The last substantial piece I wrote was back in 2018, right here on Medium. Then life happened.

I spent those years building up teams, co-founding our second company, and learning what it takes to make products that people actually use. The kind of messy, unglamorous work that doesn’t make it into polished case studies or design portfolios.

Why I stopped writing

I tried coming back to Medium a few times. Published a few pieces, scrapped them, rewrote them completely. Still felt off. The perfectionist cycle was in full motion: spend weeks polishing something, step away, then sigh in disappointment.

Meanwhile, I’d gotten way faster at designing the right features, making the right decisions with fewer iterations, and getting teams excited to build things. But writing? Still felt like I was borrowing someone else’s voice.

The uncertainty felt exactly like the early days of building our platform. You think you know what people need, then reality has other plans. The messy middle where you’re competent enough to know something’s wrong but not experienced enough to fix it quickly.

What shifted

A few weeks ago, I looked at those old essays and realised I’d been trying to write more tactical design advice when what I really had were lessons from wins and failures. The moments when reality beat theory. The hiring decisions that surprised me. The methods that worked despite breaking every best practice.

Maybe you’re here because you’ve felt that gap too — between what we’re supposed to do and what actually works when we’re also trying to stay afloat.

Moving to Substack

I’m starting fresh with “The Design Handoff” on Substack. Not because Medium isn’t great — it worked for that chapter — but because I want to build something more intentional around the intersection of design, product thinking, and the reality of growing companies.

What you’ll find there:

• Design decisions that move business metrics vs those that just look good in presentations
• User feedback approaches that work when formal research feels impossible
• How to hire design talent that actually performs (spoiler: portfolios don’t predict success)
• Building teams and processes that survive the chaos of growing companies

I write for product designers, team leaders, and founders who’ve felt the frustration of implementing “best practices” that don’t fit their reality. If you’ve ever wondered why some design approaches work while others become expensive theatre, we’re probably thinking about similar problems.

The Design Handoff by Yung | Yung Tyng Lee | Substack

What I’ve learned

After years of telling design teams not to work in isolation, it didn’t feel right to keep these lessons to myself. The gap between design busywork and what actually works is too wide, and I’ve been in the room where decisions get made long enough to have some useful perspectives.

I’m still figuring out the whole audience thing, but I have lived through the challenges that keep product & design people up at night. If sharing what I’ve stumbled through helps someone else skip a few dead ends, that seems worth the discomfort of writing in public again.

The first piece is live

I’ve just published “How We Made User Feedback Unavoidable” — about what happens when customer support becomes everyone’s job, and why it beats research sessions.

It’s the kind of contrarian insight I wish I’d had earlier: less about changing tools, more about changing how teams think about user understanding.

Come along for the ride

Whether you’re here for a quick read or planning to stick around for the long haul, I’d love to have you join me over at The Design Handoff.

Thanks for following my work here on Medium all those years ago. It means more than you know.

Subscribe if you want lessons from the reality of growth-stage product design, not just design theory.

Find me at leeyungtyng.substack.com for practical product design insights from the trenches of designing products and teams.

The Design Handoff: Moving from Medium to Substack was originally published in Gridhaus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Instead, the right way to be stuck on someone’s mind is to be…a real human being. In this series on brand strategy, we’ll walk you through Gridhaus’ process of building brands.

Have you recently rolled your eyes at another “A logo is not a brand” article? Yet, we die a little inside each time design Instagram accounts with cult followings post a single image of a logomark, and title it “XX rebranding by Studio XX” without further context. It is for precisely this reason that this theme should be reiterated — your brand is more than your visual identity. If your business or organisation is struggling to build recognition and following, then you may need to do a lot more than hire a budget standalone ‘logo design service’.

For the seasoned designer, this topic may be a walk in the park so we can go in-depth and exchange perspectives over here. For the everyday user and business, our goal is to provide you with a deeper insight into how we’ve built brands and helped businesses move beyond the superficial visual consumption that our general creative industry is so accustomed to. We’re sharing with you our exact process of making strategic decisions in order to serve users better. This is so that you can make informed business decisions and conversations with your team or community.

Fair notice — this is a meaty article. Let’s preface it with a very clear definition of terms so that we are all on the same page.

Brand definition recognition

Branding

When we say Branding — we refer to a set of qualities, ideas, and attributes that we promise and deliver in all our user experiences — whether physical or any other interaction that a person may have with a company. Branding is not objective, instead, it’s feelings and philosophies. It’s the emotion and experience that customers get when they think of you, and then tell others about.

