TSLA design arm Anak unveils creator index showcasing Asian talent

TSLA's design arm Anak has launched the Asian Creators Index (ACI), a consolidated list of creators from all over the region with unique talents. The platform, designed to be a simple, intuitive and a comprehensive ‘one-stop gateway’ that enables greater collaboration between the creative community and the world at large, celebrates the quality, fluidity and breadth of creativity across the global Asian diaspora.

According to the agency, the ACI is the place to find collaborators from across Asia - from paper crafts, bamboo sculpture artists, painters, animators, 3D artists, set and sound designers. The platform and its content is designed to be a source of inspiration and discovery.

The Index is broken down into searchable creative categories, and the Index reflects the spectrum of creativity that exists across the geographically expansive region.

Built off a decade’s worth of regional collaboration and searching by Anak, the Index is a live document that is regularly updated to include both established and new breakthrough talent. With a centre of gravity currently in South, East and Southeast Asia, the Index features just under 400 creators and counting spanning the continent, compiled by Anak’s lead art buyer, Juliana Ong. The list is hand selected, reviewed and housed within a collaborative open-access document to ensure accessibility to as wide a group as possible.

“Asia is home to an incomparable range of styles, crafts, and visual modes born out of its many diverse cultures. From traditional mediums to cutting-edge techniques, it is a region where the new and modern live harmoniously with the old - where future meets the past,” said Ong.

She added that while of the world’s best creative talents are here in Asia, the problem is that they’re not always easy to find outside of their own locales, and a lot of them might not spend much time on getting found either.

“We felt it important to expose these great talents to the rest of the world, through eyes that know and understand the nuances of the different cultures - something that we’ve been fortunate to amass through our decades of work. And we wanted to do it in a way that evolves from the outdated stereotype of the agency ‘little black book’ or ‘best-kept secret’,” she said.

“Diversity is key to creative excellence, and that’s why tapping into the global creative community is so important,” said Peter Robertson and Susan Hosking, International ECDs at Mother. “The Asian Creators Index is a resource dedicated to this - it introduces great talent to the world, and hopefully creates more well-deserved opportunities for these very talented creators.

In September last year, TSLA rebranded its design practice TSLA Design as Anak. Anak will continue to focus on branding and design development of brands rolled out at scale regionally or globally from Singapore. The offering extends end to end visual design consulting that includes identity design, UX and UI design, packaging and sensorial design.

TSLA Design was launched in 2009 and handled the rebranding of now acquired Tiger Airways in that year itself. It also redesigned the in-store experience for Cold Storage in 2015, helped with the creation of Singapore’s first unified brand to the world, the SG mark in 2016 and more recently the naming and creation of Apple’s revolutionary LumiHealth in 2019 in partnership with Singapore’s Health Promotion Board.

The agency was also behind the creative executions for brands such as KFC, Banyan Tree and handled the recent rebrand of Singpass this year. Working fluidly across disciplines, mediums, languages and time zones, the Anak team is made up of creatives.