#twentybliss

Introduce yourself! Hi (who else finds 'bios' awkwardly embarrassing to write?). I'm Lauren and I was born and raised in Hong Kong and love food, travel, art and all things (well, most things) to do with my hometown. I went back to the U.K (where my Mum is from) for University and graduated with a degree in History of Art. I loved my degree and the highlight was definitely going to Paris for a week with my class and experiencing some of the incredible 18th Century French 'vandalism' which my favourite lecturer was super passionate about. Although I loved studying there, I ended up making my way back home (really missed char siu fan), and after a year travelling around the Philippines, India and Nepal I stumbled upon a job in digital publishing. I used to be big into life drawing but haven't had the chance to do it for a while. I've got a fascination with illustration - always doodling various untidy notebooks before I go to sleep at night. I always want to be doing something creative which is why I connected with Sarah, who is one of the most creative people I think I know!

Tell us a little about your piece at #URBANHACKS. Basically, I'd had this idea in my mind for some time that I wanted to test out. I wanted to create a work of art that was truly interactive and made people feel like they were a part of it... so often galleries feel really pretentious and elitist. They sort of alienate viewers and I feel like a lot of people (especially those who haven't studied art) can find them quite boring and difficult to understand or relate to. I wanted to try out an idea would be completely accessible to anyone and would create more of a sense of community and participation. I put together this really basic system where anyone who came along could write down any number from 1-6 and any letter of the alphabet on a piece of paper. Using the numbers and letters as sort of 'co-ordinates', I then painted onto a giant canvas... each number and letter corresponding to a colour and a place on the canvas respectively. I tried to keep it really simple (although I think some people still found it a bit confusing!), with just six colours for the six letters and 26 segments on the canvas for the 26 letters. Gradually as more people came along, the paint on the canvas built up in different areas with different colours. Simple.

What was the process like? It was fun! I wanted to just try it out and create something enjoyable for people. I did feel a sense of connection to others by painting what they had chosen - it was like being the 'hands' of the people choosing the numbers and letters. It was also nice to not have that much control over what colours and where I would be painting... the end result was always going to be a surprise. Sharing the control over an art work is definitely a fun way to create that sense of community and involvement.  I wasn't too strict about the actual painting aspect of the piece as the whole point was the process and the participation, not the finished product. It did end up looking like a sort of colourful explosion though! Most interesting thing / Most picked letter and number? It was interesting how people tended to pick the same number for the same letter... the whole 'B' section on the canvas was red! I also found it interesting how a couple of people chose not to participate and seemed a bit scared to be asked to take part. It just shows how rarely art is an inclusive, interactive thing in HK.

Do you see yourself doing something similar or continuing with this concept in the future? Maybe! It was sort of an experiment for me and way to see if this strange concept I'd had in mind for a while could actually work. I've got the giant canvas rolled up in my room so it might be fun to add to it and continue with the piece at different events - I'd love to get children more involved and possibly collaborate with some schools in HK, as it's so simple and it's a great way for them visually see how working together can create something beautiful. What would you like to see more of in the Hong Kong creative scene? I'd love to see more experimentation in what people are doing. It would be great to see more events, venues and spaces that cater to emerging artists or just the general public for creative use - honestly anyone can be creative and it's important to have that outlet (mainly for sanity!). It would be cool to see more community events that really involve people and that are of course fun and engaging.

Introduce yourself My name is Ken Nana. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. I live to create and inspire. Tell us about NANA LIFESTYLE and what it means to you? When a group of people who share a vision and purpose come together, they have the power to create something more than themselves that has the ability to make an impact on society. Our goal is to bring together creatives (Musicians, Directors, Painters, Photographers, Animators, etc) who not only embody great taste, but also has a positive message and a sense of purpose behind what they do. Being an artist is not just a hobby, or a job; It’s a lifestyle. You eat, sleep, and shit what you are passionate about, and you ignore any road blocks because you are too focused your passion. If you surround yourself with people like this, you will end the conception of work/life balance, and it just becomes LIFE. We don’t do it for the money or credits, we do it because we want to. The money just comes with it, and it all goes right back into funding our passion projects. NANA LIFESTYLE isn’t just a company of creative services, we really do live this shit. Learn more at nanalifestyle.com

What inspires you on a daily basis and what is something that you are constantly trying to communicate to the world? Have you ever tried to exercise at home but you get easily distracted and don't push yourself as hard? Then, you go to the gym where everyone around you is there for the same reason and you can feel the energy so you push yourself even harder. That's the same inspiration I get from my team, my family and surroundings. Constantly surrounding myself with people who are creative, driven, and passionate about their art is what inspires me. Also, every time I travel somewhere new, I get inspired. It's all about your surroundings and the people you choose to keep close. One message I’m constantly communicating is that success is a state of mind, not an achievement.  If you wake up every morning inspired and you love what you do, you are successful. Always remember WHY you do what you do and everything else will fall into place. Don't get too caught up in the hustle and be in such a hurry to get rich. Enjoy the journey. Those are the moments you will reminisce about later in life.

