 Okay, right, okay. Yeah, hey everyone. I can't really see everybody that's here right now, but hi and welcome to our first design SG event. It's a designer's asked me anything. So we'll do a quick introduction of the design SG group and that will be done by our co-founder Sid. Yeah, take it away, Sid. Yeah, hi, hi everyone. I'm Sid. So design SG started about six months back in a message post on our sibling group, which is called DevSG for developers in Singapore. So someone just posted is there a design group here? So a couple of us just saw a need and filled a need through a telegram group. And we were very lucky to meet in person just before Dorscon Orange kicked in. And after that, the group has grown to about 600 members in the first six months. We were planning this event to celebrate 500 members. But here we are. So, so yeah, that's pretty much about the group. It's comprised of designers of all kinds in Singapore. And there are people and discussing all kinds of things like job, this like sharing job experiences, job listings, and their experiences as a designer and sharing interesting links and so on. So this is our first live event. So we are very excited to have all of you here. And we'll have another event maybe before we hit 1000. So yeah, over to you, men. Thanks, Sid. Yeah, so it was really cool meeting Sid and starting this and we definitely never to grow this quickly. We're probably about, we're just about to hit 600 members. So yeah, it's been quite an amazing journey and just a short six months. Yeah, so a bit about me. I'm actually from industrial design background. So I attended a School of Polytechnica together with one of the panelists, Postami. Yep. And so today we're really happy to have all our panelists and especially thanks to Keat for agreeing to moderate this session. So I'm going to hand over the time to Keat right now. Okay. I hope you all can see my screen and happy national day, post-national day to everyone. I'm Keat. I'm also probably serving in the community, the design community since about 2011 through IXDA, which is Interaction Design Association. And today we're really happy to help me and Sid to sort of moderate this conversation, right? Let me just introduce to you the rest of the panelists. So other than myself, which is doing the moderation, I think I want to introduce Bostami. So Bostami, you're based in Saber Jaya, right? So yeah, our friends from the other side. So Bostami is also the founder of Artwiz. Did I pronounce it correctly? Yeah, Artwiz. Artwiz. Yeah, a baseball watch design company that collaborates with global brands. He's also a design maestro and he has actually worked at Lambo Guinea. No, I have to clarify here that I'm not a staff in Lambo Guinea. But then how did my experience come in? It happened way back in 2008. During that time, it was before that I was in the selection of the Malaysian first astronaut. And from 12,000, then I managed to become the final eighth. And they said the rest is history, but then my history is that I didn't get selected to be the only one. So it's kind of frustrated. But then for me personally, I always like when you had such a failure in any kind of ventures, the only thing that comes to yourself is that how you can pick up or how you get back to your own tools quickly. So I was into the design world car design and kind of stuff since I was a kid. That was my passion. And during that time, I believe all of you know Lambo Guinea, the super car brand from Italy. And during that time, there was like a worldwide announcement, official announcement by the company itself that they are looking for a young designer to come to Italy and to help them to design like the future DNAs of Lambo Guinea. So the term was like they are looking to collaborate with this young designer at this place which is Scholar Polytinga Design, whereby at the end of the courses we will be awarded by a master's in car and design. So basically it was like a program by this university collaboration with the Lambo Guinea, but then Lambo Guinea gives scholarship to certain students. So long story short, I was the one of the students who would get the scholarship from them. That's how my experience with Lambo Guinea for I think for almost like one and half year is smaller here. Awesome. So let's turn me into this panel. All right, next up we have Kenny. Kenny has been, I've been to one of our talks by Kenny and Kenny is like a veteran in the whole design industry doing product and furniture and interior. So he is also the founder of 11H multi-disciplinary design studio that focuses on interior and product design. Kenny has two masters, one from the most economy and the other one from the University of Wales, right? So Kenny, you want to share anything about yourself? Hi, I'm Kenny. I run a company 11H. So I'm also teaching at the same time at the NTU and Daniel Academy of High Arts. And in our company, we deal mainly with interior design. We started out as a product design company doing furniture, office furniture, and then a little bit of products here and there. And over the years, some of our clients have also asked us to do their showroom and their show flat, their exhibition, and then it bled on until now. We are also doing residential interior. Yeah, so that's up to now what we're doing. And then last but not least, we have Rwanta Salim. Should we call you Salim or Rwanta? Yeah, you can call me Salim. I think it's easier for in Singapore for me to use my surname. Especially with a bit difficult sometimes. Right. And Salim has been in the design education industry for over 25 years, right? Managed six diploma courses, 12 certificate courses, and currently a senior manager, senior course manager at ITE, now School of Design and Media. So he designed strategic collaborations between the education industry. I think this is a very rare kind of role to bridge the gap between the academia and the schools and what is needed by the industry. So really, really good to have you here. So Salim had started at Temasek Poly Design School followed by Singapore Poly and then School of Design. And then now he actually got his master's in business design from Domos Academy as well. So when I had a kind of call with the different panelists, I understood that they were all starting at Milan and studying overseas university in Milan, and then coming back to Singapore to contribute, right? As far as I'm going back to Malaysia. So that's kind of how they meet and how this panel got formed together. So this is a very interesting group. I'm going to just stop sharing my screen so that we, or rather, I should just go back to this one. Yeah, sorry. Before we continue on, I completely missed introducing our moderator. So Keat is actually, sorry about that. Keat is actually an experienced consultant himself. So he's a designer himself as well. He's been serving the design community in Singapore since 2011. So coming to 10 years now that he's been involved in the design community. So I thought that, you know, asking him to moderate this session is really, really aligned really well. And so at his day job, he's working closely with enterprises and startups and nonprofits. His expertise is in design thinking, product management, digital strategy, user experience, right? An interesting fact about Keat, besides the fact that he loves bad puns and dead jokes, his black cat is actually named Sharpie to commemorate his frequent use of Sharpie markers in the design process. So thanks Keat once again for agreeing to moderate. Yeah, no problem. Okay, so let's go back to this and we're going to start the panel rolling. All right, so if you guys are coming through in through Zoom and you have questions to ask, just feel free to put it into the chat and our moderators or who really Sharpie. Thanks Min and Sid will help to collect those