The quality that makes up any company’s brand should inform the way a company presents itself and commits business — from high-level executives to management, to the smallest everyday interactions. It should be legible, clear, and well-articulated.

Identity

When we say Identity — we refer to a visual expression of the Brand through symbols, typography, colour, and layout.

When we say brand, we don’t mean the identity — but who we are as a whole. When we say identity, it’s the identifiable — logo, colours, components.

These definitions will be used consistently throughout this series on brand strategy. Let’s dive in.

1. Feelings are the way we remember people

Do you remember how you last recounted a memorable encounter with someone?

“It was such a pleasant and engaging experience speaking with him”

“Her enthusiasm is infectious! Everything is exciting and motivating when she’s here.”

“I really felt included. I’d love to spend more time with them!”

You might be familiar with the dinner-table game of “First Impressions”. It’s unlikely someone remembers their first time meeting you by your clothing. They recall their first encounter with you by what they felt of you, your mannerisms, attitudes, the kind of words you used.

This is the same kind of experience we want to give our users if we are to build a lasting relationship with them. The more we provide them with a memorable & enjoyable experience, the more they feel valued, and the more likely they will advocate for us.

I myself enjoy an occasional stroll through the local Muji store at Emporium, simply because I enjoy the calming atmosphere that their store and well-designed products create. This experience of unwinding is something I now readily associate with the brand. Naturally, I’ve amassed a line of their homewares that suit my needs (also a grasp at the dream of owning a Muji house), and whenever a friend expresses their search for a product, I’ll say “Muji has good ones!”

2. Defining a brand’s attributes

With every business, the best, first investment is in knowing, developing, and improving ourselves. It is in having a clear understanding of ourselves that we will understand how to best serve and invest in others. This is in service to our users, that they are assured of a transparent and true intention of a brand they interact with.

Some of the brand pillars we contemplate include:

• How do you describe yourselves in general? What do you aim to be?
• How does your community describe you? The culture you’re trying to cultivate?
• How would you describe your ideal user?
• What experience do you want to create for your users?
• What quantifiable value can you provide for them?

Here we define and prioritise single words that describe these aspects of the brand, among a few. Thinking of the brand as a person, how would you describe them?

Sometimes teams have the tendency to go negative, such as “indecisive” or “disorganised”. These should be positive. The goal is to express attributes based on an ideal of where we want to be in the near future. If someone describes a user as “disorganised,” we change it to “organised.” Reality happens in language first, so if we describe how we want to be as opposed to how we are, it helps us manifest that.

3. The brand statement

Having defined a set of words that describe us really well, we have what we need to build an internal brand statement. This is a statement that vitally describes who we are, what we stand for, and what we offer. In other words, the purpose of why we exist.

Succinctness and clarity is the goal. If we can’t describe ourselves, it’s hard to imagine if our audience can understand us. Imagine a first date: If you can’t fully articulate what your interests and values are, or hold an engaging conversation with the right amount of words for that matter — your date will lose interest in you, fast. On the flip side, you risk inundating them with a spiel of your life story.

Hence, it is crucial that we always have this in writing. For an idea of how we’ve built a statement, a recent example can be seen here.

By stating clearly who we really are, it makes sure we’re always on track for the goals of our project — quality, customer acquisition, knowing what should be built, and knowing the business objectives we want to accomplish are tied to the design — not a fluffy “this looks trendy and amazing!”

4. Re-enacting the desired feeling

Reality starts with language, by turning words into action and living up to our claim. A visual identity alone is only one aspect, it can’t bear an entire brand’s responsibilities. It’s in the way we speak, the way we dress, or the way we interact with our customers. The best way to bring these experiences to life is through action.

Does your copywriting sound personable or robotic? How well and consistently does your outward-facing identity reflect the true internal value of your brand? Do your customers feel cared for and listened to when they meet you or contact you? Does the entire length of your digital & physical customer journey solve their pain points? Are you present with them at every step?

We’ll dive further into tailoring these solutions for our users in Part Two (coming soon). More about the execution will be carried over and explored in Part Three (coming soon).

Why use this process?

We use words to describe feelings

It’s as clear as it gets! Words are the first line of communication, and they are especially crucial during preliminary project stages between designers and clients. The lack of clear definitions and parameters at the start are the main cause of most project breakdowns.

