Exhibit B: Seek • A • Seek

Exhibit A: Perihal

Laut Kita: The Reality of Our Oceans

This year, for Eid, our family didn't go visit the Grandparents. My beloved Grandma just recently passed away—we made two trips to visit her when she was in the hospital and when she was freshly buried, which left us with barely enough money for Eid. Long story short, we ended up staying in Jakarta for the last week of Ramadan—except for my Stepmom who went to Semarang to visit her mother and son. Anyway, that left my sister and I with enough time to roam about the city while we're both off duty from work—specifically to visit the Laut Kita exhibition we've been wanting to visit for weeks. This exhibition is brought to you by Sejauh Mata Memandang, not unlike the installation they did last year, and it highlights the rising urgency for action in the wake of our waste crisis—particularly considering its impact on our oceans. The exhibition takes up a total of four rooms, each showing us exactly how our incessant need to produce trash has impacted sea life. In fact, it turns out microplastics can be found in our own poop too. If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

Madjani hijab (old) // swapped shirt + pants (via Tukar Baju) // thrifted loafers // hand-me-down bag // 

outfit photos by my sis

Do you know that, here in Indonesia, by 2018 we have reached overcapacity of our landfills? Do you know what happens to our waste since then? There's not much of a choice but to dump them into the sea, by way of rivers and canals. This plastic waste then goes on to terrorise our sea creatures, either killing them slowly or causing them unimaginable pain. The term, "put your trash where it belongs" no longer applies, because no matter where we discard our garbage, it will make its way to sea one way or another—I guarantee you. The best thing we can do, instead, is to really be conscious of the things we buy and cut down on our waste. Here are some tips on how you, too, can cut down on plastic and find substitutes for them. Because—you know what?—if we don't start now, by 2050 there will be more plastic waste than fishes in the sea. If you don't believe me, try swimming in the sea or walking along the beach yourself and see if you can't find a single trash. We need to get rid of the out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude and really take responsibility for our waste—lest we should drown in them.

Comic Frontier 12 Prep with Gogoprint Indonesia

Today is the day! It's finally time for Comic Frontier 12! If you don't know what that is, it is an anime/game convention held here in Jakarta. Aspiring illustrators from the city and across the country all gather to open a booth and sell their creations. You can find a variety of illustrations there, whether fanart or original, ranging from the Japanese pop-culture, to American/Western one and even Indonesian aesthetics—a.k.a. "kearifan lokal." If you follow my Instagram, you might've known that I opened a booth at Comic Frontier 11 last year and this year I'm going to do the same. For this opportunity I've decided to come up with a few new designs. However, I'm really bleeding money at the moment and it feels quite impossible to come up with a budget for this shindig. Luckily, Gogoprint Indonesia contacted me a few months back for a chance to collaborate. I thought it would be a good idea to show you a little bit of my preparation for this convention.

The first thing I did, obviously, was plan out what I want to sell and design them accordingly. I was starting to run really low on business cards as well, so I thought it was a great chance to shake things up—you can see my old one here. The items I wanted to get printed consist of name card, postcard—both of them double-sided—and stickers. After the design process is done, it was time to place my order. This is where it gets a little bit tricky.

Golden Labyrinth of Fabric

Last week my friend Jess was in town and we promised to see each other. We wanted to go see some kind of artistic event when we met up—hitting two birds with one stone and all, y'know—but almost nothing of note seemed to take place last Friday. That was when I told her about this installation by Sejauh Mata Memandang. As you might know, SMM is an ethical brand from Indonesia—which I have loved in the past—and now they are launching their newest collection, inspired by Timun Mas—a Javanese folklore. To celebrate their launch, they're showcasing this 3-month-long installation at Senayan City. To be honest, I've come here by myself before, but Jess doesn't mind and would love to see it herself too. It is actually contained to one rather small room of golden labyrinth made entirely of fabric. Once you enter, you are led down a narrow path surrounded by strips of eggshell cotton, shined from above with warm, yellowish light—creating a golden effect. There are four smaller rooms within the maze: one with a big screen showing the animation of their Timun Mas book, one with two walls of mirrors facing each other, one with the photos of their lookbook and the last one was their store. It was a short visit, but a sweet one indeed.

