COMA

foound at eChelon 2010

We were at eChelon 2010 (formerly known as unConference Singapore) yesterday with foound—Danny and Aung. The two-day event was organized by e27 and the first day featured startup pitches and talks by notable speakers such as Dave McClure—an investor involved in Mint.com and Slideshare, and Gen Kanai, Director of Mozilla. foound was one of the pitching companies in the Launchpad segment and it received overwhelming love from the crowd as we pulled off what people are calling a “World-class presentation“, as tweeted by Dr. Serkan Toto of Techcrunch. The response to our pitch was overwhelming. The Geeks on a Plane folks were all wearing t-shirts and we took some really cool photos together.

Danny (CEO of foound) and our team have been working really hard over the past three weeks to prepare for the event. We wanted to launch foound at the event but due to various difficulties, mostly technical, we decided to hold off the launch and went ahead with a slide-based demo instead. The presentation was planned and designed over the past one week. The slides were deliberately kept simple to reflect the values and messages of the foound brand, which was also developed at COMA. Danny and the rest of the team practically camped in our office for weeks working closely and intensely with us. My role as the head of UX (User Experience) and Branding is to ensure the app is a joy to use and own.

foound will be released some time late June as we iron out the remaining bugs and make more performance tweaks. The team has done a great job preparing for yesterday but there is a bumpy road ahead as we push hard for the launch of foound on the iPhone and subsequently on other mobile platforms. Meanwhile please visit foound.com to sign up for the newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Pics from yesterday courtesy of Kris Krüg

foound + Geeks on a Plane in foound T-shirts

Danny and I with Dave McClure in the background

The slide which got the loudest applause!

The Story of Yeh Chi Wei

Leader, teacher, mentor and experimenter, Yeh Chi Wei was a mover and shaker of Singapore’s early art scene. Members of the artistic community would know how this quiet artist worked laboriously and played significant roles in shaping visual art during the 1960s and 70s. Yeh created some of the most distinctive oil paintings, and defined a unique Southeast Asian style.

Drawing inspiration from many cultural sources, ranging from ancient Chinese rubbings, carvings to Javanese batik, Yeh’s works powerfully interweaves these cultural elements with both Asian and Western art techniques. As an art teacher and leader of the Ten Men Art Group, he guided and mentored many Singapore artists. He was also a tremendous source of inspiration and encouragement to many others.

The Story of Yeh Chi Wei celebrates the life of such an artist. The National Art Gallery, Singapore commissioned COMA, as part of a broader online and social marketing initiative which will take place throughout the year, to design an online microsite with the challenge of making the site accessible and useful to both adults and children. We developed three educational and interactive mini games which children can have fun with while on the website, to learn about the artist and his work. The microsite was developed using open-source software and is based on open-standards, thus making the site accessible to more people across a wide range of web-browsing devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

We also designed “Hopper”, an adorable frog character who can be seen on the kids sections in the website and the Creative Play Corner in the exhibition.

This is old but gold

If you walk into a consumer electronics store today, you will still see lots of boxes like this. This has been around for years thought it’s always good to remind ourselves the dangers of poor design.

Designing the Obama Campaign

As the Design Director for Obama’s 2008 campaign, Scott Thomas led a now-historic political campaign, in which branding, design, and the web played a truly pivotal role. Likening the experience to “building an airplane in flight,” Scott talks about the creative’s need for triage, the crucial role of incremental design improvements, and the importance of getting back to the hand and keeping things simple.

http://the99percent.com/videos/5821/scott-thomas-designing-the-obama-campaign

Paula Scher Quotes

I came across some Paula Scher quotes today while doing some research on the web. Here are some which I think are really good.

On working with people

“There are smart people and dumb people. There are people who have energy and people who are lazy. They exist in combinations. If you work with a smart person with energy, that’s your best collaborator. If you work with a smart person who’s lazy, well, that’s a bit of a waste, but it does no harm. If you work with a dumb person who’s lazy, that’s sad but not problematic, because they will simply be ineffectual. But if you work with a dumb person with energy, therein lies the seed of disaster.”

On Helvetica

“I had rebelled against the Swiss international style because the act of organizing the Helvetica typeface on a grid reminded me of cleaning up my room. Also I viewed Helvetica, the visual language of corporations, as the establishment typeface and therefore somehow responsible for the Vietnam War.”

On 34 years in 1 second

“How can it be that you talk to someone and it’s done in a second? But it is done in a second. it’s done in a second and in 34 years, and every experience and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.”

A place to call home

We have moved into our new office. Took us a whole day to wait for delivery of our furniture, assembly and setting up. The MUJI chairs are pretty fun to put together but the bulky Melltorp tables is a painful affair. We really like how it has turned out as a beautiful and refreshing studio. Enjoy the photos!