Designers, we’re familiar with being stuck in the cycle of countless sketch concepts, endless draft revisions, ‘Styleguide-Final-v4.6.2.indd’, and “I don’t like this shade of blue, please use the colour my mother chose” at some point in our work. By translating feelings into words and unanimously prioritising their importance, we eliminate this old, time consuming (and illogical) process altogether. Take for instance —

“We’ve described our users’ experience of the brand as calming and comforting, like coming home from a long day and being wrapped in a warm blanket. As demonstrated in these images, we find a deep shade of blue paired with warm hues of greyish tan can embody this feeling.”

“I like that. It’s a sense of familiarity, yet also evoking senses with texture and warmth. There’s an idea that those elements were carefully selected to create that environment, which is what we want to give to our users. However, I’m concerned if this could risk being perceived as a cold palette. Could we pair them with some obvious warm colours?”

“That’s a great point. Imagine sitting by a fireplace. We’ll explore what other accents can complement this primary selection.”

The discussion naturally moves from subjective personal preferences to an objective and informed process. Decisions are now made on solid premises, following an “if this, then that” logic. Understanding the brand attributes gives us a set of very specific reference points we and our clients always point ourselves to, instead of pointing at each other.

Acceleration is the game, consensus is the aim

i. Shiny Object Syndrome
“Ooh my competitor has this feature, I like these colours, I like these graphics — so I’d like to have these. Can you do that?”

In this case, neither teams have a basis on whether it is suitable for and represents a client’s brand. It is also, plainly speaking, a waste of everyone’s time and resources when subjective indecisiveness strikes.

We start by objectively defining who we are. By knowing ourselves really well, we won’t let our brand or identity be defined by a ‘shiny object’ or what others have done.

ii. System for consensus
When we facilitate these frameworks with our clients, we arrange to have as many of the C-Suite in the same room along with other primary decision makers. This is to establish agreement from all key stakeholders on any decisions made — and this, without fail has accelerated our projects.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had to deal with unreasonably long email threads addressed to the executives, cc-ed to our team, their marketing & tech department, (and possibly their new intern). What could take two weeks for the client-side to decide on is established within hours.

In return, our clients have the absolute guarantee that we’ve listened to and understood exactly what they’ve described, and their business goals will be deeply tied into the designed end-product.

In the end, once your users clearly understand who you are and how you can solve their needs, you’ll know that your brand and identity are successful.

References:
The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier
CORE 1.9, Jose Caballer

This article is Part One in a series about Brand Strategy. Check out the links below for parts two and three, and our list of recommended readings.

1. Your brand is in their hands — Brand Strategy Pt. 2 (Coming Soon)
2. Planning for the big day — Brand Strategy Pt. 3 (Coming Soon)
3. No one cares about your logo, Jon Hollamby
4. There’s more to branding than a logo, Michael Johnson
5. The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier
6. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, Blair Enns
7. Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, Douglas Davis

Originally published at www.gridhaus.com.

Does Your Brand Sear? — Brand Strategy Pt. 1 was originally published in Gridhaus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I assumed I needn’t say much about the whole Kuala Lumpur City logo fiasco when it first surfaced, as I foresaw that many people would make enough noise about it. As expected, and to my delight, the whole Internet and social media went into an absolute fit this past week, but the KL city council still chose to defend it. It’s great that the general public knows bad design when they see it, but why exactly is it bad design? Here are a few more issues that I think might have been overlooked, and what I think about them. I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss Malaysian Design as well.

A few issues

As agreeably distasteful this “logo” is, it still has its uses—as Banham puts it, typography and public typographic signs reveal cultural stories and factors often considered external to graphic design—in this context: a culture of poor design, ignorance, laziness, and poor decision making by the KL Tourism Bureau and City Hall. Let’s unpack this:

The economics of good design

Let’s make a comparison to city branding worldwide, my favourites being Melbourne and NYC. Let’s just use City of Melbourne’s as the example—brand consultancy Landor was paid $A91,000 (about RM270,000) by the Melbourne City Council for preliminary research, followed by $A148,000 (about RM440,000) for the final design, creative direction, brand guideline and application plan altogether. It was a job well done—brilliantly executed, effective, versatile, strategic. But also bear in mind they took 2–3 years and a large team.

