August 2010
1 post
a new change
pardon the changes that are going around my website. it is currently going through a revamp to make my website lighter and less flash-reliant :)
June 2010
1 post
music
when i stuff my ears and the music comes on, my body begins to move like it’s on the dancefloor. my eyes goes dim and I recluse into my own world. then the screaming goes quiet and the pain ceases to exist. what a thrill.
May 2010
4 posts
drawing is always fun
drawing is always always always fun. awesomely fun! i’m even joined by my poly buddy, fir! hope everyone who came had fun too! thanks for the great weekend drawing session, bridget! you are awesome, as always!
okay, please dont laugh at my drawings :( the final long pose drawing some of the better half-assed gesture drawings
olaf hajek
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magically beautiful illustrations by olaf hajek
hhheeelloooo summer!
i have conquered six semesters, and it’s down to these last two semesters. can’t believe it is already time to crank it up for the final year project. before i know it, i will be out of school and back in the working world. whether that is a good thing or not, it is always disputable. when i am in school, i would yearn to work. when i work, i would yearn to be in school. sigh.
...
audio recording of reza abedini’s inspiring...
March 2010
2 posts
barren landscape
in this aridness,
death envelopes the lanscape.
the threshing storm,
the fiery heat,
then comes the stillness.
the still air strangles life.
it is strange
for the unfamiliarity is somehow familiar.
the unending cycles of the cosmos
withering life and an emptying well—
succumbing to the stars.
pre-mature reminiscing
tiger year alrdy!! let’s hope tiger year will be a great year for me! huat ah!
wow. cant believe chinese new year just went by. cant believe half the semester just went by! and even though it was crazy busy for the last two weeks, i dont really know what i did for this semester. feels like i am still searching for something. hmm. dont feel like i am getting a breakthrough this semester....
February 2010
2 posts
augmented (hyper) reality
Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
strange, interesting and scary all at the same time.
notebooks
January 2010
9 posts
love
i am always amazed at how today’s second reading never fails to reach into the inner depths of my heart, and reaffirms my beliefs for each new day. what i find very important are not the too frequently quoted lines for weddings and valentine’s day, but its preceding lines. these lines, personally, is the critical message and sets the context for the subsequent descriptive of love....
surprising
i went by the national library to check out the 100 icons exhibition, organised by the design society, before it closed in the evening. was interesting to see the development of logos in singapore over the decades. it was also interesting to see who were the original designers and who revamped the latest ones. it is kinda scary that most of the logo designers for government organisations are...
fontaid
in aid of the people who have been displaced by the natural disaster at haiti, i designed an ampersand (above) as a contribution to fontaid iv: coming together, collaborative typeface. organised by the society of typographic aficionados. for those who wish to help, closing date is today, 29th jan 2010. more information about fontaid:
The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is announcing...
WHAT A WEEKEND
indeed what a weekend it was! a very special one, to say the least. my very good friend / running buddy michelle gabrielle eng wei ping is finally married! hurrah! and none of us are worrying because we know that her husband, jingwei, will definitely love and take good care of her :) so yayy, congrats!
i was perpetually on the verge of tears during the wedding mass because i was really really...
mermer
in my boredom/lonliness/frustration/refusal to do work, i did a little illustration of our country’s favourite icon – the merlion. or in my vain attempt to try to like it, i pet-named it mermer. inspired by the russian nesting dolls.
vibes: camino – the observatory
bonjour! comment ça va?
wow. i finally finished updating my portfolio here on my site. took me a helluva long time to put everything together. almost stopped believing that i could complete it. poor photography skills = longer time on photoshop. but it is done. yayy. after this, i need to layout a subset of work for print so that they can be in time for the internship interviews.
another yayy for the day was my...
PHONETIKANA
i remember how lost i felt when i was in south korea earlier in the decade. many of the signages were in hangul, which i could not read. uk-based graphic designer johnson bank (you might remember him as the designer of the ‘think london’ logo) was caught in a similarly frustrating situation in japan. he, however, arrived at a fantastic solution with a phonetic katakana typeface....
reza abedini
i have long been been fascinated with the arabic script and how its users of all time have been able to transform this typographical element into a wealthy of graphical communication. further more, i am intrigued by the possibilities of re-inventing and infusing asian language scripts into graphic design. my interest led me to books. and books led me to reza abedini. i have seen some works of...
December 2009
0 posts
twenty-ten
wow. cant believe it’s alrdy twenty-ten. and it has been such a long time since i blogged seriously. certainly, the dawn of the new year necessitates a blog entry to take stock of the ups and downs of the year that went by.
to dread that twenty oh-nine was a drag would be very unfair. but to say that it by swiftly would also be an understatement. twenty-ten has always been, at the back...
November 2009
1 post
October 2009
1 post
September 2009
8 posts
ONCE
ONCE from Rene Sim on Vimeo.
great piece of installation work by my fellow viscomm school mates, jian’an, rene, hilmi and dennice. 贊！
WHAT IS DESIGN?
“cos when you say design… everybody has a different definition that doesnt correspond to yours. so in effect, nobody knows what you are talking about. this is true. you have to definite your terms.”
ARE YOU HAPPY DESIGNING?
