Download Independence: The reasons for existence Design

CONTENTS
Published by
The Design Society
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www.thedesignsociety.org.sg
ISBN 978-981-07-1617-2
© The Design Society
© Justin Zhuang
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FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
6
The 1960s and 1970s:
GROWING WITH A NATION’S INDEPENDENCE
10
The 1980s:
A STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
24
The 1990s:
THE POWER TO BE INDEPENDENT
36
The 2000s:
THE INDEPENDENT VOICES OF DESIGN
48
IMAGES
72
BIBLIOGRAPHY
373
Independence: The reasons for existence
Design takes root in Singapore as part of an
industrialisation plan
The profession of graphic design is established
Independent graphic design studios rise, riding on
the waves of change
1st edition, March 2012
Design by H55
Copyediting by Rachel Koh
Cover Photography by Caleb Ming
This publication is supported under
the National Heritage Board’s Heritage
Industry Incentive Programme (Hi2P).
A new generation of Singapore designers grows up to
stake their independence
THE HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN IN SINGAPORE SINCE THE 1960s
10—
“The presentation of specimens is
invariably poor and the standard
of work is no better than you
would expect in a country where
no formal training exists in the
branches of Graphic Design
related to Advertising… The
need is for top creative people to
originate and lead in this field
— in their own country.”
Brian Hoyle, Chairman of Creative Circle Singapore, writing in
the foreword of Singapore’s Annual Advertising Award 1963
—11
The 1960s and 1970s:
GROWING WITH A NATION’S INDEPENDENCE
Design takes root in Singapore as part of
an industrialisation plan
In January 1963, an awards presentation was held to honour
the top creative work from Singapore’s advertising industry.
The “Annual Advertising Awards” was organised by the Creative
Circle, a group recently formed then under the Singapore
Publicity Club by people working in the various advertising
agencies. More than 100 pieces of locally-produced creative
work in the previous year were submitted to a panel of judges1
to determine the best colour advertisement, black and white
advertisement, photograph, printed publicity, radio commercial
and cinema advertising film. Besides these seven categories,
there was also a “Creative Circle Award” for the most significant
contribution to creative standards in advertising in Singapore.
At the inaugural awards presentation, Young Advertising
and Marketing swept aside the competition, winning in three
categories and the coveted “Creative Circle Award”. That a
wholly owned subsidiary of a London advertising agency, Royds,
expectedly dominated this local awards was telling of the state
of Singapore’s creative scene then. Young represented a typical
Singapore advertising agency of its time. Established by a British
expatriate after World War II, it was eventually bought over by
Royds. Like other advertising agencies in Singapore, it was
headed and dominated by men from the UK and Australia who
sought better job opportunities in the young city-state. Young’s
creative director, Brian Hoyle, arrived on Singapore’s shores
from the UK in 1960. He became the founding chairman of the
Creative Circle, which was made up of other expatriates that
included Arthur Gough, John Hagley, Chris Arthur, Trevor Inkpen,
Bill Mundy, Allan J. Barry and John Freeman. While this small
expatriate community dominated the group and the industry,
1 Consisted of Mrs M. Tan, Mrs J.
Boxhall, Mr G.G. Thomson, Mr
Ee Soon Howe, Mr. J. Duclos,
Mr S.T. Ratnam and Mr M.
Cook, according to “100 Entries
in Contest for 1962’s ‘Creative
Advertising’,” The Straits Times,
12 January 1963.
Top:
Brian Hoyle
First row from left:
John Hagley, Trevor Inkpen,
Allan J. Barry,
Second row from left:
Chris Arthur, Bill Mundy,
Arthur Gough
1963
THE HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN IN SINGAPORE SINCE THE 1960s
24—
“The prevailing attitude is that the
best graphic design is produced
overseas and must be expensive.
This attitude must change in order
to persuade manufacturers that
they should consider local design
services to back up the products
they wish to market. A belief in
the capability of Singaporeans to
create visually arresting graphics
should be promoted by the
government.”
“Observations on the Printing Industry” in Report for an European
Economic Community-Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Seminar. (June, 1987)
—25
The 1980s:
A STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
The profession of graphic design is established
Like many graphic designers, Sylvia Tan has a flair for drawing
that helped her ace her art classes when she was young. While
many of her contemporaries applied to study in Baharuddin
Vocational Institute (BVI) in the ‘70s — Singapore’s only institute
to learn graphic design — Tan set her mind to go overseas to
learn from the best. “What kind of exposure would you get in
BVI in the ‘70s? There was nothing in Singapore then,” she
says. With savings from some years of working, Tan headed to
the London College of Printing in 1972 and received a degree
in typographic design. After working with design agencies
in London for a while, she returned to work in the Industrial
Design Centre (IDC) of the Singapore Institute of Standards
and Industrial Research (SISIR), but left again two years later,
this time for New York, to pursue a Master of Science in
Communications Design from Pratt Institute.
When she returned to Singapore in 1980, Tan was one of the
very few designers with an overseas degree, and an even lesser
heard of Masters. In comparison, the highest qualification one
could obtain in design locally was a diploma via a three-year
course that BVI had only just started the year she returned.