questions and then we can ask them one by one. All right, so let's get rolling. I think I want to start off the first question to all the different panellists is what does design mean to you? And what is your definition of design actually? Anyone? I guess the very basic of what design is is to help solve problems. Right, help solve problem. I mean, everybody has some problem, but designing and solving problems should come together. And, you know, at the end of the day, it should make the problem, I mean, aesthetically pleasing, you know, psychologically sound. So that's my take on what design means. It's basically the soft problem for people. Yeah, yeah, this question was interesting because when when I did my degree in 13, actually that was the first day question by the lecturer. So they asked us, I say, why are you here? And you say, you know, what do you think about design? And, you know, of course, everybody says that, you know, about aesthetics and all that. Interestingly, the answer I was given, I said, you know, do you remember you woke up this morning and then, you know, you're trying to pick what clothing you wear. So that already constituted design actually. That's true. Well, for me, I think I agree with Kenny and Salim. Obviously, first thing first design always has to solve a problem, right? But also, for me, design, it's always about how it works, especially when we are working as or we are creating something, an object. I think the first thing that we need to ask ourselves is that why a product or the object should exist in the first place. If it exists for the right purpose, then there's an opportunity to design and there's an opportunity to solve a problem through that whatever thing that we design as simple as to pick, you know, as as as biggest as a building. So anything has to be designed according to whatever the psychological issues or the most importantly is to create a better world. And it's interesting how the way that we are seeing design and the way that how design is being perceived out in the world or in wherever field that we are in, it's kind of different, right? So I wanted to understand maybe from your point of view, how does others perceive the work that you do? Like what do you think your view of design is and maybe from from what you've been hearing or what you're seeing, how is design being perceived in your industry? I would say like I mean depends on which who is viewing this. All right, so I let's say we are looking at some of these young designers that's coming up or maybe some students or you know then maybe they'll look at design as kind of something that is like making it look very cool and you know looking very nice and you know exciting you know. But of course if you're looking at it on a client's perspective, some of the business people they use it as a tool. They take design and they treat it like oh this is another part of our whole strategy of doing business you know and some of them don't realize what design actually is but they they just feel like they need to have it because everybody's having it. So they will just oh I need a designer coming in and then we so that we can brand it and then put it together say oh this our products is designed in Singapore and design what we're aware by who and all that stuff so that can you know kind of tell people that we are original and they use it they use us as a marketing tool. So I would say it's it depends on who you know who's looking at what you know how they perceive ourselves as a designer. Nice and and how about to boss how is design being perceived in Malaysia? Well the the word design has increasingly become famous in Malaysia. I think for the past 10 years long away before that not so many people were saying things like this thing should be designed this way or that way. It's simply because the the new era of the like the modern society nowadays they demanded for obviously for for in generally they are looking for something looks cooler something looks pleasing to their eyes and those are the things actually designers at the backhand has to solve so many things especially when we design something that is has to be practical for example if you want to build as simple as objects such as chair or table it's not just design we have to know so many things more like materials you know costing dimension or how many things or what is the MOQ to produce just one design. So in general the word design increasingly become famous nowadays in Malaysia people start to acknowledge designers people start to understand and people start to saying or start to value things that are designed well there are places in the market and and know what it it's validated by I would say like the success story of Ikea in Malaysia right just within a short space of time they are opening more more store it shows that the market is willing to pay for a good products and it was designed so I would say like there will be still different perspective on design but there are actually a long way to go to explain to all the general public on how the product should be designed and not to say also not to forget that a good design nowadays is not just a good looking thing but also a product that solves your daily problem at the same time we also need to understand that how much weighs you know if the product didn't exist at the right place at the right time so it becomes so much more thinking I do believe that designers has to be educated dancer it's not just to make just a nice drawing nice sketches but we have to look forward like how the impact will be give from the manufacturing perspective or the consumers in perspective should they buy a product that just a one and not a needs well interestingly when I started design long time ago we are more like I think we are more like decorators in Singapore you know usually the client will come and say that you know this thing looks beautiful so it has it has changed a lot I think I think for Singapore especially I find that design has the potential of design changed quite tremendously in the past day when I started really you know it just 55 things but subsequently like in the 90s there's a lot of awareness that you know how design can help in terms of boosting business in terms of like how to make things you know something that people will want rather than you know like yeah okay you come at the end of the whole process and you know just make it look nice nowadays designers tend to be involved from the beginning so that's why a lot of a lot of things like for example what I learned in doing business design is that you know we we have to be involved from the beginning we have to know exactly what the client wants at the end and we have to actually suggest to them like what is the best way for them to achieve it at the end so design has grown quite a lot at times you know so we were not just defying things anymore now right so so it seems like what we can hear is that whole maturity level of design has definitely shifted over the years and just curious how how does that affect the way that you have been designing your cost curriculum uh from the education perspective right yeah oh designing the designing cost curriculum is totally different uh again you know like I use my my background especially in business designing uh the problem that we find in education typically is actually about the fear of innovation uh somehow I think uh you know because the startup cost to do a cost is quite expensive uh so generally there is a fear of uh you know starting something that is unknown so uh there is a lot of study and then you know like you have to study a lot of the figures and then after that you have to analyze this analyze that but I think one of the issue that I found recently is that you know uh by doing that uh we are left behind a lot of time because the world