Now here we have this thing that cost RM15,000. That’s roughly AUD$5000, or about US$4000. You simply cannot get quality work for this scale with that price on an international level. Now $A15,000 (RM45,000) might grant you decent, informed and tasteful branding for a very small company or organisation, so let’s just measure the scale of that alongside branding for an entire city. It doesn’t add up. So it does actually make sense that RM15,000 was the price for this outcome by a company that doesn’t do design, provided they made it appear as if they took at least a month or two to create it. I personally wouldn’t mind if the whole RM300,000 budget was invested into the branding, but spearheaded by a transparent, well-capable and reputable design & brand consultancy. Some people might sneer at how steep that would be, but yes, that is the reality of good design. (We can discuss further if you’d like to understand better what goes behind a full design process.)

It’s a system that works

Amin Nordin said: “other cities like Amsterdam and New York took years to fine-tune their logos.”

If you want to make such a comparison, you ought to make sure they are of equal standard. When they first launched it, it worked. Rolled out all over the city, every collateral, every street corner, every signage, map, and brochure. The full package at once, and they could do it because they took years to develop it, with extensive research prior to that, doing user testing… And with full approval from the city officials, designers, public testers and all other stakeholders involved, it launched. You don’t serve uncooked ingredients to a diner and say that it’ll be fine-tuned over the next hour, and explain that this is because the restaurant was reluctant to pay the gas bill— “…the budget this year is very tight…”

Kuala Lumpur Tourism Bureau general manager Noraza Yusof said: “Since KL evolved as a major tin trading centre as the tin mining industry grew in the surrounding areas of Ampang and Petaling, the logical direction for the brand design approach is to link it to tin and the tin mining industry—Kuala Lumpur’s heritage. We wanted the letters to be crafted to appear with a metallic finish—raw tin textures and to tie it all together, it was decided that the key brand attributes be tagged to the Master Brand design—exciting, surprising and enticing,”

Here’s how a design process works—you do (a lot of) research on users, values & history, find areas of interest, construct your strategy, create the core concept, and design the appropriate visual system to communicate that. But when a free template is thrown into the mix, none of that happens (Free template use proven by Khairul Aqmal, Vulcan Post Malaysia, and a few others.)

“Noraza said diverse cultures and the juxtaposition of old and new were among the city’s strengths, and the branding focused on those. The colour silver for the word Kuala Lumpur was meant to reflect the city’s tin mining roots, she said. ‘We need to educate people and make them understand the brand first, the logo was only launched a few days ago,’ she said.”

No one saw any of that. Consider either the public a little dense, or the branding a failure in communicating. Evidence suggests the latter, with the whole Internet crying foul. You can come up with some tale as a rationale to attempt justifying your work like how we did back in college 15 minutes before submission deadlines (joking lah ok), but still not have it represent what you said. Labelling something does not make it so.

Contradictions

That whole grey tin drop shadow act barely embodies “exciting, surprising, and enticing”. What exactly is this logo trying to say? Where is the “contrast and diversity” in the logo itself? Did these “designers” forget that these concepts could be communicated in a visual language? For example, red is exciting and surprising, orange is enticing. Throw in some confetti or fireworks. Put an orangutan on the KL Twin Towers. I don’t know. There are always better alternatives to typing out three one-worded descriptions like a cheap infomercial ad.

“Diverse cultures and the juxtaposition of old and new”—now let’s take that apart. If they wanted to reflect these qualities literally… The main typeface Cinzel was designed by Natanael Gama in 2013—

“Inspired by first-century roman inscriptions, and based on classical proportions. However it’s not a simple revivalism; while it conveys all the ancient history of the latin alphabet it also merges a contemporary feel onto it”.

It bears similarities to Trajan Pro, both a reference to the engravings on the Trajan Column built between 107~113 AD. That’s right, Roman characteristics. I’m not sure if it speaks “Kuala Lumpur” in any way, considering culture, history, and the modern landscape, or the “feel” if you’d like. Did they consider typographic choice? I doubt it.

The colour silver—we all know the colour silver conveniently came as part of the free template.

Cinzel, Titillium Text, and Matura MT—notice the trend here? All free fonts, either off Google fonts or system fonts. Roboto as the body text, another free font. It surely doesn’t seem like any monetary investment was made in the creation of this “brand”. How convenient that they pieced this together at zero cost, and get to pocket all RM15,000, and perhaps more to come from the branding budget.

Now, I must emphasize that free fonts are not inherently bad. This is not to say one can’t use free fonts provided it’s well-considered, but the combination of factors here seems haphazardly deliberate.

