Tan Jia Wen

Bin Appétit is an award-winning local recycling campaign that reimagines recycling as a playful, character-led experience for young children.

The project was recognised across several design awards, receiving Best of Category at the Crowbar Awards 2022 with 5 Gold, 7 Silver, and 1 Bronze, the Student Project Prize as well as an Honourable Mention at Cumulus Green 2022: Nurturing Our Planet.

Responding to the issue of contamination in Singapore’s blue recycling bins, the campaign focuses on making recycling education more engaging, memorable and approachable. Its central concept represents recyclables as 'food' for four recycling bin characters, with each character linked to a specific material category such as plastic, paper, metal and glass.

By giving each bin its own personality, backstory, and visual identity, the campaign helps children associate materials with the correct recycling stream in a more intuitive way.

The project extends across a physical recycling station, mobile application, posters, Instagram content and wayfinding stickers, forming a cohesive system that supports learning across both public and digital spaces. The recycling station features character displays and curated recyclable objects arranged like food dishes, turning waste sorting into an interactive and visually engaging experience. The mobile app supports this by allowing users to locate nearby stations, scan items, track recycling progress, set reminders and participate in community recycling goals.

Visually, the campaign moves away from the conventional green language of sustainability, instead using bright blues, pastel colours, 3D characters, and food-inspired compositions to create a youthful digital identity.

Through humour, storytelling and interaction, Bin Appétit reframes recycling as an accessible educational experience that encourages better habits from a young age.

SIPF Exhibition & Campaign Design is a visual identity and spatial design project created during an internship at Factory 1611 for the 8th Singapore International Photography Festival, held at Peace Centre and DECK.

The campaign was awarded the Winner in Graphic/Communication Design at the Paris Design Awards 2023. Centred on the festival theme, 'Future Known as Unpredicted', the project explored how photography can reflect uncertainty, memory, vulnerability and shifting visions of the future.

The campaign identity was developed around a dystopian and futuristic visual language, using fragmented imagery, distortion and a striking teal graphic treatment to suggest instability and the constant reconfiguration of perception. Rather than presenting the future as fixed or predictable, the visual system frames it as something fluid, disrupted and open to multiple interpretations.

This concept was extended across both physical and digital platforms, ensuring that the campaign remained visually consistent across the exhibition space, online presence and promotional materials. Within the booth design, reflective panels were used to create a sense of spatial distortion, allowing the space to mirror and manipulate its surroundings in line with the campaign’s visual direction. LED signage added a nostalgic yet futuristic layer, while the merchandise carried the same fragmented graphic system to strengthen the festival identity.

Through its use of reflection, dispersion, and non-linear composition, the project translates the festival’s conceptual theme into an immersive visual experience that demonstrates how campaign design can move beyond flat graphics into spatial storytelling and atmospheric branding.