1. JESSICA HISCHE (TYPOGRAPHER)

"It's so liberating to be able to make anything you want to make. And it's not scary. People try to make it into this scary super [sic] nerdy thing."
- Jessica Hische

This is the first video that opened up the black hole that I fell into subsequently. The title was what led me to click on the video- "Grab the Reins and F*cking Do it". Basically she talked about how technology and art should be an integral part of each other. A lot of times the things we like aren't everything there is to it. There's bound to be some parts where we don't like or understand, and we avoid it as much as possible because it seems "impossible" to learn. But you just need to start doing/ learning it, because many times it's easier than you think, and it makes life easier and more efficient for you and everyone else.

I love her talks. She's so animated and funny and has a really strong passion for her work and the industry. I'm never someone who can sit through talks, but this woman is really great at talking (and obviously at what she does as a typographer, and graphic designer, etc). Note: She re-designed the font (Edwardian script) used for Wes Anderson's movie "Moonrise Kingdom"!

I watched a few of her talks but I think this would be the most comprehensive and most relatable of all. So take a look if you would like to be inspired. (And her batman analogy make sense, never thought of batman that way before. LOL)

"The work that you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life."
- Jessica Hische

2. SHIAO YIN (OF THOUGHT COLLECTIVE)
Another talk that I enjoyed was by this Singaporean woman who is one of the owners of Thought Collective, or maybe better known by one of their sub-brands, Food for Thought. I was really intrigued by her because her description of her younger self reminds me SO MUCH of myself:

"I was full of anxiety, full of fear. I was scared of a whole bunch of things; I was scared of speaking in front of a crowd, I was scared of taking a risk, I was scared of losing money, I was scared of standing out; you name it, I had all of these fears. /.../ And if you're a person who's full of fears, you generally don't make active choices in your life. Life sort of happens to you, people make the choices you kind of follow along because you're so scared of things that it feels kind of safe when people make choices for you."
- Shiao Yin

Her journey sounds like such a huge bet but she and her friends kept pushing on with the mindset that not everyone has- "It's just money". (I know right...it's just money.) 




3. DAWN NG (MULTIMEDIA ARTIST)
I'm pretty sure everyone knows or have seen her art pieces, the most famous ones being the light installation "Hello Stranger" and "Walter" the bunny displayed at Singapore Art Museum. (Not sure if they are still there) I really love her work because it's not abstract (and therefore understandable. hahahaha). You can see her works on her website here, and the talk she had at Creative Morning below.




4. WES ANDERSON; "THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL"


I know I'm late on this bandwagon/ cult thing but I finally watched "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and it blew my mind. All the details and thought that went into it was just OMG. (The fact that they built the whole set in an huge abandoned shopping mall?!? What??) Also, I love how there is a huge number of casts but all the characters still fitted really well with the plot, and it's not overwhelming in a bad way. I especially love that they played with the screen ratio for representing the different time periods. Seriously, I could go on and on about this movie.

But but but, what inspired me personally was when I watched the behind-the-scenes and interview where Wes Anderson gives really clear-cut directions to the actors and crew. It's so cool because it suddenly struck me that you don't really have to be the hands to your own ideas all the time. As long as you have the brain, you could still do art (in this case) with the hands of someone else. Okay, I know that doesn't sound like a good analogy to anything because it's not exactly the right thinking (and also a contradiction to number 1), but.. that thought itself is liberating- you are not alone.


5. RESOURCES AND ETC.
Other than all the talks, I've also stumbled upon some really great resource sites. And one program.

a) CODECADEMY- Learn coding online! From HTML, CSS to JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, etc. It's free, has practical lessons (that's helpful), nice interface/ web design, and is really simple to understand.

b) CREAVTIVE LIVE- Free live lessons for Creatives (as the name suggests...). They have lessons from crafts to design to finance. All the live lessons allows you to ask questions and chat with other audiences that's tuning in. The only downside is that most of the lessons are conducted at 12am to 7am Singapore time. I heard from one of the users that they replay the classes for free 1 hour (?) after it ends. After which they will charge you for "purchasing" the class. So I guess, either don't sleep, wake up early or just pay for it.

c) ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR- Okay, I know I'm late in this game, again, as usual. I really love the flexibility of Illustrator as compared to Photoshop. (But then again they are of a different purpose; one vector-based and the other pixel.) Shall not further disgrace myself by raving about the features.

Phew, finally done. That's all for now! Till the next post, bye!

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