Jade Palace Collective is an online platform dedicated to reselling vintage shoes, accessories and homeware to search amongst the discarded and recontextualising them for the here and now. To mark their first addition to stock contemporary fashion brand YAT PIT, Zyxt was commissioned to conceptualise, design and art direct the project and its on-going design direction.

The concept behind producing the publication is to explore the narrative of Jade Palace and YAT PIT’s shared Chinese identity, grassroots culture and a renewed energy to re-love a culture lost through their mutual affinity towards the notion of “ugly beauty”.

The design reinterprets, reflects and echos the images shot by the four selected photographers with three different photoshoots of YAT PIT’s collection. Each printed object retains their individual stories and styles while adding our own extensions through variable formats, paper stock, visual and cultural cues to amplify the notion of “ugly beauty”. Harry Chan’s work is presented on newsprint paper that folds out into posters as a reaction to the rawness of the photographic style and streets of Sham Shui Po where its been shot at. Joyce Ng’s editorial images are translated onto glossy magazine paper. Zhuo Chen and Mika Kailes’ is a playful nod to Chinese takeaway menus with its red motif and gatefold format. The behind-the-scene images shot on a 35mm film is reflected as a series of film print sized postcards. All printed objects are contained within a clear zip sleeve covered with stickers of off-shoot images and illustrated motifs hinting a traditional Chinese worship bag. Resulting Jade Palace Collective presents: YAT PIT being a collection of printed objects that crosses between a brand and lookbook for both Jade Palace and YAT PIT.

• I WANT ONE NOW

Kevin Kloecker is a video commissioner that oversees the creation process of video and film works centring around youth and music culture, working alongside international talents such as Travis Scott, Jay-Z, Troye Sivan, Migos, Lil Yachty and A$AP Mob.

We art directed and designed the desktop and mobile sites. The concept takes visual cues from track-lists and credit lists seen in music and film, setting back against a subtle yet immersive preview of the video that encapsulates the screen on each title, as if flicking through a TV screen.

• kevinkloecker.com

Arielle Berman is a casting director and photographer based in New York.

Through an on-going partnership with Arielle, Zyxt was commissioned to design the website to showcase her casting works.

The design is minimalistic in approach to edit and display the essential; her works. It is presented in a utilitarian and uniformed way to aim for equality in content, resulting in a consistent grid structure with hints of subtle interactions.

• ARIELLEBERMANCASTING.COM

X is an online publishing platform that brings emerging and established aritsts together to create a contemporary setting that offers perspectives, commentaries and references focusing on the art scene in Singapore – with each issue offering raw and unfiltered writings, hyperlinks, interviews and playlists.

Zyxt was commissioned to rename, art direct, and design a website with the aim of  creating a provocative platform that stirs emotions and prompts responses.

The name ‘X’ (eks) was developed to underpin the idea of an online platform being direct, daring and free from constraints; a no-brand approach to create an aura of anonymity – disturbing the idea of what an identity should be, while acting as a blank canvas providing open interpretation to its symbolic connotations of the identity.

From this standpoint, the website design prompts discovery through unexpected juxtaposition, experimentation and randomisation of various interactions experienced throughout the site. It aims to provoke users to create their own interpretations and relationships with the content and its underlying meanings.

• x-online.sg

Housework(Press) is a South East London based Risograph print press, publisher and graphic design studio established in 2016. It aims to provide accessible, high quality and inclusive service to allow people to experiment, share and disseminate works with Risograph printing.

Zyxt designed the overall identity design and art direction, re-evaluating its naming strategy and establishing a flexible identity system. The HWP logotype was inspired by the physical characteristics of the Risograph printer as a robust workhorse, with a system designed to reflect the mechanicality of  duplication and repetition in the act of print production and publishing.

• housework.press

If I had to explain very simply, I study how people came to be.
That could explain why I happen to be in Sinnoh.
In Sinnoh, there is a myth on how the world came into existence.
Investigating that myth may give me insight on the emergence of people.
I found something very interesting soon after arrival.
You may have it, if you’d like.

I’m told that Plate was created at the same time as Sinnoh.
The plate I found bears this inscription.
“The rightful bearer of a Plate draws from the Plate it holds”
The rightful bearer, I think, may point to the shaper of this world.
Oh, by the way, I’m only interested in the words and thoughts left behind. Physical artifacts like that Plate don’t interest me once I’ve read them.
I hope we meet again somewhere.

• Request

BUT NOW SPACE WAS PART OF THE OBJECT¹ is an inquiry into whether or not a typeface can be absent in its own type specimen. Negative space becomes positive space, secondary becomes primary, reference becomes content. False protagonist Booq Alt delivers the performance of Booq—a typeface whose identity can only be imagined through the interplay of transcribed lectures by John Freeman, Esa Matinvesi and Krister Olsson from Booksfromthefuture Summer School 2015 and a pool of public domain images.

A publication by Masaki Miwa and Ying Tong Tan, published in parallel with The Multiple Lives of a Blank Book (Booksfromthefuture, 2015).

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Metaphon is a typeface created using Metaflop, an open source web application which allows users to create and customise a font within a set of parameters.

Metaphon was designed for use in BUT NOW SPACE WAS PART OF THE OBJECT¹, acting as an in-between agent for the contrasting typefaces used in the publication – the constrained rigidity of Booq and Booq Alt against the classical engraving style of Daubenton (designed by Olivier Dolbeau).

• REQUEST

Booq Alt is a spin/evolution of the typeface Booq. Similar in its dimensions and modular components designed within the structural limitations set by Booq’s G.D.A.A Manifesto. It is based on creating a range of alternate glyphs that pretends to act as a compilation of various individual spinoffs – a visualisation of the usage and the spread of the manifesto resulting in a pool of alternate forms.

Booq Alt’s form stems from the idea of one’s innate reluctance to conform (in this case to the limitations set by the manifesto), giving birth to awkward shapes, kinks, oddities, and distortions – finding balance amongst this architectonic frustration while sticking within the manifesto’s rules.

It is a celebration of experimentation, beauty in deformities, and of alternate forms created through the breaking and re-making of a system. To celebrate this unexpectedness in experimentation, the typeface is also programmed to allow randomisation of its alternate glyphs during the act of typing.

• REQUEST

G.D.A.A (Graphic Designer as Architect) was established in 2015. Born from Graphic Design’s admiration towards Architecture’s role in possessing socio-cultural status, historical significance, and the creation of ‘works of art’. G.D.A.A aims to achieve equal or greater status for the Graphic Design discipline. This is attained by creating works that incorporate architectural methodologies into graphic design practice — by following a site-specific manifesto, from which Booq was created.

Booq is a typeface consisting of interlocking components based on the architectural structure of the blank book provided by Booksfromthefuture as part of a commissioned contribution to their Summer School 2015. Booq is built upon a set of rules — only utilising the cover, spine, spread, arc, and manipulating the paper of the book as the dimensional structure to construct a typeface.

• REQUEST