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EXPERIENCE SINGAPORE WITH BRAND GUIDE
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While food inspires some to travel, for some the inspiration is shopping. Again, for some others the food for travel is vacations that involve music festivals, hiking or snorkeling. According to Singapore’s Foreign Policy Design Group (FPDP), one should travel to experience top-notch branding.
A STYLISH TRAVEL GUIDE
The series Brand Guide is an in-house creation of the FPDP. Its first volume, Brand Guide: Singapore Edition (priced at $35) is partly a travel guide and partly a style guide. It is in fact a print dossier overflowing with fold-outs, pamphlets and leaflets through which the traveler gets acquainted with the local brands. Thus, at present, Singapore is indeed experiencing a “golden age of design” as Yah-Leng Yu, creative director, rightly describes.
In an era marked by the proliferation of digital content, the wonderfully tangible Brand Guide: Singapore Edition can simulate a personal scrapbook filled with mementos, like something that you have saved from a college trip. The pages offer enough space for scribbling personal notes.
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA
The development of the Brand Guide was first proposed two years back, after the explosion of well-designed brands in Singapore caught the attention of Yu and her other FPDP colleagues. In Yu’s words, Singapore has witnessed a sharp rise in great hotels, shops, brands, concepts, restaurants and the like, developed by local Singaporeans with commendable taste and ideas.
No doubt there have been swift changes in Singapore. A noticeable increase has been seen in the rate of urbanization in the island-nation, thanks to its success in the field of manufacturing and electronics. This has contributed to making the per capita GDP the ninth highest across the globe. With skyscrapers, casinos and hotels increasing in number, new stars are being added continually to Singapore’s skyline.
Amidst those, or sheltered under those extravagant corporate structures, many independent, local businesses are trying to gain grounds. Yu’s idea is to draw attention to such local businesses through the guide.
SELECTION OF BRANDS
As per Yu, the FPDP team uses the following criteria for the selection of brands:
- Branding and design, which is inclusive of interior design as well as elements of graphic design
- Business insight
- The owner’s capability of being a leader, innovator and risk-taker in the concerned industry
On the whole, there are 17 companies, ranking from coffee roasters and bakeries to hardware stores as well as a beach club. The book has a catchy introduction with blue ink illustrations over a pink sheet of paper. The introduction highlights the fact that since the seaport island was once colonized by the British, Singaporean design reflects the outcome of multicultural immigration. The index points out certain heritage venues and brands of Singapore, along with business descriptions including interviews with designers and founders.
The Brand Guide: Singapore Edition enables travelers to enjoy a local feeling. Through the guide, the traveler gets to know not only the most resourceful local brands of the region, but also the people responsible for the creation of these brands. So you may as well compliment these geniuses when you come back again to Singapore.
