My first design

Frontline organized our first concert on 31 August 2002. Our former supporting organization YMCA suggested to arrange a farewell party for us using the remaining budget. However we thought it would be better to spend that good deal of money to reach more people, so we organized a concert in the Crystal Room, International House of The Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong. Since the room can accommodate 240 people, we started off the concert in a small scale one. Moreover, the budget allowed us to hire professional audio system for the concert, so it turned out to be medium scale.

We started off by deciding the name of the concert. Apart from using terms like "farewell" & "goodbye" (which we didn't plan to retire that soon), we hoped to bring positive messages to the audience, even though we were still in uncertainty. Finally we chose to use the name of the song we recorded in 1998, theme song 創造前路 (meaning "heading to the future") written by Ronald Tang for YMCA 85th Anniversary. 《Frontline 創造前路音樂會》 is the simple and straight-forward name we came up with.

For the graphic design, I started by working on the concert ticket. Since we didn't plan to widely spread the concert news to every church in Hong Kong, we adopted a low-budget design scheme. Ticket size is fixed to one forth of A4 paper, printed in mono color, with auto number printed as ticket serial. The "group of gears" concept is the main element of the whole design plan. The cropped "Frontline" in the bottom suggests emerging from ground. It represents Frontline migrating to a new era, echoing the concept of our concert's name. The left portion is the ticket stub. I put a studio microphone's photo (Georg Neumnn GmbH M147 Tube) there, since we planned to start recording in one or two year's time. However, I hate the idea of putting a mic there. =D


Concert ticket

After designing the ticket, I contacted a printing company in Kwai Chung, and they helped me a lot in fixing technical issues like adding auto-number and cutting line. To play safe, I chose the color black for the ticket.

After submitting the electronic file to the printing company, I started working on the programme booklet. I played with a blank A4 paper, and tried different methods of folding it to be a booklet. To make it consistent with the ticket, I chose to retain the dimension of the rectangle shape, while enlarging the size into half of A4. I chose to fold along the long side at the center of the paper, while the open ends are at the bottom, folding up for the booklet's contents. The booklet is in mono color, and I chose the same pantone color as our name card. The design continued the concept of the ticket, "group of gears" with the word "Frontline" emerging from the bottom. I retained the Chinese words of the concert's name in the upper part, while adding details of time and venue just below. However I did amend one tiny thing in the design. I'll show to you later.


Booklet Outside front

Flipping over the front cover, you'll see the main content of the booklet, being the introductory passage of Frontline and sharing of individual singers. For the ticket and front cover, you can only see portion of the three gears. Now you can see three gears in a more complete picture after investigating them in depth, just like you need to put effort in knowing a group or person. Moreover I turned the character "L" of the word "Frontline" into path, adding contour to it from bottom to top. It provides continuity to the whole design, and suggests we're progressing on the road of music ministry. Such concept appears in the front cover too.


Booklet Inside

Turning to the back of the booklet, you'll see the backing of gears - our production credits, guest singers and acknowledgement. I decided to use typewriter's font Courier to create special atmosphere to it. I'd rather hide my intention here and let you have a guess. You may realize there're tiny little words at the left bottom region. In case you can't read it on screen, I quote here.

Ivor, Jenny and others started this group in 93 and later others gone
but Icarus, But, Florence and Sheta joined in 96.
Since then we join together in Steven's home to make
a harmony project of singing the message from Heaven.

That's the reason we sing!


Booklet Outside back

You may wonder what is the whole picture of the booklet outside? Here it is. The graphical elements are basically the same as the booklet inside. I just changed the color into higher or lower saturation of color. From this view you can see the contour effect of letter "L" very sharp. It binds the whole design together.


Booklet Outside

Just days before the concert, I worked on the "Thank You Card" for our production team, guest singers and VIPs. I chose a group photo taken after CAS2001 Summit concert. With the lens I added to the photo, the words pop up from the surface. Actually this act is rather subjective, and I guess some people dislike it because it can't show our real face. HA! You can treat this as the underlying reason of processing the photo. Moreover I framed the card in border-less glass photo frame from IKEA. As a result I added "photo frame border" around the photo, with "Frontline" pops out the border. This adds some liveliness to the whole design.