Hand-me-down top + purse // old hat + socks // MKS shoes // Book of Deer skirt // photos by Jess

Some of my favourite highlights from this installation includes the cozy beanbags in the screening room—as well as the blue, jellyfish-like air conditioner; the mirror room—because it is clearly there for great photo ops; the various nooks within the maze—with small beacons of light among the relative darkness; the fabric book of Timun Mas—hand-embroidered!—and, lastly, the lookbook video in their store. To be honest, I didn't intentionally forget to take as many pictures of the installation as humanly possible. I just had too much fun chatting and catching up with Jess—we haven't seen each other in 4 months. But, in hindsight, I find it the right decision. This event is free-of-charge and will still be there waiting for you until 8 January 2019. I think it will do them a great injustice to reveal all on the internet, while most of you are probably able to go see the installation for yourself. Of course, if you don't live in this country, but want to see the installation yourself, I hope their hashtag will help you navigate through the labyrinth.

Birthday in Bintaro

As you may know—or maybe not—yesterday was my birthday! It has been pretty well recorded on this blog how I have a love-hate relationship with such a day every year. However, I think this year is an exception—if not a turning point—to that rule, because my birthday was awesome! There were a lot of reasons why, to be honest, but since they will be way too long to dig deep into, I thought I'd mention just one: Bintaro Design District. It is an architectural set of events that I found out only days before my birthday—which happens to be its last day! It offers numerous exhibitions, open studios, talkshows, workshops and more spread out all over Bintaro—which is an area near where I live. The system dictates that each visitor must buy a BDD Pass, which is a book filled with details on each place and activity, maps to each location and space for stamps at the back. Whoever gets the most stamps is promised some enticing freebies. This seems like such a fun concept, that I asked my sister to come with me to view the event. Unfortunately, it was the last day, so we missed out on a lot.

Thrifted shirt + shorts // old hat + sneakers // hand-me-down purse // outfit photos by Sis

Okay, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to talk about each exhibition we saw, because there were too many to fit a proper blog post. I hope you'd find their instagram much more helpful. Here are a few things I'd like to note, though. So, we ended up seeing only 9 attractions spread out between 5 venues. We would've loved to see more, but there were some serious obstacles. The first one is the selling out of the pass at Kopi Manyar—which is basically where they keep telling us to purchase one in their social media—so it set us back 30 minutes. Second of all, the weather wasn't very cooperative, which keeps us from enjoying most of the attractions as they are supposed to be experienced. Third of all, the whole stamp system is thrown out the window, because it was the last day, so we didn't get the satisfaction of getting as many as we possibly could. It was kind of disappointing. That being said, the event was rather great. It's very rare to find spread-out exhibitions in the greater Jakarta area, so it was really refreshing. They'd surely be much better when everything works out, but still enjoyable even with the terrible situations. I'd love to visit it again if there's another one next year!

Birthday Week Sale with Campaign Monitor

Despite having written a post—just two days ago—on email marketing, you might realise that I've never actually created, let alone send out, newsletters before. It's an uncharted territory for me. After blogging and running several social media accounts, I feel like I've got nothing more to say. They've all pretty much been said and done one too many times. So, when Campaign Monitor contacted me to do a collaboration, I wasn't sure what to make of it. It sure feels exhilarating and intriguing, as it will be something new for me to try, but also at the same time confusing, because I don't know what to make. Luckily, my birthday was just around the corner. And so, I decided to create a newsletter for my illustration store using that theme.

Before we start, let me give you quick info on the company: Campaign Monitor is a global email marketing company, consisting of three products—Campaign Monitor, Delivra and Emma. We've talked about Emma in the previous post too, if you remember. They already have locations in five major cities, spread out between three countries—the US, Australia and the UK. They offer numerous services, including email design, personalised customer experience, analytics and transactional emails. With their team being chocked full with experts and their support team running for 24/7, it's no wonder that they have 99% customer satisfaction. They've had experience working with some of the world's biggest brands, including Unicef, Rolling Stone and Penguin Random House. The best part about them is how much they care about giving back—volunteering is apparently really important to them. Not only in materials, but also in activities, such as picking up trash at the beach. I love me a company with good values!

Okay, so the first thing I did was create an account. It was simple enough, takes no time at all. Once I had an account, there were a few checklists that I should do—although you can skip them too—such as verifying email, connecting your subscription services, watching the tutorial video and creating a campaign. I must admit, my internet is probably not one of the fastest available—and at the time, it was going on and off and driving me crazy—so I was completely unable to watch the tutorial video. But it's fine, even without the tutorial, I'd say the services they provide are pretty straightforward. Something else to note is you'd want to know two things before creating a campaign: 1) for what are you making the campaign and 2) what kind of campaign is it. Once that's all done and dusted, I went ahead with the campaign creation.

