Etre Bon Gallery and Academy invited us to pitch a design for their web design and e-commerce project. Etre Bon is a sub-brand of Bon Café, which aims to teach and expose Singaporeans and residents to appreciate the art of coffee-making by conducting Coffee Journey Tours and Barista Workshops. As an exclusive agent in Singapore for selling Ascaso Dream Espresso Machines, the website is also targeted for online selling/ordering of this machine as well as barista tools.

etre bon illustrations

In approaching the design for this project, I focused on this particular statement from their brochure. “JOURNEY FROM CROP TO CUP. It may appear to be simple, but behind every cup of coffee lies a stirring story.” The solution doesn’t involve any rocket science or philosophical art. The solution is simple: I just created a simple illustration of the “story of coffee”, focusing on the idea, from “crop” to “cup” and the processes involved in-between.

etrebon homepage

etrebon shop

I used some of the elements from their branding such as the striped gray line on top of the rich, black background and added some small, hand illustrated icons on the section pages.

I created some burst of colour for the e-commerce page and enjoyed designing the rest of the styling for all the pages.

The programming team, especially Elliot and Ross, our flash guy extraordinaire, have done a great job in the execution of this project. I want to thank Xiong Zhou and Ian, for bringing us this gem of a client for us to work on.

Cheers to us! Or would I rather say, a cup of coffee for all of us!

This year,  Orchard Central wanted to update the look of their site and decided to use my second design. The client requested for some design enhancements and what we have created is a simpler and sleeker design set against a very dark gray colour with the photo of the mall in the background.

If you ever passed along Orchard Road during night time, Orchard Central’s psychedelic lights illuminate the skyline. This new web design echoes the dynamism and playful interplay of their colour and lights. The rollover effect at the main navigation and the orange and pink small squares on the homepage and inner pages is a direct interpretation of the mall’s night lights.

The site is fully equipped with CMS (Content Management System) which allows the client full access to the database system.

Below is the new design for Orchard Central website:

Orchard Central’s old web design:

A Crayon’s Life is featured on CSS Mania last week, June 22.

Now let me tell you a little story on how A Crayon’s Life Version 2 was created.

Coming back to Singapore from my home in the Philippines last January has been one of the most difficult moments of my life. Returning from a one-month hiatus, fresh from your father’s funeral is not a very good way to start the year. They say that mourning has its own cycle and one has to go through the stages of anger, denial, acceptance and healing. I’m still lurking behind the denial stage and I did what I do best whenever I find myself balancing between grief, pain, loneliness and denial: I draw.

I tried to focus all my energy and concentration on getting things done. At the top of my list is my web re-design. On weekends, I shut myself up in my room to work on the illustrations. I have a regular day job and I only have one day per week to work on the drawings. There are also instances when I don’t feel like drawing, so it was only after about two months that I was able to complete the whole series of drawings.

I even have to rework on some of the illustrations because I was not satisfied with the initial results.

Finally, after 3 long months, A Crayon’s Life Version 2 was launched in the last week of May. I wanted to thank my friend and developer, Apple Ilagan for the long hours she had spent working on the back end programming of my site. She’s even the one person responsible for submitting my sites to different CSS gallery sites.

Only a week after A Crayon’s Life was featured in CSS Mania, I have seen “Crayosa” drift from one CSS gallery site to another.

Crayon's Life on Abduzeedo

Crayon's Life on 101bestwebsites.com

Crayon's Life on WeLoveCSS

A Crayon's Life On CSS Showcases

Right now I’m still enjoying the euphoria from my “15 minutes of fame” (Andy Warhol), because I know that people will eventually forget about this site. I’m just plain happy that some people appreciate what we have done.

About my mourning cycle, I’m still lurking behind the stage of denial but the fact that I am now writing about it is a good sign that I’m now bordering on the “acceptance” stage. I know I have to brace myself, for I believe, this stage is the most painful.

For these gallery sites whose people behind them are kind enough to let Crayosa and the crayons drift into their webpages, I am most thankful  :)  CSS Mania, Abduzeedo, 101 Best Websites, CSS Showcases, and We Love CSS.

Presenting Forecept’s new Design Machine: She comes in a small package, barely five feet tall, with long black hair (that still keeps on getting long because she finds the hair salons in Singapore very expensive) and bright-colored shoes. A Filipina with 6 years of design experience behind her, this little woman braves six people (read: Project Managers/Account Executives) who regularly turns on “The Design Machine” to create new web design, revise the new web design, create simple flash animations, draw stick figures and rough storyboards, create direct mail marketing designs, design new logos, brainstorm for a pitch project, understand creative briefs and try to create a design brief for clients who wanted to have a website but don’t have any idea on what to place on their websites. This design machine can work with grace under pressure, fragile yet hardened by experience, works best when listening to her favorite music and knows how to laugh at her own mistakes.

This is most likely what will be written in my product brochure if I happen to be a design machine. And I’d like to think that I am exactly that.

On Tuesday, I will be celebrating my 2nd month as Forecepts’ (http://www.forecepts.com/index.php) new design machine. They say that the company is known for its back-end programming and web development services with its back-end operations done in their Johor office in Malaysia. The sales/account executive office is situated near Jalan Besar in Singapore. Companies seek out their web development and programmers and along the way, they were also faced with clients requiring the whole package that includes web design. In the past years, they were able to outsource the design until finally, they decided to hire a new web/graphic designer on board due to increasing demand for the complete package. 

The Road to the Forest

It was April 24 when I first set foot on Forecepts’ cozy office for my first interview with the manager and, like any other job interviews that I’ve had in my whole life, he delivered the default ending to every job interview conversation, “We’ll call you”. Six days after the interview, I received an e-mail from him and told me that they’re having a final round of choosing their new designer, so they decided to hold a sort of “web design contest”, the lucky winner will get the job as the coveted prize. He asked me if I will be participating and of course, the design machine that I am, I bowed to the challenge and willed myself to create a good design.

It was the 5^th of May when I received an email stating a job offer. I thought to myself, so I’m the winner huh? In the field of design, being chosen as the new designer or winning a pitch project does not mean that you’re better than the other designers. I think all of us, the designers, the account executives, the clients, the boss are all playing mind games. Its just a matter of second-guessing what design approach will work for a certain client, and when you hit the target bulls-eye, then you get the job, or the project.

So I think I have to add some new text in my product brochure: Forcepts’ new design machine also comes with the ability to play mind games with clients, account executives and other designers.

To date, this Design Machine was able to produce 9 new web designs, some flash animations and a lot of internet direct marketing materials. 

Now, the account executives pressed the “pressure” button, so that the machine can produce Forecept’s new corporate identity that includes logo, letterheads, business cards, new website, the works! The Design Machine just smiled and a button started to light up, blinking are words in red letter, “Grace Under Pressure”.