Dream a little dream

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.