02 — Graduation Greens?

About a month ago at the time of writing, I graduated from the NUS Division of Industrial Design. I was expected to feel a little more… liberated? But frankly it just felt like it was another door that I finally walked through, this time with a certificate. Its a strange feeling, not feeling so much about it.

I actually didn’t know what I wanted to write about this, but I knew I wanted to write something about it. No amount of thinking led me to an answer though, so I decided to just start typing and figure it out along the way.

“Figuring out” was pretty much what we were all doing during the four years. I think every year had its own share of things we needed to figure out.

The first year I had to deal with my rustiness of the craft after my two-year National Service. Even though I came from design in polytechnic the fact that it has been a long while since I used any design software outside of maybe illustrator meant that I had to regain my muscle memory for most of them. We also had to figure out the interactions between each other post COVID-19. And the school system. Sigh. You would think that a world-class university would have updated their system or digital wayfinding, but I digress. The rest of it was going through the fundamentals and getting a feel for how the remaining years would be.

The second year we were starting to be introduced to each other again as COVID measures dissolved and things opened up. This time we have to navigate a new challenges: platform projects. These were group and individual projects that we had to bid for, which meant that there was a chance we may not get the project that we wanted, alongside juggling the workloads presented by other modules, and navigating the complexities of interpersonal and work relations between group members. Stories spread like wildfire in such a small industry, and even quicker in the classrooms. My batch was probably the only one that cared little for such issues, which I am immensely grateful for. This attitude was a major factor in how tight-knit we were as a class, and it showed for the rest of the years. It was also the year that I lost my mother, and I also had to figure out what that meant for me in the future.

My third year was the challenge I enjoyed the most: being on an internship in Japan alone. I was figuring out my place in the world through my experiences, and self-reflections. I met people who I normally wouldn’t have the chance to meet if I stayed in Singapore. I felt free for the first time in years, in my whole life actually. I think this experience was the start of me feeling more confident about myself as a person. I explored, worked, wandered and while I don’t necessarily view it as such, but it would seem that something about me changed when I came back, according to the people closest to me. Maybe I became more relaxed, maybe my views shifted. Hard to say, it also hard for them to pinpoint what the change was, other than that they knew I did.

The final year was figuring out my thesis and by extension, myself. I think thesis was a tough choice for a lot of my batchmates because it was the first year that we could choose to not take it, while for previous years it was a requirement for graduation. A good chunk decided to not do it, of course, who could blame them with the job market being so volatile?

But for the rest of us, we went ahead with it. For me, it was because I wanted a project that I could call my own, free from the constraints of topics and visions that would have otherwise be in place in a usual school project. A project that I could proudly say that “yeah, this is mine”. A crazy journey to be sure. I wasn’t even sure how it would turn out when I decided, with some support, to work on a type of project that I never really had done before: an exploratory project on nature and biomimicry (if I could call it that). I'll definitely talk more about it in a seperate post.

There were so many doubts and failures along the way, more than I was comfortable with, but it worked out in the end, much better than I anticipated. I’m sure my words here would’ve have been different had I not achieved what I did, but the completion of the project was where my confidence in myself as a designer started to form. Of course, I wouldn't be here without the presence of my family and friends, but I think I’m starting to know myself a little better now. Even if I haven’t gotten the complete picture yet, I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

In about a month, I'll be starting work at Delugs, a local-born watch strap brand. I'm not sure how it'll go, but I've got a good feeling. I don't know what I don't know, but one thing's for sure:

I'll figure it out eventually.

ISSUE 02 — 13.08.2025