has moved so far that any cost development that takes more than six months is too slow already yeah because the world has changed and and then maybe to Kenny because I understand that Kenny also teaches in NAFA and NTU right so when it comes to like teaching how is the curriculum has it been changing over the years uh yeah yeah of course I mean it's evolving all the time and uh what we try to do is uh kind of incorporate a little bit of practical skills many times uh uh we are not just going to teach them things that you know in theory but uh what we bring in as a part-time lecturer is right is it's how how the industry works and how we can help the student to be able to adapt to those uh those that's working outside right to the business outside and and the teaching in the school sometimes a little bit different because of course three years in school doesn't cover everything so what the school will try and do is give you a lot of uh theory based uh concept development and all that stuff but when you come out to the working world it's a lot of both solving problem and then just doing it and many times you can you can you can feel kind of mundane right but uh you need to align that kind of uh some some form of misconception there right because the student will get very disillusioned if you don't bring them some of spring in some of these items into so we try and and bring in some of this practical stuff in so that they they they can they they can get a feel of this and I think one of the good things in is happening now is also the internship program a lot of the schools are now going out with this internship program there's not just one month two month you know but six months nine months and those kind of program is is really good because I feel the student really get an opportunity to you know study from and have the kind of mentorship with with the design company design firm then at the same time the the design firm you know get to also meet some of these uh graduating designers right so for us it's like we can get to experience them have a little bit of relationship train them up and of course because of this internship the fees are not so high so we don't take infotainments and you know we've uh with this kind of program running it's it's really good to kind of align the industry with the teaching I think that that kind of is working around that now yeah right and and maybe uh shifting the gear later to uh the the commercial work that you do right how has that changed over the years in terms of what your clients are asking you to deliver in terms of like projects and has the brief change or mature I think I think it has changed for me but I'm not so sure whether is it because uh because of the industry or because of what we have become over the years right so so if uh if when we first start out and we are taking on jobs and all that stuff uh a lot of time um I guess there's some change a lot of time the companies are not so aware of what uh what the design encompasses and how they can how we as designers can help them but they know that they just want to have somebody inside there right so but so but now I think a lot of the design uh all the companies that are engaging or really rather meeting up with us are they already know a certain they have already a certain sense of what design means and they tend to give some kind of autonomy to to us as designers you know so so they they they respect us a little bit more you know industry yeah you used to like you know they just say oh we need this you just do it you know and you yeah but but over the years you get clients that oh they they really uh meet your help and they are you know kind of like oh putting putting in yeah all and really hope that you you help them turn around their business yeah so that that's that's some of the things that you know that and they they will they will I mean they will listen to all the advices and then we will of course uh on our side we it's a heavy responsibility because because it's it's somebody's likelihood right everybody's working towards that so so whenever I do a job I take it as I'm part of the company uh I don't just here come here take the money and then you know do whatever I want and then get out but I will once I take on this responsibility it's it's part of my my job as as part of the team in the company to help them solve the problem whatever whatever you know money that we agree on is not important really just do it that's all you know maybe to boss tell me how how is this similar and different to the work that you do because yours is watch design uh right I mean running your your own bespoke watch design business how is this different right um so the way we the way we design our business strategy it come encompassing with the design uh ecosystem all together within the keywords of collaborations okay uh there are thousands of brands uh for for watch company right so and we are pretty pretty much a young company we are just three years in the industry and what what we did for this startup is that uh honestly speaking it was so hard to penetrate the market even though there are millions of people but then there are also thousands of brands that you need to compete and all this company are there are like deep pockets okay so what we did we didn't really small team you know we believe that we have the expertise of designing which is that our superpower and that that's that's the thing that we we feel gratitude for so um in order to be seen in the market okay we need to understand the the whole ecosystem of how people perceive or how people value every product that they are going to purchase okay and as for the watches is actually it's not that hard simply because they are people are looking to see the time all the time so they need something to see even though they are smart watch and as you have your your smartphone and stuff but then um there are still people who value something that are wearable okay and what makes um we and how we we try to to tell the world that we are in this uh business but then why we are so different compared to others is that because we offering something that many company that cannot offer which is customization or we call it bespoke okay so in order for us to go into the market the i think the even now or coming future is that you don't want to compete with anyone because for us it's almost impossible to come to compete with swatch to compete with that call you all those kind of brands so the best thing is that is to stick to your strategy if you have something you are working on you have to believe in your team and your expertise so that's what we did when i say the word collaboration is that we are looking for a entity or the other partner who are looking for an object for their for example community or fan base which is if we look in the business perspective or marketing wise um considering now we have an a pond like a lake and then there are bigger lakes and we are going fishing into a slightly smaller lakes which is the big company doesn't want to get into so it gives us a competitive advantage already because nobody wants to go there and when we're out of ring which is the customization you know the this we are designing it from scratch we're giving their superpower to to have what kind of watches they want and then our unique preference is that we are almost only making it limited edition so we we find out that working out with the artist so i was uh very passionate into arts our teams at team two and since day one when we are opening our our company we start collaborating with the painter you know the the graffiti artist so we offering them to draw on dead watches which is now um they are company doing that but they are like a super expensive brand like patek philly harbler which is 500 000 usd kind of watches but earth is