More Daikin Stuff

Ok I'm sick of the cute blue droplet ...... gaaaah ...... need ..... airrrr .........

Daikin Chinese New Year Proposal

whee, work is fun for once!

SmooveJump

Whee. Now not sure where to put the typo in.

Cannot Die 4.0 - A Review of Die Hard 4.0

This fourth installment of the flick doesn't offer anything new in the way of plausibility, but fans of the series should be well entertained by the series of impossible scenarios and stunts that came crashing wave after wave, each trying to top out the one before, and succeeding. Make no mistake about it, this movie is simply a whole load of fun, and it makes no pretense of being anything but that. In fact, I spent half the movie stifling my laugh at how impossibly crazy McLane is, but the one thing I can't deny was that ‐ it was a whole load of fun!

Willis slips easily into his role as John McLane, super action hero, and tho he is visibly older and grumpier, his indestructibility is obvious avnd his devil-may-care attitude endearing. Throughout the movie, he proceeds to defy all laws of nature, physics and common sense, and delivered non-stop action right from the beginning of the movie ‐ OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but 10 minutes into it and you won't even remember the kind of real world you're living in.

As usual, McLane got assigned a seemingly inconspicuous assignment, tasked to bring in a computer hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and somehow stumbles into a sinister plot of stunning ambition, orchestrated by bad guys exponentially smarter than he is. He arrives just in time to save Farrell from assassins, and proceed to escort and protect him from, you guessed it, even more assassins. When he ran out of bullet, he took up his car and flew it towards the terrorist helicopter instead. After that he somehow zig-zagged his lumbering monster truck (think Optimus Prime), and avoids F-16 missiles as he chases the bad guys. Jumping off from the top of the F-16 (and surviving), he proceeded to mop the remaining bad guys with his trusty old Glock with a resounding "Yiipee-Kiy-Ai-Yeah!"

Give your tired brains a good old fashioned treat and remember to leave logic by the door, it's an entertaining ride that's well worth it. And just for the record, John McLane can kick Optimus Prime's ass twice a day, any day of the year.

Current Work-In-Progress - Japan

Plagiarism is Overrated.

A designer colleague of mine asked for my opinion once in regards to showcasing his portfolio online. His simple question bellies a common fear shared by most designers when it comes to the matter of sharing his/her work - "Do you think it's possible to show off my works online, but not allow others to download it?" The answer is an obvious and resounding "No". Even with JavaScript hacks not allowing right-clicks and the likes, there is still such a thing called "Print Screen". And if the other person is even that little bit knowledgeable, he/she won't even need to do that to plagiarize your work. All they need is a sneak peek, a glimpse even, and off they go cloning away your proud babies.

In this day and age of the world wide web, nothing is personal and uniquely owned anymore. For all you know, that amazing illustration you did last month could well be used by another designer for his proposal pitch. And that great idea you had for that French Festival? It's printed already! For a t-shirt design celebrating the French Revolution, thank you. And the best part of it? You don't even know it!

Even in countries that are supposedly 'stricter' in enforcing their laws (like Singapore), rip-offs still happens regularly. Some cases are pretty fricking blatant. An example would be this t-shirt design a friend of mine did for Threadless. It didn't get printed, but instead a local (Sg or M'sia) street-wear brand took the design right out, slapped their brand name in the design and printed the shirt. Note that I'm not even talking about those shady road-side stalls selling trendy youth wears. I'm talking about a proper boutique shop with a known brand with more than 2-3 boutiques over Singapore. They claim to be "Fresh", but now we know better don't we? - hint* -

Personally, I feel that designers are starting to branch themselves out into two different sub-cultures when dealing with plagiarism. There are those who are perfecting their craft to a certain extent that it is no longer just that, it becomes an art in itself. With these guys, the lines differentiating Design and Art has truly blurred, and they have merged with Artists, Scupltors, Illustrators and the likes. These are guys like Joshua Davis , Marian Bantjes , Nik Ainley and the likes who have developed and perfected their own unique style.

To them, protection would be quite irrelevant for the sole reason that the promotion they receive from their sites is such that they are now identified with these unique styles. I don't think they'll mind people copying their work because they know that 'proper' clients will see right away that the person copying is doing sub-standard work, and or not doing it properly.

Another sub-culture of designers are those who thrives on relationship and advice instead of simply the strength of their work. Does this not sound familiar? A company wants a rebranding, reimagining of their corporate identity but the person in charge of the corporate communications are reluctant in injecting new blood/starting a new relationship with a new provider. Instead the keep coming back to their current designer, based on the fact that they are "comfortable" working with them.

I'm not saying these designers are not strong graphically and the likes. I'm just pointing out that the job scope of the designer has evolved to such an extent that we no longer just make things pretty, or communicate a message. It has now expanded into communicating with the client about how their 'message' should be, maintaining a proper working relationship with the client, convincing the client that what we're trying to say with our visuals here is proper and good for their company.

My current company is quite a good example of this "working relationship". It doesn't matter if another company takes our design and copy it, because more than 50% of our clients are repeats. Meaning they come back to us because they are happy with our services in the past, tho I seriously just think that it's because we keep giving in and saying "yes" to whatever shit they ask of us.

