Jayhan Loves Design & Japan - Design blog by Jayhan Sim, a designer from KL, Malaysia who loves Japan!

A lot has happened in this 6 years

04 Dec 21

. General

Minna-san, ohisashiburi desu. It’s been a while since I last wrote my article. 6 years ago I was 30 years old, I made many big change and decisions to y life including buying my own car, trying to start a new company and then the biggest change is to move to Singapore at the end of 2015. Moving to Singapore opened a new chapter in my life, I’m constantly learning and gaining new experience. Hence the interest in writing has been slowly fading out.

During this 6 years, I continue working as a designer, but for financial institution. Singapore is one of the top financial and tech hub in Southeast Asia, I felt the tremendous opportunity to learn and to grow myself as a designer. I also started to be more active outdoor by having weekly runs and cyclings. I have ran several marathons including one in Osaka in 2018.

Clueless about Tokyo and Japanese School Girl: a book review

07 Sep 15

. Japan

book-review-3

Since the last book review, Tuttle Publishing sent another set of four colourful and interesting “Cool Japan” books to me and I was really stoked about it. I’m very fond of the new books that talks about the variety of Japanese related cultures and topics, aiming at giving people outside of Japan hints on how Japan actually looks like.

I have read the books and will share my reviews and opinion here on this blog, split into 2 blog post with 2 book review each. The first two books that I want to share is “Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool” and “Clueless in Tokyo: An Explorer’s Sketchbook of Weird and Wonderful things in Japan”

8 Product Hunt-ish web design community that worth visiting

08 Jul 15

. Web Design

Product Hunt for Web Design

Product Hunt is a famous website that allows users to submit new startups and services and then gain exposure plus get upvoted and discussed by anyone if they find it interesting. With the uprising of the Product Hunt’s popularity, many Product Hunt-ish websites are born, cater to different subjects and theme. We call this “Product Hunt for X”.

Well there is no exception to design world. Here I collected 8 Product Hunt style web/mobile design community that covers every topics related from visual design, user experience, product designs, tutorial to development. Continue reading to find out these 8 vibrant and useful websites.

Find the best similar fonts with Font Matcherator

03 Jul 15

. Typography

Font Matcherator

When comes to finding the font name of the font that we came across on designs or images, usually What The Font by MyFonts would be the best tool to use. And now we have another new tool that can do similar thing, and that is the Font Matcherator from FontSpring.

The function is pretty much similar: you upload an image with the font you want to find out, then Font Matcherator will do their best to find the fonts from their font database that have the closest match to the font. Continue reading

Beautiful Monogram Logo Designs

29 Jun 15

. Art & Design

monogram

When launching a brand you need to make sure that you make your mark with the logo that you choose. It says a lot about the message that you are trying to get across and it’s quite common for people to use monogramed logos to make things look more personal.

They aren’t exactly modern they have been about since ancient Greece, but they really started to become popular in the late 19th century. They don’t need to be a person’s initials which is what some people think, they could be any letters (usually 2) that will create an acronym that you will remember.

Learn Cool Japan, Kanji and Casual Japanese and more – book review part II

24 Jun 15

. Japan

Book review part II

On the previous post, I have read the book Cool Japan Guide, and today I’m going to introduce four more interesting Japanese related books, published by Tuttle Publishing.

These four books are: “Making out in Japanese”, “Cool Japan Guide ~Fun in the land of manga, lucky cats and ramen~”, “Japanese Kanji Made Easy: Learn 1000 kanji and kana the fun and easy way” and “Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture”. Without further ado, continue reading to find out more about them!

“Tokyo: Capital of Cool” – book review part I

19 Jun 15

. Japan

Cover Photo of Tokyo: Capital of Cool book by Robb Goss

Tokyo is the capital of Japan and is one of the most beautiful, bustling, busiest cities in the world. Tokyo is such a diversified destination with so many different lifestyles and cultures breathing under it, it’s difficult to describe it with just one word. But all can agree that Tokyo is the capital of Cool!

Today I want to introduce a new book called “Tokyo: Capital of Cool”, authored by Rob Goss. This book is really useful to foreigners from around the world who plan to travel to Tokyo, Japan to witness its coolness. It briefly talks about what Tokyo is about and showcasing the uniqueness of different sightseeing locations within different parts of Tokyo. Each page comes with a mix of images and text and you will be amazed at how crazy cool Japan is.

Code4Startup – Learn to code by cloning real startup projects

28 Mar 15

. Tutorial, Web Development

Code4Startups

From time to time you will be hearing advices that if a person wants to be good, first he/she needs to imitate, copy or learn from other good examples. Yup, this is actually a very practical example. You need to learn from others in order to discover and establish your own creation.

This applies to the world of coding too. And recently, I stumbled upon this learning website Code4Startup from Product Hunt that you can learn to code with front-end and back-end technologies by cloning popular real life startup projects.

Panic! April 21st Google Search “Mobile Optimisation” update. What should I do?

26 Mar 15

. Web Development

Google Malaysia HQ

So, last Wednesday I went to the Google Webmaster event, and the presenter told us that on the April 21st 2015, Google will roll out the latest update on the search engine ranking algorithm, that mobile-friendliness will become a ranking signal. What that means is that, a mobile-friendly website will rank higher than those are not when you search with Google using your mobile devices.

According to Entrepreneur Magazine, for all this while Google has not been very clear on how mobile friendliness of a website could affect the ranking, but with the April 21st update, it will become a main factor. And also by the uprising trend of mobile users surpassing the desktop users, modern websites should be mobile friendly.

101Photography – Free Sketch & PSD Portfolio Theme for Photographers

24 Mar 15

. Downloads

101photography

Yay freebies! Today I want to show you the latest freebies that you can download for free! This is 101Photography, a minimalist portfolio theme for photographers. It has a total of 7 pages, created in both Adobe Photoshop (PSD) and Sketch format.

Well this is actually a proposed website design for a client, but it’s not being used. So, I decided to release it for free. The feature of this portfolio design is the picture holder effect, like those old photo album. The overall look and feel is minimal with vintage flavour, and a mix of flat and skeuomorphic design.

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