Unfortunately, my phone got broken on the day of the trip and I lost the photos I took.

Personally I feel that what I encountered was various design practices over the years but they were more mainstream and commercial driven projects.

The practices present during the show were very pragmatic, with categories like fashion accessories, visual communication, architecture and environmental design, and product design. I noticed that visual clutter is being removed over the years and things became more minimalistic. It is evident when looking at fashion, when you compare the Singapore Girl in the past and the fashion of today.

Although the focus of the the Design 2025 talks about turning Singapore into a design hub that is commercially driven, there are lesser talks about critical thinking and critical design. In essence, design is seen as a tool to “design” commercially viable projects and to push innovation and commercialisation.

Effective? Who knows.