Kafka's Opening —

Art Direction, Illustration, Installation

Kafka's Coffee & Tea decided to open another location at the Centre for Digital Media, and they invited me to create a solo art exhibit for their space.

The new space would attract digital media students as well as game studio workers nearby. Hence, for the exhibit, I went more digital — I created sixteen pieces of colourful digital illustrations honouring summer sports and activities, as well as a love for coffee.

It was a huge learning process figuring out the whole process from design to implementation of putting on an art exhibition — with designing the pieces, figuring out installation layout, as well as print production, trimming, framing, and installing the pieces.

At the time, I was also working on another digital media project (Music Holograms) full-time, so I did not get much sleep and hence called this exhibit Summer Daze, Sleepless Nights. 

The exhibit was featured as an article on Scout Magazine.

Summer Fun

I wanted to honour the summer with different summer activities. Coffee, of course, is a huge part of summer — and I also wanted to tie my illustrations back to the home they were on display at, Kafka’s Coffee & Tea.

My characters are anonymous-looking, but with personality in their actions and movements.

Summer Feet

On another wall, I put up two pieces of dangling feet. Different colours, as well as titles, can change the feel and atmosphere of an illustration.

I actually had so much fun with the colours in this illustration, that I created an animation gif of the changing colours.

People, Big and Small

For the back wall, I created a few more minimalist illustrations. These are a little more personal for me. Drawing inspiration from New Yorker styled illustrations, these illustrations are more hand-drawn, personal, and sketchy, opposed to the cleaner digital illustrations above.