of bells, raindrops and snow flakes

Ribbon design for Kids 21 Christmas 2011

not one but two :)

My two new printed books have just arrived! i’ll be sharing some pictures here soon. At the mean time, do check out the book preview:

a little surprise every day

3 p.m. notes

*Max excited* :)))

the glasses

Printed materials for the recent presidential election campaign – mailers, postcards with perforated bookmark, magnets and info card.

autumn memories

Club 21 A/W Windows, 2011

Junk or antiques, you decide :)

autumn/winter in progress

Window display setup in progress.

By far the most time consuming window display projects i’ve ever done. Check out the

visual printouts in the last picture... i spent so much time on the design, planning, layout,
colour coordination etc... but yet the contractor said ‘it was too much work and

not possible to follow 100%’. What the hell!

i spotted so many ‘mistakes’, but as long as you don’t scrutinise, i think overall the windows
still look good :)

we love trees

Tree sculptures design for Club 21b

bookbinding

Reading Notabilia’s latest post has set me into a nostalgic memory of a basic bookbinding course that i took up during college. The workshop itself was a gem! It had all kinds of (paper) materials and machines. We were lucky to have the chance to use quite a few while learning to make our very first book of perfect binding then.

The ones shown here are all handmade and if i remember correctly, they were french bookbinding... but don’t take my words for it... each page was folded, and put together by stitching the raw edges. We did a set of four different styles and i gave one away which i kind of regret now because i will never remember what the last binding stitching looked like again.

Then there was this book that i designed for my final year typography project which was inspired from the above book binding method – since each page was folded into half, i can make use of the ‘underside’, which was usually left unused and hidden, to further illustrate the book idea. It was perfect for the story that i was working on – The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – a famous story relating about the good and bad split (double-side!) in people.

The cover was a mirror-like paper, the reader sees his own reflection (when holding the book), as if looking into his other self, the evil side, as suggested with a printed skeleton (not shown here). Inside pages had a few variations – an extremely long page to illustrate a long walk, text was printed reverse, on the underside of the paper (faint printing showing through the paper suggested the hidden self) etc...

i still love the book idea today even though it is rather embarrassing when looking at the typography design – the kerning was unbelievably bad, the typeface was badly chosen etc. i wish i will be motivated enough to redesign the typography for this book one day.

Don’t forget to leave notabilia a note if you’re interested in knowing more about bookbinding :-)

having a great time

Club 21 Chinese New Year Windows, 2011

The last couple of weeks had been truly crazy, am so glad that the rush hours are finally over. i find myself still on recovery mode though, had been sleeping a lot for the past few days and yet still feeling very tired. My work desk (in fact the whole room) is beyond recognition and i need to put everything back in place real quick before work starts coming in again.

How’s your holiday so far? Mine is just starting and i’m really enjoying it :-)

fifteen

My new lot of 3 p.m. breaks arrived! All fifteen of them.

Available here :-)

last day!

Flat rate shipping promotion ends today, don’t forget to order your copy!

3 p.m. breaks is available online.

3 p.m. breaks

i’ve got a new book!

3 p.m. breaks are my daily respite from the toils of life. Well, life’s little joys can never be simpler – put a little thought into your tea breaks, and be amazed by its therapeutic effect.

i feel very lucky and honored indeed to have it being featured under the front page of Blurb’s Staff Picks for the past few weeks and it was also elected as Book of the Week following its publishing. Exhilarating for me, it is!

3 p.m. breaks is available online, size 7 x 7 inches, 80 pages.

Festive flat rate shipping till 10 December 2010.

missing covers

A personal project that i’m currently working on. Quite a bit of hands-on work required... almost made me feel like a student. Will talk about it more when it’s completed.

*Excited!*

“slacks and shoes to go with it?”

Peanuts 60 Years World Tour pop-up store, at Hilton L2.

i was so tempted to get a pair of the (overpriced but so cool!) Peanuts Converse sneakers, hopefully they will go out of stock soon so i can stop thinking about it.