still like a below 1000 single i'll say so we have that customization then this type of artists or or they already have their own fan base fan base so that's where my point coming to the fishing in the slightly smaller pond or lake and then uh within that we actually start uh looking for a bigger audience in terms of artists so we have artists from new york from germany from japan uh from russia basically all over the continent then that what makes our company is international since day one singapore we haven't yet uh fun yet so maybe we are looking after this um and then within that business model it gains so much trust to a bigger player bigger player i mean like a biggest singer artist so they are start looking for us oh you guys can do customization i i wanted to do that because we have a fan base normally we just sell a t-shirt for example right so watches it's kind of premium so they are looking into that then we start collaborating with like a legendary artist in Malaysia like em nasir and we have rock bands such as butter fingers and we have more coming uh and we are going to announce soon our biggest collaboration uh hopefully by end of this week we are doing the prime minister series limited edition formulation so along the way it grows up so fast and and the business model so far works and and by the time the artist say hey i'm making a watch you guys can take a look in artist local website and for the most part within 24 hours our watches is also out then thank god for that then then we start try to start to making and we are getting more requests so um basically uh my point here is that design is not just um to create something for something because if you are trying to sell design alone it's super hard trust me in this this is modern world and this has happened if you know um i believe you all know tesla like and they are they also have many competitors for example they have fisker another another electric company whereby um it's super hard for fisker to penetrate the market simply because they are focusing so much on the design and design should complement all other things around us that's why the collaboration is the key words in this modern world right cool and i think we have a question from the from the chat uh from isabel that i probably just want to bring in uh the conversation as well um what are your experiences i mean to all the three different panelists right working freelance if you all have or you're running your own business since uh kenny and boss dummy has been running that own uh business as well so what challenges um did you face and what do you like about them what advice do you give to someone who about who who is actually thinking about uh freelancing right maybe i mean there's a different layers of uh questions here but perhaps let's start with challenges right no uh kenny whenever you start challenges between running your own company and run doing freelance is it uh i i guess maybe limit to challenges in uh running your own practice and still have to uh the the projects or or even teaching uh you know the different aspects of your life right so i think well when i first before i started my own company when i was still working for people uh i started because i i already planned to at the end of the day run my own business so the first thing i wanted to do or start getting jobs so i started off doing freelance while i'm working all right so so that that kind of uh you know so i wanted to know what is the business aspect of doing things like costing you know meeting up showing presentation and all that stuff when you're working for a company of course it's a little bit different we have our own internal meet and then we we discuss and then we you know it's quite straightforward you don't have to go in really you have to convince but you it's not it's a different type of convincing well so when you you start uh doing this freelance business right first of all you are uh because you are freelance right i think sometimes we get abused a little bit right because uh they they they see you are your freelancer so you can do cheaper you can do whatever right so so but the thing is it's it's it's mutual it's okay because we are trying to get experience right yeah so money shouldn't be the main problem shouldn't be the main issue the main issue is getting the job doing it and then making it successful learning through the job so i would tell people that take on freelancing job yeah do it do it and uh and then and gain the experience because you need the experience you got no experience you can't do any work don't talk about money right so so uh do the freelance and then you learn from the do learn from it and and then build up the portfolio build up the portfolio because your clients your new clients coming in will want to see the portfolio what you have done how you've done it you know how do you execute the job and all that stuff and then and then build that knowledge build that knowledge such that you know the different industry how do you manufacture things how do you make things happen you know who you know to get things done for you so these are all connecting the all the dots for you to you know have a very complete uh complete professional kind of a design base right in school you don't they don't see you all these so these are our things that you you have to do so as a freelancer you do those things so so the way that we should see freelance is not so much of to the client they see like free work but for us you should see as free learning experience yeah yeah so i mean don't i mean we we don't want to see until it's totally free we don't get anything out of it i mean if you know that your clients are out to abuse you you can decide to walk away right because as a freelancer we we still have our salary to pick up i mean when i was working for our company i still had money so you know it's not important i don't like you i don't do the job right but then now you are doing the business you set up your own business it's a little bit more different because now it's not about supporting yourself you have to learn how to pay rent pay the staff rent uh salary you know everyone you're worried about all those kind of things so so that is the little bit of difference as a freelancer and as a as a full-fledged design company and and unique unique to make their business work in a way right so that's therefore the costing and all that stuff is a lot more different and you you have to go and chase after the job maybe to salim has a lot of your students actually want to say hey i uh after graduating i'm going to like go freelance and i'm going to start my own practice um well what is the situation on your end this is actually quite uh quite common actually because uh what what i find is that if you can actually mingle them uh that means like you're from different disciplines for example like if you're from the media type people like from video uh then after that you make them up with uh interactive or from company design somehow organically when they go out uh they might form a company actually interestingly uh for freelance uh freelance is a very uh yeah challenging thing for any any students i find uh so at one point in in Singapore Poly actually i went to collaborate with one of my colleagues uh we actually set up like a design studio uh in on campus and the job is actually to take him you know a lot of this uh revenue generating work i just to get the students get a feel of how they can actually start charging because a lot of time what i found is that uh the students got cheated so by the time they come to me and then they say oh you know i just got cheated you know i took down the project and then you know the client just went away you know too late yeah yeah so i think by then i say well i think there's nothing what you can do just