Historical Adventures @ National Museum of Singapore

Finally doing up this post after over a month from our visit to the National Museum of Singapore. But nevertheless, we still would like to share with you our journey and some things that we've learnt from the inspirational trip.

The National Museum of Singapore is Singapore's oldest museum that showcases different inspiring exhibitions now and then. Being assigned to head down for a design inspiration trip, we were given the opportunity to check out the Singapura: 700 Years exhibition and the Lee Kuan Yew exhibition.

Stepping into the building, we embarked our journey by viewing the Singapura: 700 years exhibition. The exhibition tells the story of how Singapore was formed and the history of it that goes way back to the times when we were still an island that people barely knew about.

We walked through the vines below which we thought was a great idea to build up the emotional touch in which the start of the exhibition is trying to bring out.

We knew that we had to take a picture of it as evidently, it does bring out the tribe and rainforest, nature kind of feel to it and what could be a better way to impress the people at the start of the exhibition?

We were then introduced to a lot of interesting sculptures and figures that were placed in this table. Bringing out the colours and the details of the items, lights were installed to shine at the sides of the items, which we felt was a good play of lighting and contrast.

It was the same for the pottery display, where they displayed the broken pottery in fragments but playing on the lighting and contrast. We felt that the play on contrast and lighting was a bit unusual and not suitable as instead of bringing out the details and showing the true colours of the fragments, what we can see was dark pieces of ceramics placed on a bright white platform.

Moving on to the next part of the exhibition, we felt that the placing the designs below were amazing. The use of puppets in shadow plays as seen in Indonesia, Wayang Kulit.

Other images that we took are the following.

A fragment of a huge stone that has ancient carvings on it. It's amazing how the lighting and shadows make it look gorgeous.

At this part of the exhibition, we werw really amazed by how they used figurines and clay models to shape out the situation that was probably going on instead of using mainly text and old images to describe a scenario.

No doubt, this is one my personal favourite in terms of the way they display the images and the layout on a whole. Using white spaces to bring out the fading colours and centralising the images in the frames brings out the image really well.

One lesson that we have learnt from the experience was having interactive things (or at least something that looks interactive) helps to boost the experience on a whole. Applying this to our magazine, we thought that we could use the element of interaction in terms of a pop up advertisement or pop up designs. This was inspired by the following containers that contained herbs and spices that we thought was open for us all to smell, which turns out to be just for display.

Other interactive areas in the exhibition includes a place where you could listen to excerpts of historical tunes, explanations of history, etc. An example would be an old school table with built in headphones for visitors to try on and listen to the excerpts.

Having an oustanding and eyecatching design is another element that we have to take into consideration. In one look, the design to the tables captured our attention for it brings us a nostalgic feeling of schooling in the part.

Moving into the part which talks about the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, lightings changed to a darker tone. A great colour they've picked was red.

Be it reflecting down onto the screen or walls which contained pictures of the occupation, the lighting brought the emotional touch to the experience with visitors feeling the mood of whatever was happening back then.

Using textured books to give that extra touch when people picks up the book to read about that certain history that we had.

They made used to mirrors and bright lights, shining on the black blocks to "extend" the size of the room.

Screening a short video footage on a white wall.

Playing on contrast.

Moving to the part where Singapore was starting to develop, they changed the lighting to something brighter.

What could be a better way to get visitors to leave a feedback for them?

Moving on to the Lee Kuan Yew exhibition, here are the images that we took.

Before moving on to talk about the exhibition, we would like to offer our sincere condolences to the passing of our founding father. Without you, we wouldn't be standing on these grounds you've built for us.

With a solemn mind and a saddened heart from the passing of our founding father, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, we stepped into the exhibitions and admired every single image, object and scripture that used to belong to the late Mr. Lee.

As seen below, there was a huge memorial wall with his amazing life story that never failed to inspired us all.

He was your typical law student who dared to dream and dared to take up whatever challenge he might face. Of course, the amazing love story of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew was also documented in the exhibition with beautiful images that went well with the simple texts that combines together to form a magnificient story telling process.

With the solemn mood from his passing, we have observed the colour palette chosen for the exhibition are mostly monochrome except selected parts such as the national podium and the flowers that went around it.

There are no words for us to describe how we truly felt throughout the entire Lee Kuan Yew exhibition but we all agreed the suit case that once belonged to the late Mr. Lee was definitely an eye catcher. Placed in a transparent casing, on top of a grey platform. If there was one thing we should have learnt in the artisitic angle of this exhibition, it would be simplicity is beauty.

In general, we definitely enjoyed the tour and out of class experience. Lessons learnt from this tripped would thus be placed in our work, which is towards producing a minimalistic and clean looking magazine by the end of August.

Watch this space as we shall talk about our experience as we hunt down printing shops in Singapore that you could engage with if you are into print.