Thank You Card

Other than graphics design, I put some effort in the set design too. We fellows decorated the stage like a living room, bringing home-feel environment to the audience. It disclosed our relationship among singers and our coach Steven Ip too - though not talking to each other often, we're genuine supporters of each other. Most of the stuffs on stage are from my apartment, the blue sofa cover, cushions, photo frame, tissue boxes and table lamps. Actually you can say it's Sheta's living room. =P


Set design - on stage

There was a piano corner just in front of stage, enlarging the stage down the platform towards the audience. I placed my favorite blanket on top of a round table, placing the Kurzweil MicroPiano on top of it, linking up with the Roland A-30 MIDI controller. The lamp on the round table provides sufficient light for the pianist in reading music scores. Other things are just decors, including my favorite cartoon character 剛 (Gon) and the "five loaves and two fishes" cross. Now you know more about me in observing all these tiny little things in the concert.


Set design - piano corner


Set design - round table of the piano corner

When the concert was over, there were quite a few audience stepping on stage, looking at the decors piece by piece, and even took photos with the set. I was so delighted.

My first lesson in graphic design

Being singer of Frontline, a local singing group specialize in multi-part harmony contemporary Chinese Christian music, I got exposure in music, audio, adminstrative and PR things. But I never think of it as my first step in graphic design. I would say it's just one of chances passing by me in one day, however I'm grasped by the magic, and start to spend time and money in exploring the real art of graphic design.

Frontline decided to setup an independent non-profit making organization in Hong Kong in year 2002, to promote Chinese Christian music (especially group singing culture) in church and outside church. The first thing came into our mind is namecard design. We have developed some ideas about our mission and ministry: vocal mechanics (I should write an article on this later in Frontline Forum), music production and evangelist. These three words kept evolving in my mind, and finally it became the concept of group of gears - they have to stay close together, work close together in order to transfer energy from one place to another, and this is the spirit of group singing too.

I invited my friend Mathrew Chan to be our designer of namecard. We had a nice dinner, talking about the concept of Frontline and namecard. He started designing using pencil and paper at the restaurant, and then Macintosh G4 workstation at my home workshop. He used Macromedia Freehand to finish the whole design. I sat by his side, watching every move he made, occasionally asking him questions about the software, design process and offset printing. I helped in choosing font, color and content of the namecard. Within three hours time, the namecard was finished. It is a two-color design, and I finally chose blue background color with blacks words in the printing company.

It was 2002/07/22 23:15 - 2002/07/23 02:30, my first lesson in graphic design.

I'm just having fun

My occupation is recording / sound engineer, while I love to involve in graphic design projects in leisure. Not a graphic designer, since there's still a long way to go. I'm just having fun in graphic design.

Having no formal training at all, I learn graphic design by observation. I love to watch people doing graphic design, and that's the way I learn software and design process. I do read a lot of design books, and I love to dig into design elements in daily life. "Design" is so cool to me, it's visual mean to communicate, to express emotions and to enhance beauty (aesthetics). When I come across design items in daily life, no matter in areas of interior design, furniture design, product design or graphic design, I know that there're designers backstage taking care of me. They bring convenience and beauty to my "would be" ordinary life, and I'm really thankful to all of them.

Being a "free"lancer, I didn't get outside jobs aggressively from day one. My major works are for Frontline (a singing group involves in Hong Kong's Chinese Christian music scene which I've joined over ten years), friends' weddings and ad hoc outside jobs refered by clients. I never think of displaying my portfolio in public, since most of the works are conservative and not-that-fun to me. Upon my recent work: wedding invitation card and programme booklet for my friends Danny and Tim Tim, I start to become much adventurous in using fonts, color, and other graphical element. I start to enjoy graphic design so much, and unexpectedly I'm addicted in my own works. Clients can read messages from my works, which encourage me to share my works with more people, to hear from you, thus enhancing my ability in communication.

It's not my wish to get all of you "loving" my work. I'm just here to get some noise from you, no matter good or bad. I love to know your interpretation and feeling over my works.