“well, there was a question, of course, that was on my mind for a while: you know, can I do more of the things that i like doing in design and less of the ones that i don’t like to be doing?”
as the semester progresses and everyone’s waking hours prolong, are we still happy designing? stefan sagmeister sheds some light on “happy design”.
sabbatical
i have been reading several articles regarding renowned graphic design stefan sagmeister’s 12-month sabbatical at bali. this is his second in a seven-year cycle of sabbaticals. for him, the ideas that he developed during his first sabbatical subsequently inspired his most successful design projects. and he has plans to set aside more time for more sabbaticals if he finds his second round...
August 2009
7 posts
the heart of the problem
it is really sad to watch something like this sometimes. it is a known fact that i get rather critical about singapore and its systems. however, it really saddens me to watch a video like this that removes the nicey-nice veil of singapore and reveals the ugly truth. it’s true what they say, you know? the truth really does hurt. i guess it cuts deeper when you know that what they are...
GONE TOO SOON
aww. cant say that it has been too short. but it hasnt been too long either, has it? like the rainbow fading in the twinkling of an eye, the holidays has indeed gone too soon. it comes a time that i should recollect what i had done this summer break.
it started off kinda relaxing, with the desire to rest away all the sleepless night and stress from the semester. may and i came together for...
NOBODY NOBODY BUT YOU
My Past Life
there are days where i think about the life i used to live. you know, the one that I was active in church, with weekday and weekend appointments packed to the brim, and with friends from birth years that get more and more ridiculous with each passing year. yes, it’s the same one that I had to write too many christmas cards for. yeah, that one. i call it my past life.
i guess...
July 2009
9 posts
you and me
“ถ้าบอกว่าเพลงนี้ แต่งให้เธอ เธอจะเชื่อไหม
มันอาจไม่เพราะ ไม่ซึ้งไม่สวยงามเหมือนเพลงทั่วไป
อยากให้รู้ ว่าเพลงรัก ถ้าไม่รัก ก็เขียนไม่ได้
แต่กับเธอคนดีรู้ไหม ฉันเขียนอย่างง่าย…ดาย
เธอคงเคยได้ยินเพลงรักมานับร้อยพัน
มันอาจจะโดนใจ แต่ก็มีความหมายเหมือนๆกัน
แต่ถ้าเธอฟังเพลงนี้ เพลงที่เขียนเพื่อเธอเท่านั้น
เพื่อเธอเข้าใจความหมายแล้วใจจะได้มีกันและกัน”
if i say that i wrote...
peace and quiet
i have always enjoyed driving into lim chu kang / neo tiew area whenever i need some peace and quiet or just some fresh air. i do that from time to time. and i did just that today. lim chu kang is really great cos it’s near my place. the interesting thing is that it feels very different from the rest of singapore. there’s no chaos; it’s usually void of people and traffic, except...
FORGE ON PIONEERS
bryan is proud to honour of pioneering graduates of the school of art, design and media. congratulations to you all!
[ zihan’s valedictorian speech transcript ] oh. btw, i think pretty soon children below the age of twelve might not be able to enter public swimming pools because there are plenty of topless men running around.
dead rooster
everyone at adm is wondering how this dead rooster ended up on our shelter. someone said something about seeing dead roosters in strange places and possession. any ideas on that?
and a cheap thrill for me. but hey! i am on district’s webby!
感情永遠不會散。
一人一半 感情不散
一人一素故 感情才會久
時光累計 安靜的淚滴
一心去追 愛那么可貴
這樣的人 這樣地等
無非是等個回應眼神
為愛翻滾 不計傷痕
甘心為你一生都浮沉
這樣的人 別笑我蠢
傻傻的 心痛也不覺疼
就算天冷 就算殘忍
等你想起這沒用的人
design with a cause
i was reading a paper earlier last week published by rsa design & society entitled social animals: tomorrow’s designers in today’s world, written by sophia parker. as i read it, i found that really enlightening and also very edifying to find that the concerns that i have as a designer is also shared by others around the globe. essentially, the paper, tho largely concerned with...
June 2009
4 posts
are we human?
close your eyes, clear your heart
cut the cord
are we human? or are we dancer?
my sign is vital, my hands are cold
and I’m on my knees looking for the answer
are we human?
or are we dancer?
living it up at jurong
you know, i really do enjoy living in jurong right now. yeah everyone thinks that the air we breathe here in the western end of singapore smells bad cos it is polluted by the industrial plants and, for my ntu friends, it is also sometimes a painful reminder of school. but jurong really is a great place to live. and the air here doesnt smell bad. just within 5 minutes walk from my house, i will...
reorg
micro blogging on twitter has made me a little lazy to blog in long paragraphs. haha. the convenience that twitter brings for spur-of-the-moment sorta blogging. but for good and solid archive sake, i will still have to blog here.
damn. it’s half way through the summer holidays. other than my siem reap trip, i havent felt like i have had much of a holiday yet. i had been rushing a flash...
LEST WE FORGET
i woke up one night in the middle of my sleep with a certain fear that gripped my heart. frightful enough to make me break into cold sweat. i could not return to sleep so i decided to play around with my iphone. somehow it brought me back to blogger and i began reading some really important posts in my life since i began blogging. i think one really cannot break away from the past. it haunts...
May 2009
3 posts
siem reap oh-nine
yeah. i am back from the kingdom of cambodia and the eight days was really really well spent and really enjoyed many moments of the trip. the weather was blardy hot but it was worth heading out for all the stone wonders that the ancient khmer kingdom had built. when you reach the monuments, you’ll get that “textbooks-come-to-live” (urm, for our case,...