Our New Studio

Over the past year we have been operating from a variety of places, Pacific Coffee Company and Starbucks cafes, a borrowed space from Singapore Management University and each others’ homes. It was fine in the beginning as the amount of work we are doing increases, it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of things and properly manage projects. We needed a proper studio where the team can get together on a daily basis and focus without the distractions of home and public places. After much searching and viewing we are now finally moving in to the one we like the most.

The unit is located in Cosmo, a condominium at Guillemard Crescent which is connected to Guillemard Road and near to Geylang, the famous red light district of Singapore. We have rented a duplex unit on the eleventh floor which has bay windows all over allowing the place to be naturally illuminated in the day. The wind is terrific too as the condominium is surrounded by only low-rise buildings.

Work area

View from work area

Stairs leading up to 2nd floor

We spent the past two weeks sketching, planning and buying the things we need, like furniture and supplies. We wanted the office to look real good, sophisticated and designed by designers so we spent a lot of effort and time to get things right. We visited a variety of places such as MUJI and IKEA and purchased some really nice stuff.

White desk chair from MUJI

We found the MUJI chair at ION Orchard. They are priced reasonably, looks minimal but are surprisingly comfortable and do not feel tight at all. We got a pair of matching arms for each chair. The MUJI table which was promoted together with the chair is too pricey so we did not go for that one.

MELLTORP table from IKEA

We got the really nice MELLTORP tables from IKEA Tampines which looked really Japanese and could easily pass as a MUJI product. The simple design and straight lines compliments the space perfectly. We got a big and a medium one to fit a comfortable maximum of three persons.

The other stuff we got

We will upload more images once we have moved in and settled down this coming Wednesday.

Shashi Tharoor cited in the New York Times for Personal Branding

Just a day after Shah Rukh Khan’s public challenge to overtake Shashi Tharoor in Twitter follower count, Shashi Tharoor was again cited in The New York Times, this time for personal branding. In the column Branding and the ‘Me’ Economy Anand Giridharadas talked about how the State Department in United States has allowed tech-savvy senior officials to maintain robust personal brands an how the personalizing officials can “strengthen the acceptability of the official message.” Shashi Tharoor among other diplomats were mentioned to have established a strong personal brand in the message-conscious world of diplomacy.

Who do you think has a stronger brand? Movie star or political messiah?

Shah Rukh Khan vs Shashi Tharoor?

A couple of days ago ‘King of Bollywood’, Shah Rukh Khan’s announced his wish to overtake politician Shashi Tharoor at a function. “I had predicted this the day Shah Rukh joined Twitter. I will be happy rather than regret it,” Shashi Tharoor said in response. As the social strategy consultants for Shashi Tharoor, we thought we should offer our opinion.

While being two of the most followed Indian celebrities and share some similar fundamental objectives, Shah Rukh Khan and Shashi Tharoor are really quite different. They appeal to different audiences, are motivated by dissimilar ideals and their approach is starkly unalike. Comparing Shah Rukh Khan to Shashi Tharoor is like comparing Steve Jobs to Paris Hilton, there are surely more Paris Hilton fans than Steve Jobs fans. Shah Rukh Khan will be able to reach a much higher number of Twitter followers simply because of the potential in the vast number of Bollywood movie-goers compared to political aficionados. And looking at his popularity and the amount of hype he generated with his latest film “My Name is Khan” which I really enjoyed watching, overtaking Shashi Tharoor is definitely possible, but in my opinion hardly anything to shout about. What will be meaningful is the magnitude of the influence they will have on their really big groups of technology-savvy, educated and well-informed followers. It’s always good for people who have positive stories to tell to have a bigger audience.

Looking at the chart above which plots the growth of Twitter followers for both Shashi Tharoor and Shah Rukh Khan over the past three months, we can say Shah Rukh Khan is not going to catch up to Shashi Tharoor any time soon. So while Shah Rukh Khan tries to catch up we will work harder with Shashi Tharoor to extend his reach to as many as we can. Catching up is not going to be easy :)

We will be watching you and the Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has engaged COMA to provide social strategy consulting over the course of the 3rd season games which will take place between March 12 and April 25, 2010. The IPL, is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and chaired by the Chairman & Commissioner IPL, BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi and has recently been awarded the 22nd place in FastCompany’s list of 50 Most Innovative Companies 2010. It will be the first ever cricket tournament which will be broadcast live on YouTube. The final four Matches of IPL 3 will be screened in 3D across Movie halls in India.

COMA will be providing social strategy consulting services to the IPL which will include real-time sentiment tracking and analysis to help the IPL reach and serve its fanbase more effectively. Not only will we be watching the games, we will also be watching listening to you!

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