More commonly as “Speech Day”, our Celebrations @ SST is an annual event to congratulate SST students on their accomplishments. For the last 2 years, the team organizing the Celebrations@SST event would seek help from the Design Studies students, to design the cover page of the e-booklet/booklet for this event.
This year was no different. Dozens of students submitted their best works hoping that theirs would be used for the event. Unfortunately, the design committee could only pick one design. On the actual day of the ceremony, I was pleasantly surprised to see my team's design featured on the Celebrations@SST 2022 e-booklet. We won!
About 3 months prior, I teamed up with Yeji and Christopher to create a digital badge for this year's SST Tech Summit 2022. It turned out that ours would be the winning entry. Subsequently, our design teacher Mr Irfan informed us about this other event. I discussed with my team and we all agreed to take a shot at it.
Version 1.0
As this year's theme revolves around "We will not fear the future for we strive", we needed to show SST students can confidently face uncertainties in the future. Having seen past years’ submissions where all followed a very formal approach, our team decided to go out on a limb and make a fun and creative submission for this year’s e-booklet.
Our initial design was heavily inspired by the popular anime called "Naruto" as we felt that the lure of Naruto story fits in very well with the theme.
Background: We drew inspiration from a famous manga/anime called “Naruto”. Where students from the Ninja village of Konohagakure are taught different knowledge and skills before going for a high stakes exam in order to graduate and take on official missions. We see similarities in how SST trains its students and arms us with different skills and knowledge to prepare us for a high stakes exam (O levels) to help us take on different challenges / missions in the future (working world).
Our Village/ School: Our SST School compound is deliberately shown in the background (semi-transparent) to reflect our roots. Drawing an analogy from “Naruto”, the Konohagakure village helps train its young ninja warriors before they graduate and take on missions.
Diversity and Inclusion: Similar to the manga story, SST also has a mix of male and female students. The image of a boy and girl both running towards challenges at same direction and pace, while hands together to co-create a large "Rasengan" symbolizes Collaboration, co-creation, diversity and inclusion.
Facing VUCA (Winds of change): The image of the SST student charging head on in the face of “Thick” Windy lines (each represent a key aspect of VUCA) is to depict how SST students will courageously face these challenges when they eventually enter the workforce.
The “Weapon” Rasengan: Our SST school values, goals and competencies (3Es, 10Cs, & 4Rs) are depicted as the “weapon”. In the manga, this weapon is called the "Rasengan". In our poster adaption, this Rasengan serves as SST students’ ultimate tool to take on life’s unknown challenges. Surrounding the 3Es are our SST values. Hence, armed with a "weapon", the SST student charges ahead, not fearing the difficulties in the foreseeable future.
Version 2.0
Initially some of my group members felt that this approach and design was too simple. They felt we needed something more sophisticated to win the competition. So, our super recruiter Yeji roped in Kayden (who is highly skilled in Blender) to join our group.
After 2 weeks of revision, we completed a second version of the design. The final product looked much sleeker compared to our version 1.0. However, I strongly felt that this design did not revolve around the theme. So, the team decided to submit both Version 1b & Version 2 designs.
A week later, we received an email from the judging committee. To our surprise, our Naruto-themed design emerged victorious! The judges explained that this design won because it illustrated a story around the theme, making it more impactful. They appreciated that every individual element had a hidden meaning behind them. Strangely, this feedback felt similar to the one we received for our digital badge competition.
After being notified of the winning design, our team was assigned a teacher to help us refine the design. He was a good mentor who gave us good feedback to improve our design (version 1c). Improvements include:
SST in the background: reflects the school as a 靠山 (solid backing like a mountain) supporting its students.
The Theme: displayed above to show that SST Students will take on future challenges fearlessly.
SST school values centered: Our school values: 10C, 3E & 4R is depicted in the middle to reflect how SST prepares our students to face future uncertainties.
Diversity & Inclusion: A boy (folding his arms to show confidence) and partnering a girl shows that SST respects diverse view points.
The bright sky: to show that SST students are able to confidently brave through the challenges and still achieve a bright future ahead.
This experience taught me that good storytelling and having a clear concept that matches the theme is more important than its aesthetics.
Most importantly, my team had fun working on this project. At times we argued over how the design should be, but overall, these "storming" sessions helped make the final product better.
There were many nights I got scolded by my parents for staying up late to work on the cover designs. However, in hindsight, it was worth it. Seeing our design featured on the e-booklet was a very proud moment. Winning this back-to-back after the digital badge competition... priceless.
Chia Howie
13 April 2022
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