Comments: “Amateur work that could be done on a computer in minutes”

Perhaps, but the time taken isn’t really the issue here. Because I could take 5 minutes with a better choice of typeface and still say it looks better. No. The real issue here is that there is no thought nor strategy behind it, besides figuring how to worm into the branding budget without doing any work, resorting to a free template.

According to the Brand Identity Guideline available on the Visit KL website, it was created by WarisanAd. I’ve read through the Brand Identity Guideline (originally hosted here), a mere 14 pages—surprisingly organised and clean compared to the logo itself—though I can’t help but get the impression that it was a recycled guideline template with the purpose of making it appear like they actually put effort and thought into that logo. Follows every convention of any standard brand guideline, but to dress up and justify something lacking substance.

With no existing portfolio to be found anywhere online, one might wonder whether they have any work of considerable quality. Have a look at the very sparse warisanad.com and decide for yourself. Why assign the branding to a marketing company with no reputation in graphic and communication design? Wouldn’t it have been logical to, at the very least hand it to the designers of the 2008 Visit KL and KL Tourism Bureau logos? Or perhaps Visit Malaysia? Or better yet give the project to some of the established brand consultancy players like Chimera, 3nity, Landor (KL), or a whole range of others. Or perhaps there’s simply something fishy going on just as Bro, don’t like that la bro (Ernest Ng) suggests in his latest comic strip.

Then again, would the tourism bureau know of any reputable design studios? It seems unlikely, but why? My suggestion is that there is sort of a ‘design industry bubble’ in Malaysia. Only designers know other designers, or businesses directly related to them. Why aren’t government arms and initiatives’ branding exercises being tasked to more reputable design agencies? There is possibly still a gap in public perception, knowledge, design literacy, and how they value design as a practice and product. Only designers talk about design, and the general public wouldn’t even have an idea of what’s happening on the design world stage.

The bottom line about the new KL City logo is this—no one is proud of it. KL needs a logo that represents and celebrates the city’s people, history, culture, and lifestyle. A brand that brings people together, and they can say “I’m proud of my city, Kuala Lumpur,” while using this ideal logo as a visual representation of what they’re expressing. A true icon that lasts the years.

We can all complain and make parodies about this logo, but more shit will just keep floating up if the main source of problems isn’t addressed.

“This logo is a piece of shit…”

“Piece of crap…”

“Insult to designers…”

Then, how about we take the effort to think and explain—what should have been done better? What is the appropriate solution? Can we bring brilliant minds of design together, and collectively create better solutions?

It’s a safe assumption that the current young generation of most self-proclaimed designers and graduates are more concerned with making a name more than solving larger problems. We’re content with posters, t-shirts, one-off logos, complaining about clients, stylistic preferences and latest trends; while national publications need better structures, public service & internet portal UX is down the drain, public transport wayfinding systems need better coordination, design education syllabuses need a rethink, textbooks can be designed for better learning in schools, there’s a need for design that brings communities together, the government needs to place better emphasis on design funding, and design that helps the needy & underprivileged—just to name a few. Where’s design that makes people’s lives better, and not just advancing our own interests? We’re easily preoccupied with the superficial and not the substantial. We’re more focused on selling instead of solving. We confuse artistic expression with design responsibility. There’s a feast of opportunities laid out on the big table of design, but we’re content with scraps off the table.

Practical Steps: The Value of Communication Design and Collective Malaysian Design Standards

It’s not all doom and gloom. The first step to making things better is to have hope. Here’s what we could do:

Design agencies and professionals

There are plenty of industry professionals in Malaysia reputable on a world stage. Pitch solutions, prove to the design-illiterate what a real design solution is. It’s understandable that there are secure paying projects that need attending to, and we need to put food on the table (and sustain the company), but it’s also worth bringing value by designing for community and society, and especially educating the public about the design process.

Design educators and institutions

Use this as a case study. Analyse and dissect successful branding. Teach your students how to think critically, and how to create AND propose solutions as opposed to merely fulfilling pre-written briefs by lecturers. Research, research, research. Train them to see and decide how systems work. Because if they don’t learn how to think, they may end up pushing pixels for these same sort of white-collar types who have no interest for innovation, except for their own poor tastes and micro-managing; or these students might neglect their design studies altogether later and pursue a different field. And then we’re back to square one. I say this having come from a college design course in Malaysia myself.

