Design Talks | IDF Singapore

Saturday, 10 March 2018

www.iffs.com.sg

SPEAKERS

Chan Wai Lim

Principal Designer | Trigger Design | Singapore
www.triggerdesignstudio.com

Wai Lim is a Singaporean product designer. She is constantly hungry for fresh new elements in her designing process that would trigger an emotional connection between the user and the object. She believes in craftsmanship and having a good design story behind every creation. Her industrial and product design work re?ects positively on her bold and con?dent personality.

Since graduating from Temasek Polytechnic in 1999 with a diploma majoring in product design, she kick-started her career in industrial and product design consultancies such as Design Exchange G.E. Fitch & Monogram. Thereafter, she joined Dell Experience Design Group in 2005. Her design works range from lifestyle products, consumer electronics, medical devices, computer eco-system solutions, to furniture design. She has won local and global recognitions such as the President Design Award Singapore, IF award, Best of CES, Red Dot Design award and IDSA Silver.

Kavi Pradeep

Design Head | Arttdinox | India
www.arttdinox.com

Kavi is a creative leader with more than 16 years of industry experience across product and industrial design, FMCG, E-commerce, brand initiatives and photography. Empathetic, passionate, and business-oriented, he believes in developing brands through design intervention. Kavi presently leads the design team for home-grown Indian brand "Arttdinox" (Art in Stainless Steel), which caters to and delivers design solutions for the home. His design team is guided by their creative and passionate Managing Director and Creative Head Mrs Deepikka Jindal.

Being a compulsive design thinker, he constantly challenges the use of a hard, cold metal, like steel, to transform it into vulnerable and functional products of beauty for everyday use. The creative work of Arttd'inox is made possible by the world class technology that is offered by Jindal Stainless.

Lee Yun Qin

Industrial Designer | Singapore

Strong, independent and a risk-taker, 36-year- old industrial designer Lee Yun Qin has made great strides in building up Singapore's local arts scene. Yun Qin gets a lot of her inspirations through people and her surroundings. Inspired by Nendo's works, she constantly craves for a fresh perspective. Growing up in a family of florists too inspired Yun Qin's recent light art installation idea of "Moonlight" at the i Light Marina Bay 2017, while incorporating solar sustainability and simplicity in execution, and community engagement. Not only was her installation one of the stand-out pieces at the exhibition, it was also chosen to be displayed overseas as well at the Scottsdale Canal Convergence in Arizona, US.

Yun Qin is currently in the midst of refining a cat furniture piece for 9 lives design show, a cat furniture design exhibition. The pieces are currently on show at cat cafe Neko no Niwa and The Company of Cats till the end of the month. In addition, Yunqin has spent the last 14 years of her career as an industrial designer in various MNCs such as Nakamichi, Dell, Asus and most recently, P&G.

Vikram Goyal

Founder and Creator Head | Viya Home | India
www.viyahome.com

Vikram Goyal is one of India's leading product and interior designers and the creative head behind internationally-renowned design atelier Viya Home. Viya is known for its unique, modern and dramatic masterpieces that blur the lines between designs and art and encompass furniture, sculptures, hardware and lighting. Bespoke design is a cornerstone of Viya's bouquet and it collaborates with architects and interior designers globally across the residential and hospitality segments. Viya also offers interior design services to clients desiring the highest levels of refinement and luxury but with a sense of innovation. These inhabitable works of art are all at once dramatic and playful and have been featured prominently in various design publications.

Vikram has lived in diverse corners of the world and has educated himself in the finer nuances of both Oriental and Occidental styles - shaping a unique design perspective. He grew up in New Delhi - India's heritage-rich capital; studied development economics at Princeton University and worked internationally in finance before returning to India. In 2001, he co-founded Kama Ayurveda, the global wellness brand, and two years later, Viya Home. Vikram is the recipient of multiple AD50 awards (conferred on the country's best in architecture and design) and the Elle Decor Designer of the Year Award and has been globally recognized for his efforts at celebrating "Made in India" and Indian craftsmanship and design.

