“IN OUR STUDIO WE ALSO HAVE WHAT WE CALL OUR BSIDES,” DESCRIBES KL-BASED KAWAKONG. “SELF-INITIATED WORK DEVELOPMENT, STUFF BESIDES WHAT WE USUALLY DO… WORKS WE LOVE SLIGHTLY MORE.”
“Just like the others, we have vision too,” describes the opening page of Kawakong’s website, a graphic and brand identity design studio based in KL. “1. To design for the client, 2. To design for us, and 3. To make sure that the gap between the two gets closer each and every day.”
“We started our home studio in order to have more control over our own work and avoid getting stuck in traffic jams,” described Chung Ping Ong, co-founder of Kawakong along with his partner and wife, Ming Ng Ai Beng, “but mostly in order to have more control.” This control is not, however, of the ‘creative’ kind, where one molds a client’s brief into a particular theme or style, but more so a means of finding space for both the client and Kawakong’s characters to stand on level ground. “We don’t make something up that does not belong to the client,” furthered Ming. “If we fix one style it won’t suit everyone so we try to understand the background and the culture of the company first and then customize for them. It is never about style first.”
Kawakong’s studio is also not always even about putting the work first, as the duo strongly acknowledges the importance of play. “In our studio we also have what we call our bsides,” described Chung. “Self-initiated work development, stuff besides what we usually do… works we love slightly more.” Taking the form of drawings of characters requiring the donning of 3D glasses in order to be properly viewed, paintings of faces with three eyes ensuring that multiple expressions can be depicted at once and hand-sewn images of both process and form, Kawakong’s bsides often merge Chung and Ming’s visual languages into one, strengthening the character of their gestures by finding ways to work together.
“I noticed that when things don’t have a requirement, that is where we start to push ourselves, naturally. For us, the commercial work and our bsides are of the same philosophy,” furthered Chung. “The name Kawakong means ‘talk to me’ in Hokkien, a widely spoken dialect by many Chinese throughout South East Asia. The reason behind the name is that what we do is mainly about ‘communication.’ We need our client to talk to us and it also comes back to us as a designer or an artist, how we should draw or make things that connect to us, as our own work.”