Graphic Design Association of Malaysia (wREGA)

As a member of ico-D (International Council of Design) for many years, they’ve participated in many bridging talks with college & university for pre-grads; prepping them for the industry, and engaged in discussions with practitioners and public through their Jack in the Box sessions, and undertaking many more design related agendas. They’ve called for regular, active public discourse about design relevant to this country—now let’s join in on the action. And moving forward, how about creating new venues of output for design students as well? And creating things that the general non-designer public could respond to and engage with. Publish more articles, inviting local designers to write about current issues. And I encourage more local designers who are eligible to register as a member.

Edit (2020): I’m revisiting this as I import articles from my blog into Medium. Shortly after I first published this article with a particularly harsh review of wREGA’s inaction on the matter, a representative reached out to me to clarify that they were “doing something about it”. So, I agreed to update the above statement to a more encouraging call to action. Five years later, there are no visible, measurable outcomes. 🤷‍♂️ Maybe an official written letter was involved, but for the most part, they may have been occupied with misdirected priorities like “Graphic Design Accreditation” rather than effectively strategising for impact, like say, raising graphic design education standards in a way that’s relevant to current markets and technology.

Overseas design students

You had the golden opportunity to see Design from a different perspective, how another culture solves problems through Design. Maybe you’ve even had the chance to work a few years after that. Whatever it is, take it, observe it, dismantle it, learn it. While career opportunities may be ripe overseas, consider how you may bring this value home and apply it to our local context. Consider teaching the knowledge and skills you’ve amassed to the next generation of designers.

“I bet I can design a better logo”

Prove it. We need more people solving problems, not just discussing them. Come up with a better solution, tell us why and how it works as a branding system, not just the what-it-looks-like. Collaborate with fellow designers. Let’s create a collection of responses that can’t help but be heard—and I’ll start. The following images are my attempted idea, with the descriptions included.

(Disclaimer: there’s only so much you can develop for a concept in such a short period of time, it will NOT be the most refined. I’m in no way saying that I’m doing a better job, I just want to kickstart a public discourse.)

Now I’m actually a PJ kid, so I think maybe a KL born and bred designer with a better experience and understanding of the city could attempt this better instead!

Suggestion: Let’s all try to do so, and call to ‪#‎rebrandKL

“A dulang is a wooden pan of diameter 50cm. Tin-bearing material from under the stream is scooped into a dulang and the dulang is twirled just below water level. The lighter sand particles are washed over the edge of the dulang while tin ore remains at the bottom.” (Ref.)

Like its own history and roots in being a tin mining city, that’s exactly what Kuala Lumpur is — sifting through the smog, traffic, noise, and concrete buildings — the sediments, or at the very core of the city are the most unique and valuable things: The people, each and every one of their stories, the rich culture and history, and how all these built Kuala Lumpur into the city that it is now. These are the things that are to be cherished, refined like the highest quality of tin ore, made into items that build and advance this beloved capital city of Malaysia even further. The silver facets in the typeface are a reference to this concept of the refined tin ore itself.

Colour applications

The facets provide ease of any colour application for use across all collaterals, in conjunction with national or state festivals, city-wide events, or any other commemoration or celebration.

Simplified version

A simplified logo allows consistent branding across multiple formats and platforms, where smaller sizes are required, such as mobile apps, stamps, merchandise etc.

City-wide branding

The simplified logo allows for ease of co-branding across all of Kuala Lumpur city and its landmarks & attractions, further tying together the idea that all of these places and their stories are part of the big “dulang” that is Kuala Lumpur City.

In Closing

The Malaysian design industry is still growing, so is the public perception of it, but it might be a while more before it fully matures. Thankfully, that means we have a lot to look forward to.

I thank you if you’ve taken the time to read this far, and it is my hope that you’ve understood a little bit more about design, with my admittedly still limited design knowledge and experience thus far.

Do share this post if you think of somebody that might benefit from it. Seasoned designers, do correct me where I may be wrong. Everyone else, if you’d like to, let’s discuss further.

For any designers out there with opinions, or have stories to share about how you’ve contributed to or worked towards elevating design standards in Malaysia, I encourage you to share and disseminate it to everyone. Designers, let’s speak up together. There is still work to be done for our country.

This post was first written as a public Facebook post.

Also picked up in an article by Says.com

References

1. The Malay Mail — Controversial KL logo costs RM15,000, says City Hall [link]
2. The Star — Kuala Lumpur mayor defends new logo’s design and tagline [link]
3. Cinzel [link]
4. Under Consideration — Brand New: Pieces of Melbourne [link]
5. Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, by Stephen Banham (2012)

Originally published at https://yung.work on May 2, 2016.