Karthik Vaidyanathan

Director | Varnam
www.varnam.co.in

Karthik is an engineer by profession. After having completed his MBS, he had been working for various companies in Bengaluru since. On one occasion, work took Karthik to Mysore. En route, he encountered Channapatna and the toys of this little town. Something about the craft fascinated him so much that over the following weekends he kept finding himself back in Channapatna, learning more about the people and their craft. Though not a designer by education or profession, Karthik has always been interested in crafts and design. He has been getting the craftsmen of Channapatna to make useful items of contemporary design, instead of only the standard design toys they have been used to making for many generations.

Over the past four years, Karthik has managed to get the craftsmen to create various lamps, salt and pepper shakers, boxes of various shapes and sizes, other home accents, jewellery, and originally-designed toys. For his work with Varnam, he has received the Kyoorius Blue Elephant Design Award for packaging design and craft design, and the CII Design Excellence Award for industrial design (home products). In 2014, he received the CII Design Excellence Award for visual communication and packaging and this year he has been named as one of the top 10 craft design studios in the country by POOL Design Magazine. If these were not enough feathers in his cap already, Karthik was one of six Indian designers picked by Create Culture, a London based company started by Arpna Gupta, to display his wares during the London Design Festival in September 2015.

Gina B. Wicker

Director of Architecture and Design Markets

Gina Wicker is a dynamic, results-oriented leader with a unique combination of creative and analytical abilities. She is currently the Director of Architecture and Design Markets for Sunbrella^® fabrics and has more than 20 years’ experience in textile design focusing on high-performance upholstery, wall covering and shade fabrics. She drew on her extensive design experience when she transitioned into marketing and spent six years as Creative Director promoting the Sunbrella brand in the commercial, residential and marine markets. Her expertise helped to grow the brand’s reputation as the go-to high performance fabric for applications where performance is as important as design.

In her current role, Wicker is building a team to strengthen and grow the specification of Sunbrella in commercial markets targeting hospitality, healthcare, workplace, retail and education. Wicker earned a Bachelor of Science in textiles with a concentration in design from NC State University and a Master of Business Administration from Duke University.

Rajshree Pathy

Director | IDF Singapore (Moderator)
www.indiadesignforum.com

Business leader, design thinker, art collector, Rajshree Pathy is the multifaceted visionary behind IDF Singapore (IDFS Innovation and Design Forum Singapore) With IDF Singapore, Rajshree hopes to explore regional design as well as to promote crosscultural design interventions including generating opportunities for designers in Singapore and the Asian region and facilitating production and establishing market networks. IDF Singapore plans a global design forum and several other design initiatives and hopes to play a supporting role in making Singapore an important design hub.

IDF Singapore debuts with its participation at SingaPlural 2018, at the National design Centre, pairing Singaporean designer Chan Wai Lim (www.triggerdesignstudio.com) and ArttD’Inox, India (www.arttdinox.com), to create an extraordinary range of products based on the curator's theme of "PLAY", IDF Design Talks will be held at the IFFS, discussing cross cultural design thinking and applications in furniture and products on March 9^th, 2018. In 2012, Rajshree started India Design Forum-IDF (www.indiadesignforum.com), an inclusive design conference for dialogue, debate, consensus and action, partnering with the Foreign embassies, CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), NID (National Institute of Design) and Museums. IDF stands as India's most influential design forum in the country, spanning all design disciplines. Four Conferences over two days has been held so far in the cities of Delhi and Mumbai with an attendance of 1400 participants. DESIGN TRAIL - week long celebration of Design with workshops, district wise events and exhibitions is held during the Forum. Conversations on IDF Singapore booth "StealPlay" at SingaPlural, National Design Centre.

Suprita Moorthy (Moderator)

Director – Programmes | India Design Forum | India
www.indiadesignforum.com

Suprita Moorthy is the director of Programmes at IDF. After a specialization in Art History & Theory from Bangalore, she furthered her education in Arts Administration, Art Markets and Curation in Australia. Suprita was the recipient of the Dr. Gene Sherman award for her curatorial work. She worked for several galleries in Sydney before joining Sothebys Australia. On moving to London, Suprita worked with the V & A's Theatre Museum before joining Art Dubai and managed the inaugural edition of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize.

Suprita has contributed to several independent collections and projects namely the Daniel Birnbaum for the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), The ASAL Collection, Private collections in Dubai & Pakistan, Indian Highway exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, Attakkalari major productions – Meidhwani & AadharaChakra which have toured Europe extensively.

Suprita has been programming for IDF since 2013 and works on the production and the creative direction of IDF conferences and events.