For the design of your email, you can choose from over 50 templates—or import your own HTML. They're segmented into different functions, such as newsletter, events or deals & offer, so you can choose them according to what you want to send out. I chose one from the deals & offer category—unfortunately, the templates aren't assigned names, so I can't tell you which one. After that, I simply needed to replace the photos, edit the texts and rearrange the items until I am satisfied with the layout and content. It didn't take too long. With all the assets ready to go, it probably takes under an hour to finish—especially if you know exactly what you want to say.

This sale is real, by the way, so go check out my store!

Once your email is finished, you need to add the email addresses of your recipients—and some additional info, if you like. They will ask you where you get the emails, the relationship you have with the recipients and the frequency of you exchanging emails with them. This is their way of taking care of our subscribers and making sure that we're not just harassing a bunch of strangers—as a recipient of numerous random newsletters, this is something I strongly believe should be applied in other similar services. Afterwards, all you've got to do is wait for their approval and send out your emails. Piece of cake, no?

All in all, I'm really happy with the way my newsletter turns out. It's pretty easy to edit and I can keep doing it until the email is sent. Also, Campaign Monitor allows me to send test emails to myself, so I know exactly what it looks like to the recipients—although their names will obviously not appear on mine. They also show me what the email will look like on mobile screens too, which is very helpful. In terms of pricing, they offer three packages too, depending on how many subscribers you have—so there are options for people with huge followings and for average Joes like me. If you ever feel the need to create a newsletter, I'd suggest you try out their services.

This post is brought to you by Campaign Monitor. It is the last of a two-part campaign.

All opinions expressed are 100% my own.

E-Campaign Made Easy with Emma

For the past couple years I've been sort of kind of obsessed with newsletters. Okay, obsessed might be a strong word, but yes I've been into them quite a lot. Previously, I've always been quick to subscribe to newsletters and mailing lists too. However, I feel like in the past two years or so, newsletters have evolved in such a grand way. While they used to be mostly for promoting products and services, now newsletters can be used for just about anything—including building a community, update readers on blogs and sharing interesting projects. Some of the ones I subscribe to include Homwork and The Discoverer. I think a lot of bloggers and artists have started to create their own too. It is deemed to be one of the most effective way to reach out to your followers without being a little too in-your-face, while still engaging to a curated range of recipients.

If you want to build a solid readership or subtly keep in touch with your audience or get the word out there on your small business, I think newsletter will be a great option. Not only is it already curated to a specific group of willing party, it can also pack a number of topics in one go. Now, you may be thinking, "I ain't got no programming or designing skills, how the hell am I going to accomplish that?" Lucky for you, in this day and age, there are numerous companies who offer services to help you on this department—including Emma.

Emma is a Campaign Monitor company, specialising in email marketing services—including strategy sessions, expert training, custom design and technical needs. They have a team of experts ready to help you construct your own email marketing strategy and put it into action—be it a one-time thing or a continuous relationship. They also provide perfectly segmented industry solutions to fit your needs; you need only to go to their website and click whichever category suits your business best. With three packages to choose from, Emma offers you varying benefits to best serve your marketing purposes. Of course, if you're still unsure about them, you can always ask for a demo—no problem. Plus, if you're confused and completely clueless about this whole thing, their sales team are always ready to chat with you through everything. Not so scary, is it?

The best part of Emma, in my opinion anyway, is their resource department. Man, the whole part is filled with countless tips and tricks on email marketing and newsletter—including interviews with successful figures from established brands. They have tips for everyone, including bloggers, restaurant owners, fitness trainers and local businesses. Their podcast called Behind the Glasses—which sounds brilliant to me—is almost exclusively interviews with some of the very best minds in marketing from places like Google, DoSomething.org and Design Matters. You can even download some more thorough guides and strategy to read later, if you want. I mean, what more could you ask for?

Now, whether you're a blogger, a small business owner, an accountant or a fitness trainer, Emma might be the perfect fit for you to spread your net into the world and gain more regular clients, readers or customers. They can help you create a relationship with those who already know you too—so no need to worry about losing their trust. And, hey, if you're doubtful, you can always go for a demo, right? Nothing to lose, I'd say.

This post is brought to you by Campaign Monitor. It is the first of a two-part campaign.

All opinions expressed are 100% my own.