Bottom line? Plagiarism is overrated. While it's not cool to have your work copied and all, at this day and age, we'll just have to live with it. Those who are afraid of embracing the internet as a mean for promotional and exposure will probably do just fine, but when I look at the payoff of having my works showcased and available to such a huge (amazingly huge) audience, there is really no way I can say no to that. The potential gain far outweights the risks, by more than a mile, so the best advice I gave to that colleague of mine was a white lie - "Yeah sure you can. There's a JavaScript hack that disables right-clicking".

Reminders & Work Stuff

Indo CG Submission Noise Singapore

Personal reminders to submit works to these two competitions. Shitzor mah boxzor. Dead tired. My hands felt numb. Fingers finding it hard to move the mouse and clicking the left side. Reason is because of this.





Posters for Ministry of Manpower. Of which I still need to do another one, by the end of the day. I'm so fucked.

On another note, I did some more digging around at work and found this (below, below) - one of my favorite cover design I've done so far in Lancer. It's for SuperBowl, who is quite a large entertainment company in Singapore. They mentioned how they did not want to point too much towards bowling and wanted us to shine the spotlight on their other ventures, like the country club, properties, etc etc. My concept was to show a sort of pinball machine layout, with all the bright colours and illustrative icons to represent each of their various ventures. The idea was how pinball machine is a very common fun machine and while playing, you bounce the balls through various sections to earn more points. As such, its quite similar to how the shareholders and putting their trust in SuperBowl, who in turn 'bounces' (invests) in various ventures to earn more profits.

Fun. But of course, it didnt get selected. And you know which cover they selected instead? A cover design showing a bowling ball, rolling down the alley..... What. The. Fuck.... -_-

Zapfino and Times New Roman

I'm not sure how you guys felt about Field of Dreams - the closing of National Stadium event - but I personally enjoyed it~! Hope you guys feel the same! It was a damn shame tho, Jun Wen, Wen Jie, Lamb, Mom and Shu Yu couldn't make it. Hopefully we can organize another similar outing yah~ in the new National Stadium .. maybe, Singapore vs Indonesia? This time around, I will 'locate' the proper supplier for face paint from way before the event =D

I have to say that my own personal memories of the stadium aren't much to count for. But at least I actually experienced NDP there, in the stadium. Once, from the spectator stand. Once, with the Boys Brigade. And that last competitive match, Singapore vs Thailand - is a great memory unto itself. The crowd was amazing, the real Kallang wave - all complete with the earth-shaking thumping~ I remember how the Thai supporters were sectioned right next to our left, and there were plenty whistles and and not-so-friendly cheers and jeers from both sets of supporters (but that's how it's meant to be yeah). Fresh in memory also was how a group of ang-mohs was having lots of fun, dancing and cheering around - they really know how to let loose! And the group of nine with painted shirts, spelling out 'S I N G A P O R E' - And the Malay uncle who came walking past our section - towards the Thais, chastising, swearing and cursing - before turning back and having a laugh as the rest of us voiced our backing for him~! Well, can't wait for the opening of the new stadium is all I can say!

One thing I can't help noticing was how the Singapore Sports Council decided to use that particular font for the headlines in promoting the event. It's a font that's actually a favorite of mine, so I can't help smiling when I recognized it's sexy curves =) Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, ... Zapfino!



This very Shakespearean font is perfect for that night out on a classy beach-side restaurant. First class and by the sea, accompanied with an elegant live band performing classics from the all time greats. Follow it up with an inspiring play in the theater and then off to a cozy setting to round up the perfect date. Basically, when I think high-class, elegant and or classic, I think of you, Zapfino. My only complaint is that she can do with a little more bulk, her thin frame can really be quite drastic and dangerously close to being invisible.

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Here's an interesting article that once again proves Designers to be .. well .. designers. We don't do things the normal way .. =) I'm off to design a poster for a faux artist performing at a faux event in a faux country!

It probably also explains my undying attraction towards poster design. A part of me wants to call my poster designs 'art', but another part chides me for being so naive and shameless. Getting paid to do something so fun has got to be a sin! But as I browsed through my old works today I surprised myself with how much work I have done that I can't even remember of. A lot of fun stuff that I really should be quite proud of~ (not surprisingly, a lot of poster designs). A part of me really really wants to go back to those old days working with (fake) clients that really allows me to let loose, and just go crazy with whatever is in my head. Is there such a job out there in Singapore?

Here's some of my extremely early poster works for promoting Times New Roman. My bullcrap reasoning was that Times New Roman being the standard font used in newspaper, magazines, and word processing softwares - it's gotta be quite legible. In fact, the very first thing that comes to mind when you mention Times New Roman are words like : standard, simple, strict, legible, normal, and most of all - boring. So I set out to disturb this perception of Times New Roman as all of that. I set the fonts up, tore them, break them apart, randomly stack them amongst each other and just had a little too much fun to call it work/study =) The end results are a set of posters that portrayed the font in a totally different light, which I feel works well to promote it amongst designers. My aim was to have them look at these posters and goes "oh hey, thats an interesting way to use Times New Roman,"






Hmm, I actually bullcrapped my way presenting works from 5-6 years back. Apparently I have reached a new level in bullcrapping .. +15 Intel