What gave you the drive to say, "fuck it!" and start something you're passionate about? There was a point in my life where I always wanted to please other people. I cared way too much about what people thought about me and I wanted to be like-able. As soon as I started to say "No" to the things I didn't want to do is when things started to fall into place. During that time my brother, Sean was going through the same kind of transition. We both broke up with our girls, moved out on our own, and just shifted our energy back into creating. He was in San Diego, and I moved to a small studio in Koreatown by myself. Once I found that inner peace of being able to freely do what I want without any regrets, things really started to shift. So much to the point where Sean decided to move back to LA after being in San Diego for 9 years building a solid career with Apple Inc. Once we were back together on a daily basis, NANA LIFESTYLE was in full effect.

What can you tell us about "Message to Princess" and the concept behind the animated short? If you grew up in the early 90s like me, chances are you were playing Nintendo NES and watching cartoons with a bowl of cereal with little pieces of Oreos hidden in the milk. I wanted to incorporate a new medium for this video that was inspired by my childhood, so of course, 2D-animation was what made sense. The entire Welcome to Warp Zone! EP is inspired by Super Mario levels in a unique way. Isaac did an amazing job capturing the feel I wanted. The song is a dark song, but the video and sound makes it feel light. Because every dark situation shouldn’t be taken so seriously. There is a positive side to everything and I feel that it is almost making fun of situations like this. I’m so happy I got one of my best friends, Furis, who I’ve known since like 10 years old to rap a verse on it. He hasn’t rapped in a long time because he’s been Directing/Editing tons of music videos for some amazing artists. He’s also a part of the collective. This is special to me. You can download my entire EP for free on our website. (nanalifestyle.com) If you could eat anything right now, what would it be? Mmmmmm deep fried Talapia with some rice. With chili and fish sauce. Thai-style.

Let’s set one thing straight: I’m poor. 

I’m a writer who earns practically nothing. I earned more when I was bussing tables. I earned more when I was a bakery girl greeting the 6am breakfast crowd with a smile and a broken cashier. I earned more when I was tagging tiny eyelet onesies for Italian designer brands. I started writing when I was 14, about Enron and listicles on the Hard Rock Cafe; I am now 26 and write about art and occasionally, civic issues. Narrative journalism/writing is possibly the most illogical profession to be in if I ever wanted to make money or wallow in the rich waters of fame or recognition – I have resigned myself to the fact that I will probably die having achieved neither.    I started the way most of us did, with unpaid internships and weeks of work experience financed, in part, by my family and in part by the other jobs I would take to supplement my real passion. But I also had a decades-long plan in mind, formulated when I was actually just 14 – to write for the rest of my life, and to make it work. I would not be here today, still writing on a Sunday morning at 9am, if I didn’t really love writing. The pay is shitty and will remain shitty for the rest of my life unless I write a book about the shittiness of it all and other shit-paid writers buy that book and we all help ourselves, a little bit, out of that shitty pool of shittiness. 

Introduce yourself Hey All! My name's Belinda Love Lee and I have my own petite design and illustration studio, based in Cardiff, UK. It's a one women show over here and I work with clients mainly via the internet to help design and build their branding. That means anything from hand lettering their logo, to designing the stationary, to the website. The whole idea is to design their overall look and feel to be cohesive and recognizable. Other than my work, I prefer summers over winters, cities over the country side, and travelling is a must in life. Tell us about your experience in Hong Kong.  So here's my life story in short: I was born in Ontario, grew up in Hong Kong, then returned to do Uni in Toronto, and now am situated in the UK because of my lovely husband! My parents are from Hong Kong, so naturally when they were done with Uni in Canada, they headed back Home. I lived in Hong Kong from 3-18, so it's a huge part of who I am but I would definitely say I best associate myself as Third Cultured Kid. Whenever people ask me where I'm from, I make sure to mention that it's both HK, Canada, and now the UK, because all of them have become huge parts of me. Home isn't necessary of one city for me, but more a concept of a growing list of places to conquer and say that I once lived. Growing up in a busy city like HK, you learn fast and get accustomed to way too HUGE crowds (Causeway Bay, hello!), a ton of different cultures, and the best quality of it yet is being able to stomach almost any food! I feel like I have a love/ hate relationship with HK. I love visiting! It's for sure, hands down, one of the must see cities in the world, but personally I probably wouldn't choose to live there again long term. One of the reasons being that the work culture mentality is just insane, 9am to 9pm if that! What inspires you on a daily basis? I always find this question hard to answer because inspiration comes from everywhere! My brain never stops looking to be inspired, you can find it even in the most mundane places, like your daily dog walk/ nature/ travelling/ and of course the internet. I think with any creative though, the key is to always be on the look out!

Any advice for other emerging creatives? Why do you think we're so afraid to put ourselves out there? What made made you say, "fuck it!"?

My one advice would be to not compare yourself to the people around you, and more importantly to the strangers on the internet. With social media being such a huge part of our lives now, all we see are the best moments, most organized, stylized parts of people lives. And it's easy to go into a spiral of self doubt, and not feeling like 'you're good enough.' Though the person online might look like they have it all together, and that everything is going for them, don't forget that behind their Insta-self, there's the real person, with struggles and fears, and dirty dishes! In the end, try to be the best version of yourself, not someone else. The more that I've learned to value myself, and my own unique qualities, the less I lived in fear and self doubt.

