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Two students from the Temasek School of Design won this year’s coveted D&AD Student of the Year Award, beating off international competition. The D&AD Student Award is a prestigious competition, identifying the best emerging creative talents within design, advertising and communication from institutions around the globe. In their 30th year, this is the first time a team studying outside of the UK has won the top creative prize. No small honor considering the breadth of competing talent.

Reinald Chee Weng Pin (Interactive Media Design graduate) and Jason Feng Jiesheng (Moving Images graduate), won the “Yellow Pencil” for their work entitled Modus Transposition Virus: Humoral 315, a boundary-pushing creative response to MTV’s brief: “MTV is a virus. What does it look like, how does it behave and where does it invade?” The work is a multi platform installation involving a short film, an interactive installation and a fully designed CD give-away kit containing interactive applications to help market the campaign.

For a full list of winners, visit the D&AD site.

23-year old Timothy Lee obtained his Diploma in Fashion Design from LaSalle-SIA College Of The Arts.

This is the story behind his Autumn/Winter 07-08 collection (above). “I once met a girl who lived in a refrigerator. She told me her name was “Refrigerator Girl”. She explained that it was constantly cold in the ice-box, like a continuous winter, but she liked it that way. She often played pretend, imagining she was of Inuit Eskimo lineage. And amongst others things (like tasting the different flavors of ice cream and soaking herself in chilled chocolate & strawberry fresh milk), she plays with ice cubes, building igloos of different sizes out of them. And she doesn’t ever get bored, because she hides and secretly smiles when someone opens the refrigerator door and doesn’t see her there.”

“Slacking with the slack-to-crats-boys-and-girls” is the title of Timothy’s Spring/Summer 08-09 collection. “The collection is about clothes for “hanging around” in town,” Timothy clarifies. “Clothes for boys who will be boys, and clothes for girls that will be girls. The story is poetic and lyrical, where colors play an exciting game with minor details peeking around and polite styles making whoopee with eccentricity.”

n.nchal.nt Designs are available from Front Row, Level3.

dA_art Site

Tempted to pimp your walls with faces of your loved ones? Thinking of hiring a contemporary artist to supply a totally unique birthday gift? Check out dA_art, a recently launched site specialized in hand-painted pop-art portraits.

Artist Brenda Lim about her project, “The idea came to me about a year ago, when I did a portrait painting as a gift for one of my friends. The people around me loved what I did and encouraged me to set up dA_art. I’ve always been a fan of Andy Warhol and I love the way Pop-art brings happiness to the public; the vibrant colors and its relevance in everyday life … it brings Art closer to the people. Same goes for dA_art, I am trying to bring Art a little closer to the people around me.”

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Click image from more collection pieces.

Winner of the 2007 Singapore Fashion Designers and the Asian Young Fashion Designers Contest, Chia Wei Choong’s re-invention of the male silhouette has made him an exciting young designer to look out for. His Autumn/Winter 07-08 collection (above) titled, ‘Serotine’ was part of the Blue Print show at this year’s Fashion Festival.

Chia Wei Choong is currently working on his Spring/Summer 08-09 collection which, in the designer’s own words, “is a recollection of historic costumes, but decomposing the ideologies and than reconstructing them again through a filter. Bits of information but never fully comprehensible, with a strong emphasis on the volumes and shapes. There is also a certain ’roundedness’ in my designs, and I choose a clean muted palette to fully allow the impact of the silhouettes to come through.”

Ode,
as we head deeper into unknown times,
as the world around us seems like it is about to crumble and give up,
perplexities of life obscure the goodness and happiness,
just before we let the fear overwhelm our beings,
just before we lose our beliefs,
just before we lose our history,
let us celebrate, the past, present and definitely the future,
for a future full of unknowns,
is a chance to make new histories.

Antebellum Designs are available from Front Row, Level3.

Attention sad sacks … are you desperately lonely or down in the dumps? I’ve been there before, but luckily I found a place where they make endearingly, unfortunate looking dolls that encourage you to ‘hug your sorrow away’. That place is the adorable world of Mimipong, the playground of Art Director, Ms Mimi is and Graphic Designer, Mr Pong. They have created a set of Hug Your Sorrow Tear Dolls that will make you happy in the goofiest way.

“By experimenting with various aspects of design and craftsmanship, we hope to produce things that mirror our personal and mutual interests,” says Mr Pong, and continues, “We seek to highlight the basic function in everyday items. The Hug Your Sorrow tear dolls (above) are made to fulfill the key role of plush toys as comfort objects in moments of misery. Each teardrop comes with a lined tag for the user to pen down the reason for his or her sadness before giving it a big hug for comfort. The doll can also be used as a ‘get-well-soon card’, or it can be sent to a person as a reminder, for having made someone else sad.”

THE DESIGN

Click image for larger view.

‘A Stream of Light’ is a reinterpretation of the classic sofa, and was designed by Olivia Lee in collaboration with her good friend and colleague, Alienor de Chambrier. The sofa is made from four separate items of furniture wrapped and bound in silk, wool and horse hair.

Olivia explains, “The D&AD Students Awards 2008 recently nominated us for a collaborated entry, responding to a design brief set by Vitra. We had to produce a piece of furniture that was unencumbered by commercial constraints and took inspiration from the latest Vitra Edition. Our approach started with a re-examination of the sofa and it’s being defined as a piece of upholstered furniture. We took the idea of upholstery and started to play with other kinds of traditional craft techniques such as crochet and knit - exploring ways of making comfort part of structure as well. We also began collecting a huge array of unusual materials (including horse hair, uncarded wool and unwoven silk) which we felt would build on the uniqueness and eccentricity of the piece. It was quite an organic process with both Alienor and myself agreeing that it was almost as if we were having a dialogue with each other through our weaving.”