When Tan began looking for a job, she was disappointed with
her options as compared to her experience working in London.
“How many agencies in Singapore were there then that could be
regarded as design trailblazers?” she asks. “There was a huge
disparity in standard by comparison.”
In the early ‘80s, most graphic designers in Singapore were still
working inside advertising agencies. Even the design houses
around, like Hagley & Hoyle and Central Design, did mainly
THE HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN IN SINGAPORE SINCE THE 1960s
36—
“If GST is the most talked
about topic in and out of
Parliament these days,
then DTP surely must be the
equivalent in the publishing
and printing industry.”
—37
The 1990s:
THE POWER TO BE INDEPENDENT
Independent graphic design studios
rise, riding on the waves of change
Apple Computer’s slogan for its Macintosh range in the ‘90s
could well describe Singapore’s graphic design scene of the
same period. “The Power to be Your Best” — this was the
spirit of those heady days as graphic design rapidly gained
prominence here and around the world. Powering its ascent
was the invention of the Apple Macintosh in 1985, a computer
with a graphic user interface that redefined the production
of graphic design over the next decade. Prior to this, some
design consultancies were already using IBM computers to
set typefaces, but this, including other traditional design tools
and services like typesetting machines, bromide prints, colour
separators, photocopiers, BOFA sets and cow gum would one
by one be replaced by a Mac in the coming desktop publishing
(DTP) revolution. Armed with a Mac, the designer gained control
of the entire creative process, from conception to execution,
before sending the final artwork to the printers.
As the early computer models were expensive, few designers
worked on them. This changed after the 1985 recession when
the Singapore government aggressively pushed society and
businesses to computerise and adopt the use of information
technology. Su Yeang Design took advantage of subsidies
offered by the National Computer Board in 1986 to purchase its
first computers. “In the ‘80s, I never did annual reports because
if a client wanted to change two words, you had to change the
whole page. After the computer came out, we were doing 20 a
year!” says founder Su Yeang.
Ronnie Poon, “Desktop Publishing” in Singapore Printer (May–June 1993)
Being able to do more with a computer empowered more
designers to strike out on their own. In 1993, Sim Kok Huoy
THE HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN IN SINGAPORE SINCE THE 1960s
48—
“In all fairness, when it comes
to Philippe Starck, a Parisian
who seems to doggedly make
the global design village a big
Starck ville with his prolific
works, we do not question how
French his designs are... So why
fixate on the Singaporean-ness
of Singapore design?”
—49
The 2000s:
THE INDEPENDENT VOICES OF DESIGN
A new generation of Singapore designers
grows up to stake their independence
Two separate exhibitions held by Singapore’s top graphic
designers in the 1990s and 2000s show how the profession
had changed within a decade. In 1994, Su Yeang paid her
own way to hold “Breaking Barriers” in The Design Centre, an
exhibition of Su Yeang Design’s work to educate the public and
businesses on the importance of good design. It reflected a time
when graphic design was seen as a problem-solving tool for
businesses. Fast forward to 2005, :phunk Studio held “A Decade
of Decadence”, a retrospective exhibition of their “Greatest
Hits”. Besides the influence of music, this exhibition held in the
Singapore History Museum was supported by entertainment
establishments Zouk and MTV, as well as Tiger Beer. As
William Chan of :phunk then said: “When we started, people
thought all graphic designers could do were design ‘Big Sale’
flyers and lay out text on posters. But these days, we are viewed
as trend-setters.”1
:phunk, formed in 1995 by four LaSalle design students —
Jackson Tan, Alvin Tan, Melvin Chee, and William Chan —
represented a new generation of Singapore graphic design
studios. Their founders grew up as young adults in the late ‘80s
and early ‘90s, when Singapore opened up to the world’s pop
culture from both the East and West, bringing in DC and Marvel
comics, Hong Kong’s kungfu man hua, and most importantly,
music.
Jeff Lim, “Singapore Design I.D.: To Tag Or Not To Tag”, Singaporedge. (2005)
This entire generation learnt about design through music. While
listening to cutting edge bands of the times such as New Order,
Joy Division, Cocteau Twins and the Pixies that were launched
by British labels including 4AD and Factory Records, they fell in
Mono Number One
:phunk Studio
(A Decade of Decadence)
:phunk Studio
2004
1 Clara Chow, “Phunk Soul
Brothers,” The Straits Times,
11 November 2005.
Winning “Calendars” and
“Posters” entries in
Annual Advertising Award 1963
Creative Circle Singapore
1963
—75
Inside pages of
“Does your business look good?”
Hagley & Hoyle
Promotional Brochure
Hagley and Hoyle
1980s
—97
Public Utilities Board
Annual Report 1977
Design Objectives
1977
POSB
Annual Report 1986
Design Objectives
1986
First International Design Forum
(IDF) Collaterals
Addison Design Consultants
1988
Editorial spreads of inside pages
of Signature Magazine
Ransome Chua Design Associates
1980s
—153
—185
Singapore Repertory Theatre
Logo Design /
Marketing Materials
Momentum Design
1995–1999
—209
Decadence
:phunk Studio
2005
—227
Chocolate Research Facility
Branding / Packaging
Asylum
2008