Asher Wen

Strategist, Marketer, Nerd

Learning Graphic Design from Karen Kavett

I have been looking for short graphic design courses for the upcoming summer but haven’t been able to find anything satisfactory.  I ultimately came to the conclusion that the most economical and effective way given my circumstance is to self-learn. And so I googled and chanced upon this video by Karen Kavett.

The video is really helpful with recommendation of books I could look up and useful tips as to what to do to grow my experience. You can really tell that the advice comes from a place of experience with design despite her young age. Her geek cred also makes the video really fun to watch. Gonna try all of the advice out when I have time!

Check out her other videos too. Pretty informational stuff about colours, typography, etc.

Knowing Your Dream.



Today we celebrated my friend Jamie’s grand launch of her very own clothing line 20:TWOTHREE down at PARCO next NEXT.  It is an awesome brand with very avant garde cuts and designs created by Jamie and her cousin Genevieve despite not having formal fashion design training.  They have truly come a long way from running their own blogshop to creating something of their own.  Kudos to them for their courage and bravery!

I couldn’t help but stand in awe of how much they have achieved, and how much I pale in comparison.  I have been feeling this for quite some time now.  One by one, I see my friends chasing their dreams and doing what they love, while I still grapple with the fear of not being able to do what I truly want to do.

There was Tan Long who was back during the Christmas holidays to do co-direct and perform in a musical concert for his church.  He does this every Christmas when he comes back, and you can literally see him shine when he does something he likes.

Then there is Teck Heng, who is relentless in pursuing his dreams of becoming an academic in Literature, all this while balancing his passion for music by performing in his very own band.

And Liansheng, who held his very first dramatic reading at the NUS Arts Festival that transpired just nearly a month ago.  Mervyn who is an awesome hair tattooist who taught himself everything he knows and pursues his dream of having his own barber shop and bringing back the concept of barbering to Singapore.

What have I done?

I know what I like, but I feel so crippled as compared to all of them.  I keep telling myself that I don’t have the time to pursue graphic design properly, but I know these are just excuses for myself.  It’s time I started thinking about what I really want for myself, and live it like so many of my friends.  I need to know my dream.

On Regrets.

The office is calm before work starts.  Almost no one comes early here, so I have a moment before I have to put on the mask of enjoyment to write a little.  It has been a long time since my last entry.  Posts have been drafted then abandoned, or drafted then deleted.  Funny how I am living in a supposedly less stressful way as compared to studying, yet I hardly have time to do things for myself anymore.

Of course, that’s not the point to this entry.  What I really wanted to talk about was the competition that I took part in between the last post and now – L’Oreal Brandstorm.  And I guess the post title was a misnomer.  I do not regret anything that we have done for Brandstorm,  In fact, I am proud of my team.  We have come so far from that first conceptualization while sitting on the benches of a certain university in the city centre.  It’s a pity that The Body Shop did not see the diamond in the dust.

You know, I don’t exactly remember how I got into the competition in the first place.  I wasn’t planning on joining this year since I had this internship at SUTL.  I think it was a text message from either Alan or Karen asking me if I wanted to join their team.  I thought to myself, this would be quite fun.  I haven’t really had the opportunity to work with them before this even though we were all marketing students (except Shell with Alan).

With that, we began our epic journey of trying to balance our separate internships with submissions, meeting almost every other night to discuss what our new product would be.  When we submitted our proposal during the prelims, it was after one long night of preparation and research at Karen’s place.  We hardly slept a wink, had MacDonald’s and emo talked about our dads.  We talked about our problems at work, and got to know each other better in the process.  None of us knew if our concept of Lingering Fragrance would work out, but it did for the prelims.

We were taken aback to hear Tambyah tell us that we got chosen for our concept.  I guess we were not sure of it up to that point.  In the preparatory presentation to profs, we were shot down for our uninteresting, boring and static slides.  And I took especial offense since it was done over my computer.  With the short week that we had, we improved it by leaps and bounds, radically changing it to have less info on screen, but much more on speech.  Of course, we also tried to do up our collaterals to impress.

We now know of course, that it was not enough for L’Oreal folks.  I don’t think I ever went through such a great experience though.  Great not because it was easy to do, but great because I got to do it with great friends, and got to know them better in the process.  And great because I now know what it really means to truly believe in your product, and to treat it like your little baby.

Even though we are walking away from this prematurely, we walk away with our heads held high.  And with greater confidence to conquer our dreams. Exuding our fragrance and unleashing our confidence wherever we go.

Thank you Alan and Chuntong for the opportunity!

A New Job And New Routines.

I think it can be considered a tiny miracle that I am actually writing right now.  I should really be rushing out my part for L’Oreal Brandstorm, but I felt like I needed to take some time to pen down my thoughts before they get lost forever in the deluge that is my new working life.

That’s right.  I’m working now.

A Brand & Communications Intern at SUTL Group.  I don’t blame you for not having heard of it.  I didn’t before I googled it.  Even after I did, I was still sketchy on the details of what the Group did.  Well, now I have a better idea I guess.  We are mainly a distributor of wines and tobacco, but the part of the Group that I deal with is mainly in Consumer Retail.  We are the owners of Nike-Only retail stores, nydc, and FootWorks.  Admittedly, they are 3 very distinct operations.  But somehow they work, I guess.

Work is only beginning to get interesting since I am finally exposed to more than data entry for the loyalty card database.  You know, sometimes I study so much and do so many recommendations in my Marketing projects, that I forget that someone out there has to execute all that is being said.  In my Asian Markets course, we covered intensively about KBox’s loyalty card programme.  Now I have a first hand experience of what it really takes to actually have such a programme.  No mean feat, especially if you don’t already have a CRM software to help you out.  That’s what I have been doing for the whole first week of my internship – keying in data.

Other things that I am exposed to are the store operations.  It is interesting to hear the difficulties that a retailer faces when we do not own the brand.  That means there is a definite limit to the things that we can do, and the promotions that we can run under the brand.  Well, I shouldn’t go into much details here, but I think it would be fascinating to see how it all works out in the end.

This post, after all, is also about new routines.

It has been rather difficult to see all the tweets about returning to school and people complaining about having to bid for modules or to drop or swap them when I am not myself in the fray.  I feel like I am somehow left out of the fun, even if it feels like chaos to them.  Last semester was one of the best semesters I have had, and I am honestly quite worried that spending one term away from school would affect my studies.

On top of that, this new waking up early and sleeping early routine has taken some getting used to.  I almost always feel tired waking up these days, and I get tired really quickly at around 10 pm at night.  That means that I can’t really do much outside of work, no matter how hard I try to keep myself awake.  That can only mean that Brandstorm gets jeopardized.

Kai has been very understanding about my not spending enough time with her as well.  That’s something I must figure out – how to do the things I used to do while juggling work life.  This is definitely not how I want to lead the majority of my adult life.

I am actually looking forward to next week when my Boss comes back from her holidays, because it can only mean more challenges and more tasks for me to do.  I have been rather reticent these two weeks because I am still getting used to the job, but I think it’s about time I stretched myself a little and used more of my brains in my work.  It’s getting rusty.

Well, let’s see how it goes!  I’ll keep you updated =)