‘Get cracking’ means to get started with something quickly. With Singapore’s fast-paced lifestyle, we often forget to fully immerse ourselves in the moment, thus overlooking the little joys in life. Even the act of eating might become a mindless activity, where people rush to finish their meals to continue on with their bustling lives, without savouring the food they are consuming. In Singapore, with the advent of convenience foods or processed foods, and the growing prioritisation of careers and academics in families, there is a decline of home cooking, and children have fewer opportunities to be involved in cooking and planning their meals. Cooking becomes a chore and a hindrance, and people increasingly turn to eating out or taking away food.
Let’s Get Crackin’ seeks to spark joy and interest in food and cooking in children, and help them get in touch with food, using a fun, creative and mindful approach. It comprises an illustrated step-by-step recipe book with engaging activities and educational information that aims to build healthy and joyful relationships with food, together with a kit containing cooking tools and items that would ease children into getting started in their food and cooking journey.
Beauty and personal skincare market has been increasing exponentially over the years. Ranging from skin masks, bottled essence to edible beauty snacks. Massive number of online websites and advertisements features the promoted beauty products and their indicated properties. However, this gives rise to the question of what exactly is ‘sustainable’, ‘natural’ or ‘safe’ in such products.
ACOSKIN project aims to provide consumers with the relevant knowledge of the different chemical properties inside the beauty products. Utilising scientific facts and product scanning features to motivate consumers to trust and make choices for their own skin. With an interactive skin app, users will be empowered to buy products that suit their needs and improve their skin health at their own pace. Reducing misuse and misconception about skincare and beauty products. Guiding users towards a sustainable and ethical approach to skin health.
‘The Weeping Citizen’ is a visual exploration of a speculative ocean future, where Singapore navigates efforts to reverse the catastrophic loss of 50% of all marine life on Earth due to climate change. It is motivated by the increasing urgency of the Ocean Sustainability crisis and our disconnectedness from the issue due to our lack of up-close interactions with marine life in our urban environment.
This project aims to encourage Gen-Zs to become more proactive about conservation efforts in response to the ongoing Climate and Ocean Sustainability crisis and encourage inquisitiveness to become better-informed citizens. It explores the use of speculative design, utilizing sci-fi prototyping and a participatory design component to present a future scenario that synthesizes existing technologies, research, and scientific journals to contextualize a response.
The project, which includes a hypothetical public web archive and experiential display, prompts the audience to reflect on their relationship with the Ocean Sustainability crisis and the impact of their actions on building a sustainable future. It aims to incite introspection and encourage the audience to consider the interconnectivity of our lives with the Ocean Sustainability crisis, the various aspects of life that would be affected, and the ways in which our actions can either help or hinder our attempts to build an ideal sustainable future. By doing so, it aims to reframe how we interact with the present, critique our existing behaviours and encourage active conversation about steps we can take from here.
Under the Roof is a project about rediscovering harmony within our homes and making purposeful improvements to our living space in order to create a positive outlook towards our home environment and family life. Utilising the practicality of Feng Shui principles, an interactive online guide will explore meaningful spatial arrangements and homemaking practices in the Singaporean context, to encourage young Singaporeans to tailor their living spaces to better suit their personal needs. By allowing users to explore their ideal space while being conscious of the distinct energy and significance of each area in their home, this project hopes that it will be able to ease household tensions to establish a sense of balance, encouraging a fulfilled and healthy lifestyle that starts from within.
Knowledge That Binds is an investigation into the craft of bookbinding through the lens of a designer, to foster appreciation and encourage creatives to engage in the craft.
Often overlooked in the hands of readers, bookbinding is an essential part of holding pages of information together. Books were initially bound by hand in the past before industrialisation introduced machinery and automated much of the process. As such, the craft of hand bookbinding has dwindled into a niche profession and a hobby.
Despite the decline of hand bookbinding, the craft is still relevant to creatives as it is frequently used in student projects and artist books in the art and design scene. It is a significant skill used for artist books and design publications, hence, it is important to promote the art of bookbinding in Singapore amongst creatives so that more creatives can engage with and develop a deeper appreciation for the craft. Learning about hand bookbinding techniques and binding methods from the past can also provide inspiration for contemporary designers and artists who are interested in exploring the art of bookbinding. By studying traditional binding techniques, one can gain a greater understanding of the materials, tools, and methods used in bookbinding.
This project seeks to study existing hand bookbinding techniques and aims to relook at hand bookbinding techniques for designers and artists who self-produce books and can benefit from hand bookbinding as a creative expression.