learn from it uh but again you know like uh they so freelance i think it's a good start but they must know that you know there is certain risk to it yeah so for for companies uh i find that in Singapore the overhead is the one the killer i find if you grow too fast uh i have seen my students who grow too fast means that they they they want to take in a lot more clients they tend to be unable to balance that uh interestingly some of them will lost their soul so called you know so they become they just going or to earn money and they say oh yeah so i i hate to do this anymore you know because you know i lost my soul so i think the the good one that i saw from a couple of my students they know how to balance so let's say they have taken a lot of uh good paying jobs so they call it ambassador they call it and then after that they they act on their own they actually do their own project so let's say it's uh i i know one traffic design student who actually is run a very successful company on his own and i know he employs maybe like one or two young designers but on his own he does a lot of furniture designing somehow you know it is something that he wanted to do so they take so you know i i can do my brand but at the same time i just do what i want you know so that they can balance up instant of uh you know the info for your hope sanity yeah yeah i think that's one thing that i did when i was as a freelancer right uh you know sometimes you you do the office work is it's quite mundane then you put on this freelance job it's like a breath of fresh air you do something new something you know that you're interested in so you do it for less money it's okay because anyway that's one you know when you say office what is it the office furniture or office kind of design or no no i mean as in like when we were employed as a full timer right in the company so then either i'm doing office furniture or i'm designing contract furnishing or whatever yeah after a while you can you know a lot of technicalities you're doing numbers you're meeting clients you're not really doing the work and yeah the design work sometimes comes in like that and it's like oh that's quite nice you know do it right and how about for bosamy like when you return back from uh milan do you like started as like doing freelance or do you went straight into uh starting the the watch company um so it was a long journey after i come back i after i come back uh from milan to malaysia and i didn't straight away um uh opened a watch company that that company is just certainly about three years ago we started um i come back to malaysia in 2010 so it was like 10 years ago it's been quite a while um but then uh to find a job during the attack it was so hard okay and and i graded in master car and just for design even though doing project with lamborghini there's only two companies in malaysia you know and then they're always full of uh designers in those companies so when i come back even though i got the uh opportunity for for them asking me to send my resume and kind of stuff but then i didn't get admitted right away so after six months of trying then only i get admitted to proton you know um they are looking for a designer but then in big company they are they they all they're always having a budget you know like when one person lived then only they can afford to hire anyone so that happened to me when that person lived then i only got the opportunity but then they know and i know we've been waiting for six months to get on board so that was my contribution to to malaysian car company so i work in proton for i think almost five years and um the freelance team uh this is an advice for people who are doing freelance because freelance is not consistent right you get a job and sometimes there are so many challenges especially dealing with clients and when you are dealing with clients that has low perspective in terms of how design can bring value to them and that's how so many so many stories we heard that uh you got cheated by these and that so uh i've been doing freelance the whole of my life even now i still got like a uh offer to do this kind of little projects so my advice to people who are interested uh going for freelancing but at the same time also thinking about opening a business this is really two different side of story because freelancing you are on your own okay you are on your own you i understand many people come into the design world because they feel very passionate they love the design they love how things work they love how cool is that product but those are the things that doesn't pay you a bill okay we still have to pay rent and food and stuff so many things so my advice would be you you in the first play you have to invest your time and energy to yourself make sure you are so good in what you do and people will come to you so instead of you looking for a job let the company come to you and when they come to you you set your own term because they come to you right so you can have uh normally what i do um we always have a contract in the beginning before i even sketch or i even start opening my photoshop so have a contract uh there's a lot of example in the internet or you if you have like the law friends or legal kind of thing you can ask them uh validate in your contracts and make sure you guys both happy you and your client happy with that contract of what amount time and stuff then only you sign off after you sign off for the most part i will always ask for an upfront payment okay upfront payment that you are feel comfortable and they also feel comfortable to pay you then only you start don't do it first and you send it they they they say things like crazy deadline for you then doing all the modifications and when you send it and they say okay hang on now we wait for maybe my boss will approve your account now uh calculating the money then you wait you wait for one month two months three months that and in the end today it's a loss and and and we have to protect our value so that's for freelancing and for the business you have to have like a different mindset of thinking because when you are doing businesses you cannot grow alone okay you have to have like at least a small team to support you uh i like the story that uh mr salim say just now uh when they get so many jobs and sometimes because we only have 24 hours a day then we sleep 10 hours a day we play with Netflix and kind of stuff we know so many times to to focus on the project so if you're thinking about the business then start opening a small company first and when you get the job make sure you are acting like you are a big company okay and then when you get a job you don't do everything yourself if you are a business then this is the should be the mindset if you are freelancing then it's fine when you are thinking about a business when you get a job please please share some whatever salary or fees or income that you get to your friends or other designers because try to put into different perspective because i what i believe is that the more you give normally the more we come back to you right even though you get little little project but then your portfolio is growing so your company profile get more trust in industry and people don't play with you because you got this client a bc right so that's it this might take who or people who want to go to freelancing and businesses it's it's like uh it's very challenging right but then um you got to find a mentor too like people who are says if you're in Singapore then look forward to mr can you honk or mr salim uh they can advise you because having a mentor is like the most important of success in any kind of of venture it's simply because um they will show you how they will show you the path um i give you example like uh if you want to go to Mount Everest right you just don't want to like