Tag: Cross-cultural design

‘You get around.’ I do. I’ve lived and worked in: Ireland, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam. So far, so good. These are notes from what I’ve personally observed, on how to better design across culture.

'S' is for Sincerity · Publisher's Diary · The Muse

Issue #65, S P C | *Secret Location*, ‘Cake Walk’

Posted on by Dipika Kohli

Earlier this year I started hosting real life popup conversation parties. The big idea was that we would pick a city that we all wanted to go to and show up for a few days, to find our way, together. Sometimes we book into the same guesthouses or hotels or whatnot, and sometimes we just meet up for part of the day. It’s like that. Free-form. As and how you want to roll with it is how you can roll with it. And stuff. Usually I wind up making the final decision about the locations, because I’ve been to these spots, personally, often multiple times. So I kind of know my way around a bit. Where to go for what, in the form and fashion that my kind of friends enjoy. Low-key, mostly. Unpretetious, unassuming, non-instagrammy. Know what I mean? I guess it’s like touring. But it’s like tour-plus-philosophy party and it’s also invite-only, more or less, these days. This week, I wanted to share S P C | *Secret Location*, ‘Cake Walk.’ It’s inspired by someone I met in *Secret Location* about seven years ago, JPC. (Thank you for the sharing. Thank you for the conversations. Welcome, and… welcome back. I wrote our story into this issue of S P C…)

#projectepicurus #spacethejourney #spacethezine

Order S P C | *Secret Location*, ‘Cake Walk’

Here’s a link..

http://gum.co/space-secretlocation-cakewalk

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Found in the Field · The Muse

Issue #62, S P C | Bangkok, ‘Step a Little Closer’

Posted on by Dipika Kohli

Today we share our Bangkok issue, S P C | Bangkok, ‘Step a Little Closer.’

This title of this issue is from a 2015 poem I wrote,”Step a Little Closer,” for someone who helped me understand what S P C was trying to become, before I even knew myself. HT MT.

This week’s issue of S P C contains an excerpt from the freshly completed eBook by Dipika Kohli, called Step a Little Closer. 

SPECIAL EVENT TIE-IN. To mark the publication of SaLC with a live event, DK will be reading from the new book at Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok on Wednesday, for a special discussion about this city, its “as told to DK” stories, and how anyone who wants to write their own stories can do that, too. More about that once-off 27 Feb event is here: http://salc.eventbrite.com

 

Order S P C | Bangkok, ‘Step a Little Closer”

It’s an exclusive for members of S P C.

Start your membership when you order S P C | Bangkok.

Here’s a link…

http://gum.co/space-bkk-step

Thanks ;)

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Desk Notes · Innovation & Creativity

12 years ago, DK rebranded Seattle’s Northwest Asian Weekly

Posted on by Dipika Kohli

Cool.

The Seattle community paper, Northwest Asian Weekly, is still using our rebrand all this time later. I’m updating our portfolio here to reflect the highlights of our past work in design, and communications, and so, wanted to post about it here.

 

How we rebranded a 25-year old paper

Everyone. editors, copyeditors, publisher, designers, other staff, occasionally those passing by, and DK worked together to come up with a fresh update, a new template set, typeface selections… the works.

Concepting took a good effort, but it was important, for us, to get the story first. So we sat. And talked. For several sessions, just setting things up so the real talking could begin. In this way, we could do what all designers love to do when they are writing their own creative brief: be present, listen, and make sure you hear everyone. Goal, for DK, then, was to gather inputs from the full team at NWAW. 

But it started with the whole big metaphysical question, 25 years after you got started, ‘Who are you now?’

A box over the i, which you can see accented in the design for the masthead, was inspired by the answer we found, together, through dialogues at a round table. Which was, ‘A window to the world.’

Will need to find the better resolution files from our redesign process, but I’m terribly disorganized with old old files, as most people are, and it’s fine, but why I bring this up is because I do recall the file I placed onto the CD of files I had delivered when this project ended, which was, ‘Brand Story: A living document.’ A word file, meant to be something that future editors and designers could visit, and reshape, as time moved on and needs changed. These things happen. It’s inevitable. But a good design leaves space for that… leaves room to grow, and change. To me.

 

Writing & Publishing

Since I personally love community journalism, I was hawpy to be part of this project, and lead the effort to shift over to a modern, clean design from the original style.

In 2013, When DK got set up in Cambodia, I began to write for the paper, too. I sent in this column, ‘The Village Report,’ to the NWAW. It was easy to think of the idea, given what DK had gathered about what the aim, vision, story, and idea was for the redesign. ‘Window to the world.’ Made sense. It fit. It worked.

A Philosophy of the Moment

Issue #47: S P A C E | Kärsämäki, ‘The Field and the Horizon”

Posted on by Dipika Kohli

For this issue, DK’s creative director Dipika Kohli worked with A. Spaice and our newly budding creative team in Penang, Malaysia, in November, 2019.

Wrapping a year’s worth of reflections on the idea of growth, change, seedlings and new beginnings, it is a soft version of something that heretofore in our magazine has been rather geometric and angular, in style and attitude. Yet time and sharing, more and more, has opened us up a little more to ourselves, and to a very small section of our innermost hearts.

 

Quiet places

There, in the quietest places, something new is aloft. Seeds, seedlings and search for new grounds, fallow periods and more make their way into these pages, indirectly and perhaps abstractly, but with, we hope, a feeling that gives itself rather than asks you to pay attention to it.

Here’s a link:

http://gum.co/space-karsamaki-field

Thanks ;)

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Found in the Field · In real life · Publisher's Diary · The Muse

Issue #46: S P A C E | Huế, ‘An Art of the Moment’

Posted on by A. Spaice

The artists gathered for this co-created zine are four very curious people.

Art, natural patterns, and words intertwine in a collaboration between them.

 

The nature of art

Lee Moore Crawford, a floral designer and artist, once struck up a conversation about the Japanese art of ikebana when DK happened upon her arranging flowers at a coffee shop in Durham, NC, circa 2011. We never forgot it.

So when DK collaborated with another creative person who takes inspiration from nature to make the cover image of this issue (Dipika Kohli took the original photograph in Huế, then forwarded it to digital processing artist Nils don Sihvola in Finland), we wanted to ask Crawford what her feelings would be. Lots came of this interaction, including a short piece, ‘Bloom.’

To give the collection continuity, we then circled back to former culture editor Michael Bridgett, Jr., whose article, ‘Why I Art,’ opens yet another fresh perspective.

Order it here.

http://gum.co/space-hue-aotm

Thanks ;)

 

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