H55 is an award winning Singapore-based design and communication consultancy with a reputation for conceiving relevant, engaging and effective ideas.
We enjoy creating visual representations and narratives which are meaningful and purposeful, as opposed to being merely trendy and stylistic. Our fundamentals are clarity, functionality, and timelessness; and we translate our ideas into physical form through an objective process involving craft, well-considered typography and art direction.
An imperative part of our creative process is listening to the needs of our clients and having open communication. This helps us understand and formulate each project's parameters so as to move efficiently towards an appropriate range of possibilities.
Design to us is about intervention rather than invention, and much of our work entails designing new relationships with things already in existence, rather than just new things.
We also recognise that design is only meaningful as an extension and mediator of its context, and this is why we constantly look outside our practice to be informed by other creative and non-creative disciplines.
Besides being a professional practice and business entity, we celebrate design as a significant part of our visual culture and everyday landscape. A piece of work to us not only has economic value, but also social, cultural and linguistic potential and significance as well.
Since its establishment in 1999, H55 has been independently owned by award-winning creative director Hanson Ho, who continues his hands-on attitude towards design and project management. Till this day, H55 remains as a light and compact office so as to be creatively sustainable, focused and dedicated to a select range of clients.
H55 has worked with a variety of clients ranging from government ministries, museums, public-listed companies, small-to-medium-size enterprises, new startups and individuals. We often collaborate with a network of creative specialists such as writers, photographers, digital media experts and architects, building teams according to the needs of each project.
Our work has been featured in numerous international design publications, including Peter and Charlotte Fiell’s ‘New Graphic Design: The 100 Best Contemporary Graphic Designers’, Taschen’s ‘Asian Graphics NOW!’, and Viction:ary’s 'Point East: Exploring Talents in Asia'. Through the years, H55 has also received recognition and awards from the British D&AD, New York Type Directors Club, New York One Show Design, Creative Circle Awards, Tokyo Type Directors Club, and the New York Art Directors Club.
Hanson Ho is a recipient of Singapore’s highest design accolade, the President’s Design Award ‘Designer of the Year’.
As founder and creative director of Singapore-based design studio H55 which he founded in 1999, Hanson has created numerous visual identities, brand applications, and publications which have represented Singapore on an international level. These include the visual identity designs for the Singapore Pavilion at various Venice Biennales and the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize.
Featured by the Sunday Times as one of the top Graphic Designers in Singapore, Hanson has also received recognition and awards from some of the most prestigious international design competitions for his works, including the British D&AD, New York Type Directors Club, New York One Show Design, Creative Circle Awards, Tokyo Type Directors Club, and the New York Art Directors Club.
Besides heading H55, Hanson is also a curator for the Singapore Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) Art-in-Transit Programme for nine of the upcoming Downtown Line MRT Stations, invited speaker and external examiner for several design institutions, and Head of Design Jury for the Creative Circle Awards 2014.
This website is an ever growing archive of H55's selected works and ideas through the years.
Its purpose is varied: firstly, to provide an understanding of our history and approach to our clients; secondly, as part of H55's continuous internal creative auditing process; and last but not least, as a way of sharing our work with the rest of the creative community.
Instead of typically capturing the 'plan view' of our projects, we have chosen to document most of them in a more three-dimensional manner, in an attempt to see them as 'living' objects rather than mere two-dimensional 'flat' graphic works.
Although we are well aware that graphic design work is only meaningful when it is an extension of the real-world context, we have decided to present almost all of our projects within a neutral grey environment, so as to isolate and observe them for what they are.
We see the project text descriptions as 'voice-over' commentaries, and these may not represent the full background, narratives and ideas behind each project.
Designed in collaboration with Plate Interactive, the website's full screen images are adaptable to window resizing, varying formats and screen resolutions, depending on your viewing preference. Please go ahead and try it out.
All studio shots of the projects are photographed by Caleb Ming of Surround in our office premise.