Cultural Dances

Some fabulous cultural dances performed in Singapore for more culture shioking fun:

Chinese Dance



Malay Dance



Indian Ankita Dance

Cross Cultural Fun

Here's a video that I think is a perfect example of the rich cultural diversity that can be seen in Singapore:



This is the brief exchange that goes on in the video...

Indian Male (talking in Chinese): Hey pretty girl...
Chinese girl (talking in Hindi): Go away you silly man!

All film credits go to MMC student Ritesh Sharma.

The Collateral

Here's a preview of my awesome poster:


(For a better quality version, please see the digital drop box on edventure)

Meanwhile, here's a preview of my brochure:

Side 1

Side 2

(Similarly, please see the copy in the digital drop box for a better quality version)

The End

Ah, so we've finally reached the day when this entire project is actually due. Honest reflections: working on it has made me so intense all semester! While the design principles that Dr. P taught in the beginning of the semester all seemed to make perfect logical sense, I found out through this practical project that to actually put them into execution is much easier said than done.

Luckily, Dr. P has been very patient with my whining and incessant worrying, so acknowledgments must be made to him. Acknowledgments also go to my roommate who allowed me to show her face in so many of the pictures in my brochure and poster. As I mentioned to her once, she is the star of my portfolio. :)

While I know that my collateral do not look particularly professional, I hope at least that they manage to carry across my concept "CULTURE SHIOK!" well. :) May the ICA 2010 conference be a success, and may as many conference participants decide to extend their stay in Singapore over the weekend to get their own unique culture shioking experience!

Here are just some more fleeting glimpses into lively Singapore:

Indian sweet shop in Little India

Serving up delicious Dim Sum in Chinatown

Nothing better than some fresh coconut on a hot summer's day

Brochure success!

Now I had to consider my options for filling in the inside pages of the brochure. All I knew in the back of my mind was that I wanted to fulfill the following 2 requirements:

1) Emphasize the 'culture' element
2) Relay the 'shiok!' element

In order to fulfill the 'culture' element, I knew I could make good use of all the pictures I took in Little India and Chinatown. After selecting a couple, I laid them out across two-thirds of the page and added in white borders so as to make them look like polaroid shots. Rather than putting them in a neat row, I arranged them rather randomly so as to keep the brochure looking young and "exciting"- thus allowing me to also fulfill the 'shiok' element at the same time. I added succinct and fun captions to the pictures to continue with the 'youthful' and 'exciting' undertone.

Then I created three text boxes on the right hand side of the page and filled them in with a hot pink shade so as to make it coincide with the font color of the word 'culture' on my poster.

After playing around a bit more with the fonts and sizes, I heaved a sigh of relief as I realized that my brochure is finally looking somewhat put together...

The beginnings of a brochure

So off I go to begin work on my brochure! I googled as many suitable brochures as possible for inspiration, and while I did manage to find plenty of beautiful examples, there was no way I would be able to emulate them. Thus, with a heavy heart, I decided to give the templates in Microsoft Word's project gallery a shot.

In the beginning, I got very excited upon knowing that the pictures and text boxes were so easily replaceable. However, I soon discovered that the backgrounds could not be changed. That posed a problem for me as I wanted to make the background black to keep the look consistent with my poster.

Thus, finally, I decided to attempt my own design in Microsoft Word. As I could not find any blank brochure layout on my very old 2003 Word software, I very primitively measured the A4 paper in thirds and put in lines as my guide.

For one of the sides of the brochure, I decided to use the type mask tool once again to create the three letters I, C, and A to tie the Singapore Weekend project with the ICA conference. After brainstorming for awhile on what creative way I could use the three letters, I decided to use them as acronyms for the three racial groups in Singapore. This way, it will also appropriately emphasize the "culture" aspect of my design concept:

I - Indian
C - Chinese
A - And Malay

(The 'A' part was pushing it a little, but I figured it would still be acceptable!) :)

Flower stall in Little India

Yahoo! I have a poster!

Yay! I now have a poster! After having experimented with all sorts of design possibilities (and failing), I have finally decided to settle on the one I have now. Rather than doing a collage of photos, I used Photoshop's "type mask" tool to create the word SHIOK from various pictures taken in Little India and Chinatown.

Meanwhile, I used the "magnetic lasso" tool to cut out my roommate from the jumping shot photo and borrowed her active form to serve as the exclamation mark after the word 'shiok'.

I played with various backgrounds of the overall poster, but as the type masked word was already very colorful on its own, I ultimately settled on good old solid black so that the word would be able to stand out even more. Then, I added the word 'culture' towards the top left of 'shiok' so as to balance the diagonal direction of my roommate's photo.

I'm pretty pleased with the overall look, if I do say so myself.

But next comes the hard part... how should I formulate my brochure so that it can look similar to my poster?

Poster Experiments

With my photo collection at hand, I started to try to put some of my sketched ideas to the computer screen. I wanted to make sure that I captured both the "culture" and "shiok" elements in accordance with my tagline, and thus mapped out a few ideas for my poster.

My first idea was to do a collage of various photos taken in Little India and Chinatown and put them all within the outlined shape of my roommate's jumping shot. However, while the idea seemed brilliant at first - actually executing it was much harder than I expected. Having very little experience with Photoshop - and definitely no natural eye for design aesthetics like Dr. P! - I found out that collating the photos and laying them out next to each other so that they actually looked natural was very difficult to achieve.

I thus had to scrap that idea and try the next.

My second idea is actually the reverse of the first one, i.e. that the jumping shot would be a black silhouette against the backdrop of an entire page of collaged photos. I figured that this would be easier since I would not have to cut the corners of the pictures to fit any particular curves of my roommate's jumping shot. However, after much trial and error, I once again found that it would prove much harder than expected.

And so that had to go too. With the semester inching to an end, and still without a poster ready, I was beginning to feel worried. Very worried.

Prepare... to get Culture Shioked!

"Shiok!", as Prof. Ang mentions on the ICA 2010 website, is the Singaporean way of expressing extreme excitement. So I figure, why not use this term creatively and make a word play on the term 'culture shock' to create the tagline for my project, "Culture Shiok!"?

After all, I found the tagline very fitting for Singapore - a country I also refer to as the 'land of cultural contrasts'. With its emphasis and promotion of its ethnic diversity, the Lion City certainly offers a uniquely rich form of cultural experience for tourists that you would not be able to get anywhere else.

Thus, with the general idea of wanting to create something that would show both the 'culture' as well as the 'shiok' elements, I set out to conceptualize my poster.

For the 'culture' component, I knew I would require some pictures that could show some sort of cultural heritage (therefore not such places as shopping malls!). I thus set out to Little India and Chinatown and took a series of photos of everything from food to buildings.

As for the 'shiok' component, I took some jumping shot photos of my - luckily willing - roommate. After all, I thought that such an active picture as a jumping shot would be able to carry across the feeling of 'shiok!', or 'extreme excitement' well.

Now that I had enough photos, it was time to begin brainstorming some basic looks for my portfolio.