^{Jul 18, 2018 · Kristian Agustin}

The past two months proved to be an exciting ride for ASEFEdu as the whole team has been ramping up preparations for its upcoming major projects later this year, such as the 22nd ASEF Summer University(ASEFSU22) in Croatia and Slovenia set for September, the 3rd ASEF Young Leaders Summit (ASEFYLS3) in Brussels for October, and the 14th ASEF Classroom Network (ClassNet) in Finland scheduled for November. And while each team member focused on the big tasks at hand, few creative — often unexpected — things happen on the side. This debut Medium blog post is intended to showcase one of the team’s niftiest moments this year — attempting “flat lay” photography.

This began when Angie Toh, ASEFEdu’s project manager for ClassNet, consulted the team for fresh ideas to help achieve a new look for the ClassNet website to be launched soon. The intention is to visualise nine thematic areas currently covered by the ClassNet programme, namely: (1) arts & culture, (2) business & entrepreneurship, (3) education, (4) environment & sustainable development, (5) health, (6) history, (7) media, (8) science & technology, and (9) simply “others”. Time was a crucial factor, of course, and the easiest approach the team could come up immediately was to take photographs.

After throwing some suggestions here and there, team members Kristian Agustin and Tiffany Chua came up with the fresh idea — albeit the technique is as classy as it is classic: “flat lay” photography. After all, it’s gaining some popularity recently with social media apps such as Instagram(by the way, if you haven’t been following ASEFEdu on Instagram, this is your chance) as well as other photography apps.

The perfect opportunity to take the photographs came in mid-July when half of the ASEFEdu team left Singapore for about a week to attend to various projects elsewhere (the ASEFYLS Navigators Training in Warsaw, Poland; the Model ASEM Spin-Off in Chengdu, China; and the Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 in Bangkok, Thailand).

Finding the items proved to be quite easy. Many of these odds and ends were already displayed or kept in the office — on the desks of other team members, and in the pantry, for instance. What proved to be more of a challenge was the actual photographing process itself. Nevertheless, after two days of creative experimenting, the team finally took great delight in seeing the finished photographs. Hence, this blog.

Arts & Culture Theme

History Theme

Environment & Sustainable Development Theme

Shown here are just some of the photographs that came out of the team’s improvisation. Besides, the ClassNet website will be online soon, so stay tuned.

It’s really exciting when sparks of ideas happen in the workplace. #ASEFEdu