uh blindly go there and climb you need someone to bring you a shepherd to bring you to show the right path so that's my advice cool thanks a lot of good anecdotes there i i think there's a there's an interesting uh full-up question right um how does one draw the line with existing customers once enough experience has been gained i think this is to justify the price increase or do customers generally agree that once they see the added value that you are able to provide then uh you're able to to increase the price i think there's more to like let's say during when you are freelance maybe you charge like okay uh i don't know $30 an hour for example right but after that you start a business uh and then you say oh it's going to be $100 an hour now or it's $100 an hour right uh how do them i think this question probably to synthesize it better more to justify justifying the value that you provide as a designer um to the client right that you work with how how can one sort of justify that value so i mean if i look at it we are counting we are trying to charge based on our basis and that's the very basic of thinking but i'm thinking like if you want to do a business you don't charge by the per hour you charge by the value that you create all right so how much is your design work uh uh to the client right how much am i giving in terms of whatever things i do maybe i can take a week maybe i can take two weeks to do it but if i can help the company increase the sales by another 10 percent right so if they say oh my turnover a year is two million dollars three million dollars if i do a 10 percent increase it means like they get a two hundred thousand dollars more so if two hundred thousand dollars more then if you pay a twenty thousand that's a 10 percent that's not much if i can help you twenty two hundred thousand dollars then i think a twenty thousand dollar job that uh that only encompass two weeks if you charge by per hour basis that's a hundred dollar per day per hour then your two weeks job is definitely less than ten thousand dollars right so so it depends on what kind of value do you bring to the clients right so of course there are some clients i mean if you are starting out of course then you and you have no idea how you know and you meet with clients that are that that do not have such a big budget and they are not talking about so much money or whatever then you use the per hour gauge to kind of roughly you know get a feel of how much time you spend and how much cost involved but based on your per hour charge then after you do a little markup and you can get that cost right how how does salim teach your students about pricing generally in Singapore i mean like uh they be charged by a project so then they always take along some value and then they say okay this is the amount that i'm going to charge you uh i think the problem i think i can i can see from here is that you know when you started you know you thought okay i think for this job i just charged two thousand dollars and then uh then subsequently you know you're beginning to produce more work and then it's more good you know two thousand is not enough to cover me anymore uh generally i think i would advise students to start with uh man hour first uh after man hour then after that they can start the when they are more comfortable in uh in in sizing up you know the value of the project and now they can actually start by a project from you know like the what kind of value that you think that you will return to the to the business uh there are another another uh uh permutation to that uh one is five man hour plus yot but it's thousand factors in in Singapore but i think in europe they do that some some designers yeah so so in this case it says god also the uh the designers in the sense that you know like the each product is selling very very well uh they also get some money out of it other than you know like oh yeah okay quickly it doesn't belong to me anymore so so like in Singapore yeah that's right yeah for us we do get this uh kind of a royalty basis thing so uh it depends on client to client yeah but for furniture usually we will do uh we'll tell the client beforehand that uh we do charge a fee plus a royalty and the royalty can range from three to five percent depending yeah and and i i i think there's there's a lot of questions that started to to uh throw in and we have about five minutes left so i'm going to shift a gear later right uh to more or let me see this little question which is quite interesting right awin was asking like for example budding software engineers can contribute to open source kind of like projects to gain experience right but for designers i think where we are all just coming out into the industry or graduated and all that how other than freelancing uh where do you see designers being able to contribute to sort of like a open source or something in a community kind of work sort of to be able to gain experiences uh uh have you all seen any equivalence in in your respective field that's in the forum is it in terms of product design and all that stuff yeah it could be yeah no i'm not really involved in all this forum thing so i'm not so oh still old school right i think almost in the design is a lot of relationship and network that we sort of build and use that as a way to uh gain that necessary experience yeah yeah it's important to to have the kind of communicatives here and so that you can you can get the opportunity if you just stay at home and wait for people to kind of knock on doors nobody's gonna find you anything from bostami side um well um to gain experience through collaborating in community i think um to put into perspective is that um we want us to be seen okay and and and we do understand that it's not easy for us to just get the client right away and and because obviously people don't see it yet what we can bring or how we can upgrade the value of their businesses or community so i always um um encourage people to give um i will i will i will not say free services but then you can do something that you are strongly believe in or you like it a lot without having a pay upfront but not for them but that in generally you are showing them say hey today i'm doing this blah blah blah you don't have to tell everything you just need to tease them that you are capable of doing this then you can shout out like say anybody from software engineering or electronic people who like to join me to work on this project so by doing that um you actually in a way of forming your own venture and without having a cost in the beginning because the cost will be your time your energy and your expertise and same goes to the other part that they have like the expertise in software that you don't have for example then you can partner as you can collaborate and ends up you can open your own startup for example and go for funding go for pitching go to the startup incubator for example or accelerator i think singapore has done a very good thing for that you can go to gov tech show your idea first but you don't have to show everything because it takes a lot of more time and energy energy when sometimes feel that the thing that you make has so much value in solving community issues for example there will be someone somewhere will come to you and ask what do you need more okay i come up to a few ventures uh with this kind of idea simply because um i i spent a lot of my time networking i went to this kind of event this kind of event even though that event doesn't belong doesn't relate to my skills but then i see the value in networking when i went to the like a startup event in blessure right i met with a lot of people who has so good incidence expertise that i don't have then we start becoming friends then we start in the community uh the thing is uh the million bill this telegram group which is