This is an essay written for the Communication Design Criticism class, Masters of Comm Design RMIT, arguing the case for accurate portrayal of design in publishing, with Robyn Gower’s ‘A Question of Substance’ chosen as the required key article.

A regular customer enters his usual bookstore, and this time his attention is drawn towards a peculiar magazine with a pretty cover in the Design section. He picks it up to examine-it looks polished, and up-to-date with current visual trends. Flipping through the pages, he is intrigued by the very pretty images inside, the seemingly carefully selected paper stock, though the lack of text or any form of information appeared unusual. Going from cover to cover within two minutes, he places the magazine back on the bookcase. Soon he is going on about perusing books in other aisles, having no memory of the pages he just browsed. There was nothing memorable to be consciously registered, nothing new learned. No knowledge nor meaning was gained.

Such is the case of ‘design’ publications that are edited or curated, by non-designers. One might wonder whether they had any purpose to enlighten in mind, to begin with. Readers aren’t given any new insight nor challenged to think, let alone be more informed about design as a discipline. As Robyn Gower describes in her essay ‘A Question of Substance’ for the first issue of Open Manifesto, using magazines such as EMPTY and Refill as examples-while these magazines offer young designers the opportunity to display their work, they do not explore design’s role in communication; quite the opposite.¹

It’s possible to assume that publications of this nature are driven by sales and finding as much content as possible to push out the next scheduled issue, and with the way design has been portrayed, it’s no surprise that the majority of the average public still don’t see the role design plays even though it’s all around them. As explained by Garry Emery, “Most people understand graphic design as logos and packaging. It is easier for the public and media to relate to the physicality and familiarity of products, buildings and clothing than to dynamic information, communication design and brand imaging.”¹ Even among my own peers and people I meet for the first time, most of them have a better idea of the term ‘graphic design’ as opposed to ‘communication design’.

This lopsided view of design among the public, and even among certain practising designers without a full understanding of design as a discipline and its purpose, suggests that design is a closed bubble, and responsible in and only to itself, that it is void of any other context. Without knowledge of the process behind each design work, its function and purpose, we start to assume that design ‘just happens’.² This presentation of graphic design reinforces the perception that the things we make are nothing more than disposable ephemera, and anyone with access to a computer and the required software can ‘design’.

What caused this perception of design? Even Saul Bass has had something to say about this as far back as 1989, in an interview republished in Essays on Design 1: AGI’s Designers of Influence, saying that: “One of the difficulties that students and young designers have to deal with is a perceptual issue. They look at the exceptional work that’s being done. What they see is the end product. They are not privy to the process. They may have the illusion that these things really spring full-blown out of the head of some designer.”³ This was said even way before the Internet became widely used. Now, in the so-called ‘post-internet’ era, the full adoption of social media has culminated in an endless well of design project images and numerous ‘daily design inspiration’ blog posts. This has led to the culture of students and designers gorging on innumerable websites and blogs devoted to—in Adrian Shaughnessy’s words—“the visual archeology of graphic design”², otherwise known as ‘Design Porn’. Sadly, back in college, I saw both classmates and lecturers leaning towards this mindset of aesthetics before communication in our approach to assignment briefs. We frantically flipped through copies of Computer Arts, and lecturers encouraged Grain Edit and The Dieline as sources of inspiration. Our design rationales were usually written to fit the end product after it was completed.

Since the advent of social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and the like, this phenomenon of collecting and perusing images as one would in a gallery has increased exponentially, far greater than what Gower could have ever predicted when she first wrote her essay in 2004-given the fact that she was commenting only about printed publications, just years before the Internet and social media started gaining momentum. Unfortunately, this has influenced how some designers choose to publish their work online, leaning towards bidding for attention with visual glamour in place of information and education. Say for example, on Behance and other online portfolios, most designers’ works are published just as images in a gallery format, highlighting how good a particular work looks. This isn’t to say their work lacks process and thought, but this aspect is perpetually pushed behind the scenes as something only the designer and their clients are aware of.

