Kelley Cheng
C001688
Singapore / Graphic Design
An architect by training, Kelley Cheng is a modern day polymath – editor, writer, curator, spatial design, graphic design, video director, interactive designer, educator – she has done it all. She runs her own publishing & design consultancy The Press Room, designing everything from books, brands, exhibitions, documentaries, and even stage and film set design. From F&B businesses to an art gallery, her “creations” are diverse and unpredictable. As a creative director, her graphic and branding projects include the Youth Olympics Games, Singapore Pavilion at the World Expo Yeosu 2012, The National Art Gallery Singapore, Artstage Singapore, Singapore Writers’ Festival 2014, etc.
She has curated and designed many high-profile exhibitions including President's Design Award 2015 and 2017; augmented reality art show "Martell 300 Air Gallery"; "Project 6581" for Japan Creative Centre; co-curated "Rotations: The Art of Tim Yip" and "TributeSG" with Esplanade, co-curated “iLight Marina Bay” Light Art Festival 2009, “Limit-Limitless” at the Venice Biennale for the architectural firm MKPL Architects, and a big scale architectural exhibition for REDAS (Real Estate Development Association Singapore) celebrating SG50.
An active educator, she had served as adjunct lecturer in Visual Communications at the Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Glasgow School of Art, Singapore; an adjunct lecturer in Interior Architecture at LaSalle College of the Arts; she is also a frequent name on international design judging panels Red Dot Awards, Nagoya-Do!, Creative Circle Award, James Dyson Award, etc. As a design veteran of the industry, she is a board member of various organisations including the Design Communication Industry Advisory Group for LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore Polytechnic Design School Advisory Board, & SPH Chinese Media Advisory Board, etc.
Portfolio
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Art Stage Key Visual (2015)
Held yearly, Art Stage Singapore is an art fair that celebrates the unique character of visual artworks from Asia, with a focus on the Southeast Asian (SEA) region. As with our 2014 designs, our four cover layouts for the 2015 catalogues evoke the equator around which SEA nations have co-evolved and flourished. The catalogue spine designs are each inspired by Asian fabric patterns, which dynamically evolve into vibrant bands of colour spanning the front and back covers. This visual shift emblematises the rootedness of Asian art in the region’s heterogeneous traditions, even as artists today are driven to pursue ever newer aesthetic directions. Furthermore, colour palettes based on these fabrics are a key element in all four designs, serving as a common thread that binds them together.
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Inkpulse
Chronicling the journey of Singaporean visual artist, curator and gallery director Yeo Shih Yun, INKPULSE: The Art of Yeo Shih Yun is a progressive catalogue of artworks over two decades, interspersed with accounts by collectors, curators and friends of the artist. The book follows the artist’s journey into the world of abstraction and experimentation. This volume of works, done between the year 2000 to 2017, is divided into 3 parts based - at 6 years, 12 years and 18 years - on a grid of 3mm by 3mm and all the elements conceptually based on the numbers, as a tribute to the artist’s conceptual approach to her works.
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National Gallery Wayfinding
The most challenging aspect of wayfinding projects is constructing a directional strategy. For the wayfinding for National Gallery, we carefully studied the transition points in both the old City Hall and Supreme Court buildings in order to build a comprehensive system to govern the navigation within. In order to ensure not only end-to-end connections but also comprehensive links between areas, several layers of hierarchy were incorporated in the design. The choice of font was also a result of extensive research. Ideal Sans is considered a humanistic typeface and is said to convey warmth and humanity. A set of customised signages were also specially created for this project.
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Project 6581
An exhibition that emerged out of a residency exchange between four artists from Singapore and four artists from Japan, Project 6581 provided an extraordinary glimpse into the visual conversation that took place. The title of the exhibition combines the country codes of Singapore (+65) and Japan (+81) to hint at the artistic correspondence between the artists. The exhibition catalogue, too, was planned in such a way so as to highlight the collaborative nature of the process while maintaining the uncoupling of the artist’s works. The design enabled readers to begin viewing the catalogue from both ends while a grid plan was used to obtain consistency.
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Project 6581
An exhibition that emerged out of a residency exchange between four artists from Singapore and four artists from Japan, Project 6581 provided an extraordinary glimpse into the visual conversation that took place. The title of the exhibition combines the country codes of Singapore (+65) and Japan (+81) to hint at the artistic correspondence between the artists. The exhibition catalogue, too, was planned in such a way so as to highlight the collaborative nature of the process while maintaining the uncoupling of the artist’s works. The design enabled readers to begin viewing the catalogue from both ends while a grid plan was used to obtain consistency.
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Singapore Writers Festival 2014
Referencing the beauty of nature, the beauty of the soul and the beauty of writing, we created visual metaphors that express this year's SWF's theme "The Prospects of Beauty" - The Beauty of Nature (Flower & Butterflies), The Beauty of Writing/Reading (Boat - a metaphor for writing and reading as a slow journey in a boat, enjoyable but choppy sometimes), and The Beauty of the Soul (of the Heart and of the Arts). All 3 types of Beauty are created using "materials" of books, writing, reading - papers torn from novels are folded into origami objects of heart, boat and flower as the 3 key objects, surrounded by pencils, bookmarks, splattered ink, etc and things that make writing and reading both joyful and poetic.
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Tomas Saraceno
The NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) commissions information booklets for their exhibitions, each customised specifically to the style of personality of their exhibited artists. Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions sets out to experiment with interspecies communication through sounds made by spiders and their webs, conceived by Tomas Saraceno, an arachnid enthusiast who creates artworks specifically informed by the structural design of a spider web. Centred around the notion of the exquisite web and featuring one of the works from Saraceno’s intriguing collection, we printed the image of the web on reflective material, thereby highlighting the finer details of the images on the covers on this informative booklet.
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Tedx Singapore Poster
Celebrating SG50 (Singapore 50th birthday), TedxSingapore organised the biggest conference ever held here in December 2015. The Press Room was engaged to lead the creative direction of the event. The key visual was designed using 200 Instagram pictures shot in the streets of Singapore taken over the years by The Press Room's Creative Director Kelley Cheng, each and every single picture shot spontaneously, capturing the unknown sides of Singapore, presenting Singapore in a different view - The Undiscovered Country.
These pictures infill the "x' of the "Tedx", forming the key visual to be applied on various collaterals. The 200 pictures also come together to become a poster and 200 different book covers were printed, making it a talking point for conference goers who all receive a book with a different cover.