I think fundamentally the reason why we're all scared to step out is because it is scary. To pursue something you actually love and are passionate about is sadly not the main stream today and so to take that risk is already scary in itself. But it's also scary because as creatives we're literally putting ourselves out there. See for me, I see my work in a really personal way, as an extension of myself. So every time I produce a piece of work, or blog or even Instagram, it's a part of me that I'm choosing to share with the world, and so it is really vulnerable to put yourself out there for the world to judge. You probably wouldn't believe me but when I first started social media-ing 2 years ago, I was actually scared shitless. Prior to posting, I always had this impending fear of putting my work out there because I was scared of not having people's approval, or for not being or doing, good enough. I remember clearly the first time I put a blog post online, I was so petrified, though no one was probably reading my blog at the time. But in the end despite other's opinions, the scariest thing was not being good enough for myself. In my head I was just this newb, trying to find my style, not having enough studio experience. Denis Waitley says it well, “It's not what you are that holds you back, it's what you think you are not.”

What made me say 'fuck it' was that I personally couldn't have lived with myself and my thoughts for any longer, of constantly wanting and longing to be MORE. I posted that first blog post, and soon that overwhelming sense of fear became smaller and smaller with every post. We live in a time where the internet provides us with so many ways to put our creativity out there for free. How important of a role does the Internet play in your career and how has it benefitted you? I would say 99% of my work comes from the internet. So if the internet were to crash I would literally be out of job, I'm not even joking. It's essentially one of the key factor for my business, beside myself and my talented hands (please read that sarcastically!). I have completely benefited from it because not once have I had to spend a dime on advertising.

Explain the internet in one sentence. It's a great resource for keeping up with Kim Kardashian's butt, but for real, it's changed my life and I would be jobless without it. Favourite dumpling filling? Pork and chives, nom nom!

Michelle Akin ( michelleakin ) is a life coach, singer and a YouTuber. She talks about how we spend a lot of our twenties refusing to take ownership of our own lives and how we need to be more mindful of what we consume and who we allow to matter.

Introduce yourselves We are a four-piece band coming out of Canberra, Australia. The band consists of Patrick Ryan (vocals/guitar), Tim Douglass (guitar/keys), Jono Warren (drums) and Jack Schwenke (bass). Stemming from a broad range of musical influences, we aim to capture and deliver what has been special about pop music since its origin: Relatable lyrics and catchy hooks that are able to evoke foot-tapping enjoyment. That, and something that people can just dance to. And we also throw in a few cool guitar solos. How did you all come together to start making music? Tim, Jono and I all lived in the same residential collegree at our university, ANU. After a few times playing in the college band for various events, we decided to have a bit of a jam. Turns out, it went rather well. After a number of gigs and swapping instruments (to compensate for the lack of a bassist), we met Jack, who studies with Tim and Jono at the music school. The rest is history.

How would you describe your music? We've been described by a college radio presenter in the US as "Well, imagine if you will, Jack Johnson accidentally walking into a Beatles' session and they decided to write and record a few tunes 'just for the fun of it'", which is pretty cool. Those two artists definitely have an influence on us, but not so much so that we're bound to the confines of that brand of music. Fundamentally, we're a guitar-driven pop-rock band that doesn't mind mixing things up to keep it interesting. What are some of your influences/inspirations, musical or otherwise There's always the classics. And they are classics for a reason. Dylan, The Stones, the Beatles and Pink Floyd are all some of my favorites, who, along with many others, have shaped modern pop music. My personal all-time favorite is the Dire Straits. Tom Petty comes a close second. We write what we know, so all of these musicians, and countless others from a range of genres have helped to shape how and what I play.

Can you tell us about your experience working on your debut EP, 'Someday Soon'? If you asked me a year and a half ago how I'd be spending my summer of 2013/14, never could I have fathomed that I'd be recording an EP. The whole experience was scary, mildly tedious at times (doing the same take over and over again can get to you), an awesome learning experience, and most of all, so much fun.  After writing a number of songs, we had planned to record a few tracks at a local studio in Canberra, then send them out for mixing. So, we shot off a couple of emails, to which we got back an email from Producer 'Lindsay Gravina', who not only was happy to mix our tracks, but wanted us to come into the studio to record with him. After months of pre-production, we managed to find the 5 that we were happy with to be released on an EP. Once we got to the studios, we were exposed to a whole new world of music production that none of us had ever experienced before. Four weeks later, after many a late night listening over and over again to the same 5 tracks, we came out with an EP. It's a completely different side to gigging and live performance that we'd only before experienced to a minor degree. For me, I love the live stuff, so this was definitely where all the hard yards go.

@DesignGoodNow Yes absolutely its great to see people going out and making thing like this happen. Inspiring! Keep up the work @sarahkohler

— Saziso (@sazisophiri) August 28, 2014

@sarahkohler What can we say? Folks like you make our job easy!

— DesignGood (@DesignGoodNow)