so good actually for you guys to networking to talk to each other uh share some knowledge but you never know you will might might find someone that has the same because finding the right business partner also it's another challenging because you don't know uh this is going to happen right business is is i would say is difficult but then if you need so much the process then you will value it so much i treat my business as my baby i treat my even small sketch or whatever product i am working on i treat it as a baby and i want to see that baby goes so that kind of mission that this kind of community can get you into so that's my thought cool um i i wanted to regroup back because uh it's it's four o'clock and i think that is one area that i like to link back uh this whole conversation too right is that uh all three of you and including min chose to study overseas and in the muscle program that is in milan uh why and and why not something in singapore and why not something in the region for example is there a gap here that we are seeing anyone so the reason why i wanted to do an overseas program rather than a local one is i feel the it's not about the education mainly is the interaction with the people yeah the more you you meet a lot of uh people from different countries with different kind of cultural background and and thinking and i think that that is the interesting thing about doing an overseas program and second thing of course is uh when you're overseas you get to travel you get to see a lot more you're gonna have the fun there so so i think i think for me that's the reason main reason why i wanted to do you know somewhere really far away and even you know something like language i don't understand like i can speak and just to experience a whole yeah just the experience of meeting with all these other people that's the beauty of it salim uh okay i think i think for for for me would you encourage encourage your old students to go overseas or is that okay uh actually i do because uh i think the impact that they would get when they get out there is very different uh i mean for for me was strange because for me i was indonesian i come to singapore to study and i like to australia and i went to Milan so uh you know that even the culture alone i think it tells you a lot uh what i need for example i think it's the openness uh italyan tends to you know entertain a lot of crazy ideas i mean i mean like one of the crazy ideas that i did when i was there is my my own dc which is quite suicidal uh i said you know singapore at a time is uh i said you know singapore it's a it's a it's a artificial world let's put it that way everything we do we built it out of uh we created including the water so i said why not in singaporean think that the history is not great why not we create our own history that is we invent our own civilization in the past you know just just to attract you already so you know the italyan was like oh yeah okay you know if this is how crazy you know maybe we should we should look into it you know when i come to singapore why do you want to do something like that but i think that's interesting but in singapore right now uh again you know like i i think they they have to change a lot i mean they we do talk about things like this with the people you know but uh in education still not that in education still you know very safe yeah you can't you can't go while yet yeah yeah and and do you like i mean just curious i do do y'all see that as a kind of common cultural mindset for what is it in singapore and in in melasia in terms of like oh let's design and let's keep it very safe let's just ensure that it works and that's it right um the the breakthroughs and all that the innovation is not not there well um i think for me personally um i was i guess it started when i was really young uh when i saw that supercar on tv and and uh since i was a camp on boy you know i i live far away from about three hours from from quality work and to design a car it's become like my dream since i was a kid i even had a book that i wrote what i wanted to be when i grown up and one of them is that i want to design for ferrari so i wrote that when i was 15 years old and then um somehow they say that when you wrote something on your book it translated into an energy and subconscious your subconscious mind will work for that so fast forward to 2008 i got the opportunity to go to italy and actually uh what i want to say why i choose Milan uh to further my study it's relate very much the majority decision is because of my passion and i wanted to design something world-class then i have and i must learn some uh from world-class people or world-class company world-class brand that's makes uh that that's why how i ends up in italy then um because of that patient i have another patient which is aerospace and uh those are the things i'm working on right now for the space transportation systems and those are the scheme that i am leveraging onto because car design was something uh transportation right so uh and i'm done with that i've been in in almost 15 years in car design industry then i was thinking i was thinking like uh how long more i should design just cars i wanted to design something else and and the most highest probably engineering or something really crazy is an aerospace right so that's how it ends up that i ventured into another startup it's the same business model or same idea that i gave early in the community so i went into this startup where they are working out on basically they are engineers they don't have design so that's where my value came from in this startup where we went on for the google lunar expires competition uh to learn a spacecraft to the moon so i was part of the team and it makes me travel too so i had an opportunity to visit the r&d space at r&d in united states i went to google luna expires in in in uh california so i think when you want to decide decide where you want to go especially in terms of out of country out of malaysia out of singapore uh you you might want to do your research where is the best uh expert that reside on that country if you want to go for startup tech so you can start in singapore but then look forward for the other country who do it doing really well for example silicon valley right so i think the majority of decision is relies on of course the food is very fantastic in italy um yeah the the language that we we must learn because they don't speak much english which is now is an add-on to my language skills so i always look forward on how many value i can get back with that kind of uh energy and time and of course money is spent during that time nice now probably uh in conscious of time because this is uh 407 now uh i just want to end off with one last question right which is for anyone who wants to get into design um you know these days we have like our book camps as like your three months or six months or even some one year kind of specialist diploma um and and comparing to a formal training right like going through whether it's nafa or your uh it or or the polytechnics or even universities um what would you advise people which route that they could take or should take and and yeah and which one kind of like you feel is the probably the effective route into the industry i'm so down for that i think i think formal education is good to start you up with the uh your your the skill uh at the end of the day is how much you push yourself uh generally i always tell students i say i know you know the your your given time for projects always push your the project to the max means that anything you see with with projects in school you can always make mistakes and also you can actually push to the boundaries you know like you never worry like how much this project going to cost me but you know like it's limitless basically i can do