The designs thatmade Singapore The designsthat madeSingapore

At the top of a rectangular Zouk mailer from the early 2000s is the word “home” in oversized, heavy, black sans serif type. The superscript “1”, styled like a dictionary entry, leads to a mock definition printed beneath.

Another mailer from the same era speaks a completely different visual language. Against a black and luminous green backdrop, a symmetrical image – a cross between a robotic insect and an alien machine – hangs from above.

Apart from the nightclub’s logo, the two designs have little in common. But both date from Zouk’s 25-year run in Jiak Kim Street, where it occupied a cluster of converted riverside warehouses from 1991 to 2016 and grew into a defining force in Singapore nightlife that extended well beyond its dance floors.

Everyone remembers the club differently. For some, it was cheap drinks across the road before the night began. For others, it was squeezing into Phuture or splitting a one-for-one jug of Long Island Tea.

But Zouk’s cultural legacy also lives on in paper – in the fliers, mailers and marketing ephemera that found their way into pockets, drawers and, eventually, private collections.

Conjured by its in-house team, the graphics did not follow a template. Designers were given free rein to experiment, respond to the club’s ethos or riff on prevailing trends.

Today, traces of that era and visual world survive digitally in the Singapore Graphic Archives (SGA) , an independent online archive created by writer and researcher Justin Zhuang.

A n a r c h i v e o f e v e r y d a y l i f e

An archive is a repository of records and artefacts that traces the social, cultural and historical contours of a place. A graphic archive focuses on the visual language that has shaped everyday life across the decades.

For Zhuang, this includes official mascots, government agency logos, brochures, book and magazine covers, school crests and even playground layouts.

“These are the things many of us probably grew up with, but no one really asked who designed them or why they were designed in this way,” he says.

That question lies at the heart of the SGA. Its entries argue that familiar visual objects are more than decorative ephemera. They are records of economic change, public policy, national ambition, consumer culture and everyday life.

One example is the work American brand consultancy Landor Associates did for Singapore Airlines in the 1970s. What began as a corporate branding exercise went on to shape how the airline and, by extension, Singapore, were seen around the world.

N a t i o n b u i l d i n g b y d e s i g n

In the decades after independence, public design competitions were a popular way for companies and government agencies to commission visual identities.

Offering generous cash prizes and other rewards, the contests attracted a broad field of entrants, from veteran designers to enthusiastic amateurs.

In 1983, Mass Rapid Transit Corp offered a top prize of $10,000 for its logo competition. The winning logo – selected from 90 entries – was designed by Lawrence Wong, a contest participant who shares the same name as Singapore’s current Prime Minister.

Two years later, the Ministry of Defence raised the stakes: its Total Defence Day logo contest offered $3,200 and a 14-day trip to Switzerland. The competition drew more than 1,700 entries, with freelance graphic designer Berwin See emerging as the winner.

All this information can be found in libraries and national archives. Zhuang supplements it with his research and also draws from personal collections he has been granted access to.

The SGA’s contribution lies not simply in preserving the material, but in reframing it as a history of Singapore through design.

“They exist and have never been recognised as designs, so I thought of reframing and grouping them,” Zhuang says.

His work combines preservation with interpretation. By consolidating disparate materials on a single platform, the SGA presents them as evidence of how Singapore has represented itself to residents, consumers and international audiences.

Zhuang did not set out to build an archive. He was struck by the need to do so while working on Independence: The History Of Graphic Design In Singapore Since The 1960s. The book was commissioned in 2011 by The Design Society, a non-profit organisation which champions local graphic design and visual communication.

The research introduced him to pioneering local graphic designers, many of whom lamented that he had arrived too late. They had already discarded much of their earlier work.

Younger designers, meanwhile, were puzzled by Zhuang’s research. Did Singapore even have a graphic design history worth tracing?

To Zhuang, the question revealed a deeper blind spot. Unlike fine art, graphic design has long been treated as background infrastructure – created to communicate, sell, direct or organise – rather than preserved as a cultural artefact in its own right.

He began a simple website to organise materials related to Singapore design more systematically. He hopes the archive can serve as a resource for tracing local design history and to inspire future designers.

T h e s t o r i e s d e s i g n t e l l s

The SGA’s collection extends beyond official logos and government campaigns. It also includes commercial designs, like matchboxes bearing images of now-demolished buildings, hotels and restaurants.

One of them is Oasis, a theatre, restaurant and nightclub housed in a floating structure on the Kallang Basin before it was demolished in the 2000s.

Another is Hotel New World, formerly known as New Serangoon Hotel, which collapsed in 1986 due to structural defects and poor construction. It was one of Singapore’s worst building disasters.

Among the archive’s more unexpected holdings are advertisements by Singapore defence companies published in international trade magazines.

The Singapore Defence Industries Charter, introduced by the Ministry of Defence in 1987, encouraged local defence firms to export their services, resulting in advertisements in trade publications such as International Defence Review.

Zhuang says such advertisements complicate conventional ideas of good design.

“A tank may be considered well-designed by the person using it, but not by those on the receiving end,” he says.

The advertisements suggest that good design is not just about how well something works or sells, but also depends on what it is designed to do.

“The design industry is grappling with these questions on a global scale and I think it is interesting that we can make these associations through our own designs,” Zhuang says.

That broader perspective shaped his approach to the SGA.

“What I want is to look for undocumented stories as well as designs that reveal distinct categories or movements in Singapore’s visual culture,” he says.

A n a r c h i v e w i t h b o u n d a r i e s

Zhuang’s biggest challenge is defining what “Singapore design” actually means.

Some works such as National Day Parade logos, commissioned for Singapore audiences and closely tied to public rituals of national identity, fit neatly into that category. Others are more ambiguous.

Examples are works created by Singaporean designers for overseas clients. Do these count as Singapore design? Or are they simply the output of Singaporean designers working abroad?

Questions of authorship add to the complexity. Design is rarely the work of one person. It typically involves clients, printers, photographers, copywriters and others, so – unlike paintings – there is often no single, identifiable author.

“Design is supposed to operate in the background, invisibly. It is not seen as an artwork, where value comes from the artist signing it,” Zhuang explains.

This makes attribution a deliberate and often difficult part of the SGA’s work. It explains why materials such as hawker stall menus or the measuring tape markers used to indicate safe-distancing requirements during the Covid-19 pandemic are excluded.

Even though they are strong representations of local design in context, their creators and production circumstances can be difficult to verify.

Zhuang often refers to the SGA as “Justin’s archives”, as it is shaped inevitably by his judgment and taste.

In May 2023, the National Heritage Board announced Design Collection Singapore, an initiative aimed at deepening the understanding of Singapore’s identity through design, while tracing the country’s links to the region and the wider world.

It focuses on contemporary Singaporean designers, architects and artists and plans to work with local collectors while acquiring works from across Asia.

Zhuang does not see the initiative as a competitor.

“Every archive is distinctive in its own way,” he says.

He likens archives to design itself: although individual works may appear distinct, they often share common roots, whether in a country, artistic movement or broader influence.

He adds: “So we may share the same starting point of documenting Singapore’s design history, but our archives will inevitably evolve in different directions over time.”

S i n g a p o r e ’ s p i o n e e r i n g g r a p h i c d e s i g n e r s