Splash Greetings

Splash created 2 in-house greeting cards for the festive season;
a splashes created snowman name Splatz and a splash decorated x'mas tree.
We wish you guys a 'splashingly' great holiday ahead. :)

The 5 Ballerinas

We are on our toes... Oh... what a joke! Hahaha...

Have you heard?

The case of "The five laughing toe ballerinas".

Akan datang. Watch this space:).

Is the death or rebirth of innovation upon us?

"The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -- the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -- are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy." (Edward Dahlberg)

This proclamation set me thinking. Are we setting ourselves up to be more innovative, or less? Perhaps, at this juncture, the willingness to think about it matters more than forcing an answer?

What's design about?

Content. Content. Content. (Overheard from Felix Soh)

Similarly, we say

Substance. Substance. Substance.

Partners. Fartners. Dartners. Bartners. Kartners. Wartners & Tartners.

When we said goodbye, we become dartners -- ie, ex-partners. Dartners automatically qualify to be the object of legal action, the cause of anything and everything bad. Whether there is any basis for action, is considered a separate matter.

When we say we can make waves together, we extend our life as partners. Now that we can hear some sweet sounds of success, we are becoming bartners.

Meanwhile, it appears our dear ex-partners are still bidding farewell to whom they had called their very own. We call this the exodus of the kartners. What're left in the end might just be a tray of wartners and tartners.

Keeping things simple and sweet, we are just glad to be bartners.

Design

Things that we do everyday.

Sneak Peek

TL in 360 (words)

Someone said: “Hey TL, forget your decade in the financial sector, your MBA, or your training experience. No one bothers that you set up one of the first hedge funds in Singapore.”

“It does not matter that you then built a graphic design team that billed more than $5 million of design communications work in three years – your first real three years in this line – or that some of the work was award-winning.”

“Neither do they give a hoot that you left an IPO aspirant as second-in-command and equity partner to start everything from scratch.”

“But if you mean to be a good Christian and marcom pro, you jolly well not short-change your clients. They can sniff you up miles away.”

Well, I think everything happens for a good reason since everything is God's work. So I am not going to think too much of my receding hairline. I shall just think of it as gaining face. And I am not over-weight; just under-height. (A little equanimity goes a long way for me).

What I remain quite uptight over, yet, are my family, team members, friends and clients. They have stuck by me through thick and thin. For this, I dedicate my night-scare and solitary prayer to them.

[A night-scare]: The bridge catches fire on both ends
I found the five of us on a bridge that caught fire on both ends. Behind us was a raging cauldron of hellfire, threatening to engulf us. Ahead of us was a freshly lit torch flittering obstinately amidst icy winds. To falter meant to fall into inexorable physical and spiritual deaths.“Let the winds be. Stay. Don't stray”. Came a calm voice. And so we leaped -- all five of us – forward, towards the torch.
　
[Solitary prayer]: Take stock
I prayed

For the will to take stock
The courage to accept what God will
The faith to carry on

God is great
Working in amazing ways
Answering my prayers
Giving me grace

To face the thorns
And hold the rose

The life of forgiveness
The story of love

The love of God

.....

We live to tell the tale of A Splash Concoction.

What's in a splash concoction?

Everything happens for a reason. This is especially true in design communications. A heady mix of art and alchemy, topped with a potent dash of insight and service, is what defines the creative team at Splash.

We do not aim to please or impress for its mere sake. We are just set on delivering the goods -- your design needs -- the good old fashioned way: on time, on target; in fine taste. Some things -- the absolute good -- do not change.

Yet, other things do. Like the interplay of ideas, concept, visuals, production and delivery across space. The way target audiences react to trends and fads over time. Perhaps even the ripple effect of a butterfly wing flap in icy Oslo. Our advice and execution modes, to be worth your expectations, are dynamic and relative.

The Splash style of design communications is a curious cocktail of five -- growing as we speak -- professionals. They unleash a combined related experience of no fewer than four decades -- graphic design, copywriting, management consultancy, finance, training and production. In their immediate past three years of close professional synergy, the team conjured more than S$5 million worth of design work, and won several much coveted design awards as a team. In late September 2005, the team joined Splash, heralding a new era of design communications consultancy to a creative agency first founded in the 1980s to specialise in mega events and filming by an industry veteran.

Have you found a reason for an intoxicating serving of Splash today?

What is stretch target but a state of mind? 

Relationships are not built nor destroyed on the day of bidding farewell. Relationships are built or destroyed as the sum total of past encounters. Do you really know what it means to put relationship first? 

Vote with your feet. Splash with your talent. 

Works - Netting a good catch!

One of our early 'catch'.

"People don't care about cold facts. They care about pictures or stories."
—Nancye Green, Founder, Donovan and Green

We are ONE month old

And WE are ONE. Keep smiling, keep going, guys. I am supremely proud of you:).

T

Works - Splash CI

oh... what a 'mess'!

Shadow boxing? Too much imagineering. We prefer to cut to the chase. 

No fool

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
Elizabeth Elliot

无聊斋
之 一手遮天

马大虾妄想天下人只听他的, 不闻别的. 到头来,这会演变成一宗天大的笑话吗?

看官且拭目以待.

Teh Sue Sue (TSS)

Only to those who know:

TSS realises some of his lieutenants -- whom he routinely called partners, an outright misnomer -- are actually worth much more than he had been rewarding them. How much? Some S$200,000 in just a month!

Talk about realising one's market value. Who needs Towers Perrin (or is it Perrin Towers?) when as soon as you leave, your previous company would calculate how much you are worth to them?

So, the next time you want to know your market value, you know what to do, don't you:)?

People.People.People

Quite simply, the 3Ps of professional services, we believe. And as any god-fearing or management-savvy (one is not necessarily inherent in the other, nor are they mutually exclusive) person would maintain, running deeper than mere people is the relationships that bind, synergise and elevate our experiences.

Our way about this is to literally splash the blessings that come with sharing, openness, mutal respect and appreciation. One of the most vivid displays of this sentiment is perhaps Songkran, the Thai custom of splashing water every April.

Taking the plunge

Circumstances have a strange way of sorting themselves out. 15 Sep 05 broke some hearts and enjoined others, to jeers and cheers. We leave this chapter for he who has the last laugh to write. Meanwhile, we prefer to embark on another and let God, friends and clients pen our history to come.

To borrow the words of William Borden, we take the plunge with "no reserve, no retreat, no regrets". (We have this in Chinese too:)).

Hi! We are Splash.

15 Sep 05 -- a day to remember?

The day that so much was done -- or undone.

Some 40 years of combined relationships came crumbling down in but half a day, in a beloved company that proclaimed that "relationships come first". Baffling efficiency on the part of the aggressor.

More questions than answers ensued. More harm than good done.

Sad, but life must go on.

[Next: Taking the plunge]