anything so always push it until you know you have very very good uh portfolio and then after that you know get out uh i would suggest that either you do freelance once you do freelance for a while and then you plan to open your own your own agency then in this case then you know you will gain satisfaction in terms of like you know your your own boss i think uh working for people is good uh for portfolio but at some point i think you start asking yourself you know what you achieve cool Kenny um i think definitely the if they can afford it is to go and do a formal education and but i always tell my student that you know you just need to start off with a basic if you are starting out don't go until a master and all that stuff why why because if you are too highly qualified and you are starting on a junior position nobody there to employ you because they know that if i pay you too low it won't stay long if i pay you too high you may not be productive for me so i always tell them say go out after you do your diploma or if you if you are doing degree come out look for job first get you know get a good dose of what the work is all about and you ask yourself whether is this something that you really like and you really enjoy if you really enjoy and you think this is going to be a career for yourself then go all out and do it after that you build your degree do your masters and then you want to do a phd go ahead and do it right so that will help you to you know help form a better position of what you want to do because some people may not even know what they really want after they graduate with the masters and they do some some of these works and then there's like oh this is not really what i sign up for so it's going to be a a choice of restarting again or you're going to leave your life regretting everything so i always tell them get a few of what work is like then after from there uh yeah cool boss um okay i like to share two stories basically it happens to me and this one story is that if you proper education obviously it's essential for anyone of us in to take this job professionally because you need to educate yourself right you need to get the right skill sets but then moving forward is totally different game because it depends on what you want to do sometimes like mr kenny said we don't know what we want until we we go through all those things and i've seen many things happen with many people too and in fact i was when i was just starting out i didn't right away work in a big company i just went to work in a really small company with i think less than two designers i was uh i have my boss which is the chief designer and i was the only designer because my boss doesn't do the design work so much but then because the company is so small i had so much close contact with the founder or the owner of the company and the company relying so much to sell the design to the customer whereby he himself cannot explain to the customer so whenever we have a meeting with a customer my boss brings me and asks me to explain and on the other side of the positive way i learned so much in terms of business from him especially how on how to close a deal you know how to put the price those are the value things that come to me if you decided to go to a big company it's also good but then you are like a small chain in the big company so uh the the the learning curve will be so much but then because you will be focusing on doing just one thing probably your job is just to design an icon for n apps forever i know people who work in big company uh in in a fort you know a big company um it happens that for 15 years he just designing a sports wheel okay sports wheel for 15 years and and that's what also one of the reason why i quit my automotive industry because i wanted to design something else so much more and that's another story of um okay so this is like a direct information that i get from mr chris bangle you know he was the former chief designer for a bmw car so he was the one who come up with the flames facing that many companies uh are following the trend right now so this one story of his top uh his name is uh carim antony habit so he is the uh a young designer during that time uh when when mr bangle found this guy he just a really young designer went into the big company but then um please bangle sees so much potential in him and please bangle taking out from the company for about six months and send him to a place in italy a very remote place i forgot the name just to learn calligraphy calligraphy and those are the things that steve job done for a typeface interface for apple computer he learned calligraphy in the re college and that's why we have so beautiful interface in apple nowadays and what carin learned in in the remote place of italy is just to learn to perfecting the lines okay so my my advice will be for you just get the proper education this is also for you to get the right mentor the right mentor is your lecturers it's your whatever okay and then be good be kind be humble respect your lecturers because these are the people who are giving away so much value to you because the skill that comes to you it will embedded in you forever we never know sometimes you will get the opportunity you don't know so cutting cutting now becoming the chief designer of exterior bmw for the past few years now i think he already resigned but then the legacy live forever whenever you see the bmw cars you see fast line on the road and it's there and it's been copied when you design something that has been copied then you're the best you your your baby is successful so i do really hope people who just starting up sometimes we don't know what might happen and sometimes we change along the way i have another friend when i was in italy i have another friends uh italian friends uh his name it's maro he is 39 years old when i was there he was like a 39 years old and for the rest of her we just like wow that guy so old now come to learn right that's age mentality right but that's not for him because he had to work in his own bookstore in roma just because to find money to find to find her proper education to that school yeah so what happened was during during our classes he he turns out to become obviously the oldest candidates but then he was like the super hard working student in that class and later that i know when we're great there we finish we say bye bye cha chao and then later that i know when i see his link in he was working with ferrari okay and he was working with the ferrari many models and and the latest that i i had a chance to talk to him he's now in apple uh california designing for uh many products that probably you buy now so that's an inspiring story age is done doesn't just a number but then if you know what you're going to do that's the best but if you don't know keep looking like just just trying out we recently i never know i'm going to build a watch from a car from a space car but probably i'm going to build something else in the future i never know so we just keep looking try to be humble and try to give so much value to the world we did the design scope right so thanks so much thanks everyone for your humble sharing and very very useful insights and then it's a wrap all right uh round of applause uh to to everyone okay thanks so much for sharing and uh min over back to you okay yeah um thank you uh everyone who came and who stayed all the way to the end of the of our first event um due to bostame kenny salam and especially to keep all the hard work today um and yeah and thanks sit um my co-fight with help you have um come to fruition today so um yeah enjoy the rest of your national day holiday um see you again soon all right stay safe take care everyone happy national day singapore oh and thank you a shout out to engineers sg for recording our event today yeah bye bye