Studio COOLEG is a fictitious design studio created to critique the uncritical adoption of Western design aesthetics in Asia—where style is commodified, and meaning is often secondary to market trends. Through satire, the project questions what is lost when "cool" becomes a formula rather than a result of thoughtful design.
The studio’s manifesto mocks the industry’s obsession with imported Western influences, where pedagogy and visual trends are replicated without contextual depth. By exaggerating the rhetoric of trendy design agencies, Studio COOLEG exposes the tension between authentic creativity and market-driven mimicry.
The two accompanying posters—On Recooking the Cooked Plates and The Shrimp Poster—visually manifest this critique, using deliberate appropriation to challenge the viewer’s assumptions about originality and cultural relevance in design.
Poster selected for POSTAPALOOZA exhibition at HEATH, Hong Kong
process sketches