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THE ART

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Amanda Ma is fascinated by Chinese culture and architecture. “Even though I’ve never been to China myself, I did quite a bit of research before creating these illustrations,” she says. “At the same time, I didn’t want the illustrations to be photo realistic, so I decided to punch in a few fun elements for myself. I incorporated dragonflies, a frog and pig stone statues instead of the typical lion ones. To push the fun even further, I gave the environment a fish-eyed view. Whenever I work on an illustration, I try to personalize it with little stories, either through the characters or the environment.”

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THE DESIGN

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Teo Ying Hui was born in 1977 and graduated from the Raffles Design Institute with a Diploma in Fashion Design. Her Autumn/Winter 07-08 collection (above), inspired by a yearning for solitude, was based on being and nothingness. The designer explains, “Does existentialism justify our being, or is the nothingness a better rationalization? We are defined by the voids in life and at the same time, we are seeking freedom from our consciousness. Taking a simplified and abstract look at these thoughts, my collection attempts to uncover how isolation inspires the route to self-actualization.”

For her Spring/Summer 08-09 women’s collection, Teo Ying Hui found inspiration in nostalgia and dreams, and in objects that evoke a sense of familiarity and belonging; old toys, cracked paint, vintage fabrics, wooden benches and dusty books. “Through the random linkage of these objects and haphazard episodes in my dreams, I imagine new clothes for the passer-by in my dreamscapes.”

DemiSemi Designs are available from Front Row, Level3.

THE PHOTOGRAPH

Alvelyn Alko is a second year art student at Lasalle, College of the Arts. She also teaches art in primary and secondary schools around Singapore.

Alvelyn about how it all started. “I received a Lomo Colorsplash when I turned sixteen. Before that, I was shooting skies, buildings and my shoes with a cellphone camera. The first decent set of pictures I ever shot were about skateboarding. I’ve been skating for four years and during that time I was heavily influenced by photographs I saw in Transworld Skateboarding.”

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On Friday, 18th July at 10pm, alternative rock quartet Nuance will launch their self-titled debut EP at Home Club. In an interview with frontman Donald Pan two weeks ago, we promised you a crack at two free EPs. Want one? Send me an email and I’ll choose two names randomly on Wednesday. Good luck!

* Contest is open to Singapore residents only!

THE ART

‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ is Jerome Simon’s favorite quotation from René Descartes’ ‘Discourse on the Method‘. “We are what we think about,” he says, “and that comes from our perception of things, and how we place ourselves in this society. I am learning about my place in the world, just like anyone else.”

“The above painting is basically a tongue in cheek perspective of myself. Very often the way people perceive each other is not always accurate, and is a take on the person’s actual character. In this instance I was being labeled a flirtatious guy.”

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THE PHOTOGRAPH

According to Geraldine Ang Luyi, all fishes do, is swim, eat and mate. “Maybe we’re aimless like that sometimes … offering ourselves up to something we don’t understand. Can you see the shape of a tree in my photograph? … perhaps and unknowingly sprouting growth?”

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Going green gets groovy come 19th July at Old School @ Mount Sophia, when the RSC Block Party (see our interview) kicks off Singapore’s first rock festival in support of the environment. Through the use of Music and the Arts, the party aims to raise awareness on Environmental, Oceanic Reef and Animal rights issues amongst the youth of Singapore.

The Green Line Up

Headlining this event will be a concert, showcasing local bands such as Plainsunset, The Great Spy Experiment, Amateur Takes Control, The Analog Girl and I Am David Sparkle, to name a few.

There will also be a flea market to encourage the 3Rs of conservation – Recycle, Reuse and Reduce. Adding to the festivity will be ‘Say Cheese with Bintan Resorts’ photo contest and DJs from Home Club working the ambience music. At the same time, there will be a screening of select local films at Sinema. Visit the RSC Block Party site for more details.

GIVEAWAY!

We are giving away a pair of VIP tickets to two lucky readers. We’ll run this contest till 11th July, so for those interested, just send a sweet email to Michele.

Update: Sorry guys … we have two winners. The contest is closed. 

Contest is open to Singapore residents only.

THE DESIGN

Walking around at MAAD, I spotted these beautiful toys made by Malaysia-born freelance artist Nana Pong. The toys are entirely made from fabric and make great snuggles. “I started getting exposure to art during a three-year fine art and design course at Chong Hwa High School,” says Nana. “After that I obtained a diploma in interior design from the Singapore Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Two years ago, I decided to give up my career as a senior interior designer and became a full time artist. The endless passion for creativity and the power of imagination for my artwork moved from a hobby to an Art De Vivre (Art of Living). I also believe in admiring and sharing the reflections of art. In 2006, I decided to start my own company, Roomism.”

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Click the image for more designs.

23-year old Tan Qiu Wen graduated from LaSalle-SIA College Of The Arts with a diploma in Fashion Design. Qwen is the designer behind iamwhoiam, and the pieces above are part of her Autumn/Winter 07-08 collection, titled “War is a Drug. We are dying of it”.

Qwen explains, “The collection is inspired by the films Dr. Strangelove, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It references a nuclear accident, building on the widespread Cold War and the fight for survival. A by-product of human absurdity, Humanity having created ‘the ultimate terror’ must now live with the consequences in circumspect - the ultimate error.”

Qwen is currently working on her Spring/Summer 08-09 collection, which will be presented some time late October. “The name of my new collection is Nostos, which is Greek for ‘return’. It began with the yearning to return back in time,” Qwen clarifies, “to the nostalgic memories of childhood and euphoric happiness. This yearning will only continue… and I chose to be tormented by the unappeased feeling, rather than to feel empty about the present. This collection reflects the mixed feelings of my present emotions and the nostalgic feelings of the past.”

iamwhoiam is available at Front Row, Level3.