane. I can’t drink, so it’s quite nice to be able to work on a spirit brand (laughs). And the client Marcus has been really wonderful. He trusts us, and gives us full creative freedom, collaborating with us; even the name is actually from him. So, I am just glad to be able to work on that project, and really happy with the end result.

I strongly believe that the most important element is trust. Mutual trust. Without mutual trust, it’s very hard to do good work. So, with mutual trust, in the sense that the client trusts your instincts, your intuitions, your consultancy, your advice, your explorations, your proposals… and in turn we trust the clients to have a certain confidence in how we explore, how we approach it, how we look at things, how we help them to manage the strategies, and the visual execution of it, and then both of us are like… you know… take on the risk together so to speak, to roll out the outcome and see how it works in the real world. I think that is very important for doing any real work. So, trust is the one thing that I always look for whenever we start talking to clients, when we start project negotiations,

I am quite grateful that so far in the 10 years… we don’t really have difficult clients per se. But probably 1 or 2, it’s probably less than… I would say 3 or 4 lah. And… hmm… amongst these few, we either broke off the project in the beginning once we know that it wasn’t going to work out, or we just kind of stick to our obligations and responsibilities… and just try to finish the project as soon as we can, and then we just kind of broke off with them cleanly in a sense lah. One thing about our studio is… I always emphasise that we will always treat the clients with respect, no matter how difficult it is lah.

I’m an interaction designer by training… by education, so I just happened to go into print advertising when I joined Kinetic. From there, I learnt so much from Pann and Roy, and then I started to, kind of, see the bigger picture in terms of designs, and the overall design thinking… and the approach to everything. So, medium is just one of the channels for design. In that sense, I started to really see the bigger picture of graphic design and everything. So.. hmm… I guess it’s almost like I roll back from technology? When dealing with interactive design, you have to deal with all the technical bits. For graphic design, it is a bit more tactile, playing with papers; or when we do packaging, we play with boxes… and all kind of things. So, hmm… I guess technology is good and bad lah. It’s definitely streamlined the creative process, and you know, helps with a lot of things. But I guess the negative thing probably is that… sometimes it makes us also a bit lazy? I don’t feel that it is negative negative in a sense, but maybe it makes us a bit lazier in certain aspects? (laughs) Yeah, if that makes sense.

Quite random, but I think the only question that I always remember is that a lot of them will ask, “Are you taking interns?” (laughs) Yeah, but the studio is very small… I used to take in interns quite a bit during internship seasons, … I have stopped since many years ago lah…

My longest designer is actually from internship. So, when she did the internship… I was really impressed with her dedication, her discipline, and you know, her focus and stuff. So, after her internship ended, she went back to school, but I actually, immediately kind of like chope (colloquial in Singapore which means “to reserve”) her… once she graduated, I got her in. So, yeah, you can say that through internships, when you work with someone, you start to understand them… and you can see whether they are able to fit with your style of working, the studio process, and all that.

It is actually one of the things I’ve been thinking about.. to adapt the studio to the industry changes, especially with COVID in the past two years… it has actually accelerated this trend… that a lot of the bigger agencies are actually starting to have collaboration with smaller studios. It’s almost like forming a collective with smaller studios who are more specialised in certain aspects, like recently, AKQA formed a collective with Made Thought. So, there are a lot of collaborations between bigger agencies with smaller studios to tackle projects, tackle campaigns, and various kinds of projects together. So, I think, moving forward, this will be the continuous trend, and it may even accelerate and probably evolve from there. So, we are trying to open ourselves to collaborations with bigger agencies… you know, to work on more interesting projects as well, yeah. I mean, in the past, we have worked with Ogilvy on the SG50 icons, then we worked with JWT on SG Bicentennial… and recently we worked with FARM on the Hungry Design exhibition, so we hope that we will have more opportunities to work with bigger agencies on more interesting projects.

Yeah, correct, yeah. And I feel that when we have a collective and come together to work on a project and solve it together, it’s much more exciting, then trying yourself, you know? it’s no longer about just growing your own studio and hoping that you are able to work on a certain project any more. I think maybe 5, 10 years ago that worked? But now things are changing so rapidly… we need to adapt to that as well. I mean, the bigger agencies… a lot of them no longer look to grow internally, but rather they prefer to work with external specialized studios for certain things. So, I think it is an interesting and dynamic kind of setup that actually works best for the client in the long term.

Hmm… my dream project is probably… hmm… design an airline branding? (laughs) An airline… or a museum branding? Yeah, I think it will be very interesting. Branding projects like these… it’s like… you have to think in a global way, but you also have to think in a local context. Yeah, so I think that will be interesting…

Hard to say. Currently our setup suits the way we work, and the kind of projects that we have, the kind of processes that we are running. But hmm… I don’t rule that out, you know? Things can change, as maybe when we take on bigger projects, or maybe we take on bigger collaboration, then depending on how all these projects’ parameters and requirements might affect us, we will need to change to respond to that. But as of now, the current setup kind of works for us lah. So, we will try to maintain it and then you know, try not to give ourselves unnecessary stress.

Yeah, correct. Like I said, I’m not a planner in the sense that I will not think, like, in 5 years’ time, I want my studio to have like, 10 people, you know? Or that we want to work on this and that kind of project… because I’m a very hands-on person, so I’d like to see, like… you know, as projects come, and I can kind of enjoy the present, and then from one kind of project, hopefully it can lead to similar kinds of projects that I would like to work on, and then just kind of let it roll and plan from there, yeah. So, it’s a very - I would say - organic way, to look at it, yeah.

Hmm… no… actually, no. Hmm… I’m a person who believes that things happen in the way that they should. So, I like who I am now… as a designer, so all the mistakes… all the bad things… good things that I’ve done previously, they need to happen in order to arrive at the me now. So, I don’t think I would want to change anything in the past in that sense, yeah.

Yeah, I mean with the COVID thing… hmm… it’s really getting harder and harder… you know, not a lot of companies are actually hiring… But actually, not really true… I’ve seen a lot of recruitment ads as well. But anyway, I guess it’s to stay humble and be hopeful. And then, you know, just trying to find your way… find your voice… and find your place in the industry, in the community that you are going into. That’s the most important thing… also, take on internships and stuff like that, yeah.