The sheer amount of content available on the Internet also brings about this ironic idea of ‘I can find this online later’—myself being guilty of this. At one point, I tended to take note of the designer’s name or websites while browsing the aforementioned magazines, thinking I’ll look them up later instead of purchasing the physical book. I used to observe this same decrease in reliance and appreciation of design among my fellow coursemates in its published, printed form. While we may be able to find everything online, what are the chances of finding it again? With browser bookmark folders filling up with nearly thousands of saved links, it’s hard to remember which are the more significant bodies of design work. On the other hand, the book as an object is memorable. Any avid reader or collector of books will know exactly where a particular book sits among their various bookshelves. The printed book has a certain value that may not be replicated by any other means, no matter how much technology and information accessibility advances. The printed book can document what may, in some cases, never be found on the Internet-and this endures the test of time amidst a constant flurry of online content.

While the demystifying of the design process to the public and new students can lead us into a whole other discussion altogether (have a read of ‘Understanding Design’, an interview with Vince Frost by Kevin Finn also in the first issue of Open Manifesto), the question is, what of design’s place in the publication cycle? Design trade journals and publications play a significant role in encouraging dialogue between stakeholders, so, as Gower puts it, the aim should be to ‘put theory into practice’ and continue building a true, honest and straightforward representation of a misunderstood and under-represented industry. Designers-speak up, be open! Design isn’t a process to be kept secret in the hopes of astonishing people at the end of it with merely a dressed-up result.⁴ Architects or product designers will never let their work be published without thoroughly explaining their decisions and process, so why should graphic and communication designers let this slip by?

There were no doubt a vast number of iconic and profound design publications throughout history (think Neue Grafik by Lars Müller Publishers, Eye magazine etc.), but it’s safe to assume that only practising designers understand their value. Thankfully, when we look at the past decade, we see a great change in this realm, with more and more designers stepping up to be at the helm of contemporary design publications, creating and writing content that not only truly represents the industry, but which seeks to inform readers and to encourage thinking and conversation outside the design industry bubble. Going against ‘Vanity Publishing’ and ‘Eye Candy’ as described by Gower, we have publishers like Occasional Papers, Hyphen Press and Fuel Publishing. At the forefront of this is the prime example of Unit Editions-the brainchild of Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy and their frustration with publishers without empathy for, or understanding of, design.

On their website, Unit Editions describes themselves as “combining high design and production standards with insightful texts and informative commentaries on a wide range of subjects”, with “the book as a highly designed artefact with rich visual and textual content”.⁵ Besides breaking away from a traditional distribution and retail system, we here see designers as publishers bent on creating beautiful books with brilliant, informative writing. Only five years since it’s founding, Unit has already published nineteen books, of which six are now permanently sold out, with two more editions of a Lance Wyman monograph currently on pre-order. Their most prominent, and ambitious publication would have to be Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer (1918–81), a monograph of the legendary Herb Lubalin. I am fortunate enough to be a lucky owner of one copy-for which I have my old colleague Gordon to thank as he helped me to purchase one of the last seven copies, and eventually refusing reimbursement, insisting that it be a gift-a very generous one at that. I still can’t fully describe this book other than it being absolutely gorgeous, and the form it takes certainly does justice to, and is reflective of the work of Lubalin himself, as one of the design greats. It is very clear that the content has been meticulously curated, and detailed research is present in Shaughnessy’s biographical essay of Lubalin. Anyone who owns a copy of this, or existing admirers of Lubalin, can certainly agree with Rick Poynor that it “does everything in its power to win over the unconverted to Lubalin’s cause”.⁶

So what now of design publication that presents design as having context-not just about logos or pretty printed pages, but about clever thinking? We see designers taking charge once again in the realm of printed matter, but there remains a huge majority of people without knowledge of such publications, and the fight against mindless visual gluttony remains on the Internet. It takes the collective effort of designers, students, and educators to seek and provide insight over appearing impressive-and ironically, I would like to see a day when the term ‘communication design’ might not need as lengthy an explanation as it does now.

References

1. Gower, R. (2004). A Question of Substance. Open Manifesto, (1), pp.74–79.
2. Shaughnessy, A. (2010). Publishing in the Age of the Internet. Design Observer. [link]
3. Marsack, R. (1997). Essays on design 1. London: Booth-Clibborn.
4. Finn, K. (2004). Understanding Design: An interview with Vince Frost. Open Manifesto, (1), pp.30–49.
5. Uniteditions.com, (2010). Unit Editions — About. [link]
6. Poynor, R. (2012). Rick Poynor’s Notable Books of 2012. Designers & Books. [link]

Originally published at https://yung.work on August 29, 2015.