For the 3rd edition of Ubud Open Studios, we asked Bali-based illustrator damdampops to create a set of icons to represent all the different types of art and media found at Ubud Open Studios. The icons arrived to decorate the main hub at Titik Dua and also appeared on the official tote bag, t-shirt and catalogue.
We were excited to create a line of merchandise for Room4Dessert based on Chef Will Goldfarb’s recipe notes, written in the back of a copy of A Moveable Feast. The quick sketches, loops of the pen, and the English and French words that jumped out of the scribbles, like pamplemousse, chocolate milkshake, citron and creme brulee, made us fall in love.
We created a t-shirt, water bottle, apron, tea towel, notebook and shopping tote based on an image that appeared in Chef Will’s cookbook taken by Martin Westlake. All are available to buy at The Powder Room by Room4Dessert.
We couldn’t let 2023 pass without The Dinner Series! This time we gathered to dine with Fed and Made Dhanu in the Titik Dua gallery surrounded by the artwork of Salvita de Corte and Naomi Samara. 19 guests joined us for a 5-course meal plated on Jenggala ceramics and a very special performance ended the evening. As always, the Dinner Series was hosted by co-founder Maya Kerthyasa.
We started the design of the dinner wanting a very minimalist and clean table to ensure the artwork of the Present Space exhibition remained the focus of the evening. We chose single white lotus blooms and white canvas cloth for the tables.
Place cards featured a Joan Didion quote used in the curator’s note of the exhibition written in white under the watercolor lettering of the guest’s name so you could faintly read the words.
Guests were invited to explore the exhibition before being seated.
The Fed menu was inspired by ingredients that were once common in Balinese dishes but are slowly disappearing due to the globalization of culinary arts. The local ingredients are slowly being forgotten. Some of the dishes are based on reminiscing about a childhood snack, a combination of Rujak Es and Rujak Cermai, resulting in the creation of cermai granita which was served with raw fish caught by local fisherman. The dessert also came from a home-cooked snack that Made’s grandma always made when salak was in season. The dishes were all plated on ceramics by Jenggala, a heritage Bali brand celebrating over 40 years of making incredible tableware.
The performance was presented by St Udyana, a youth group from Taman, Ubud. The dancers also played instruments and surrounded the guests with a story of knowledge and culture flowing like water and filling up all the spaces.
The final touch came from Salvita De Corte as she washed the white on white printed menus with watercolors to reveal the menu of the evening for attendees. A perfect final moment.
Ubud Open Studio participants received a printed catalog, a tote bag and a wrist band.
For the printed catalog we were so happy to be supported by the team at Fedrigoni Paper Indonesia. Fedrigoni is a 134-year-old specialty paper company from Italy. We were so happy to be able to incorporate their papers into the printed catalog. The covers were printed with a holographic foil.
For the tote bags, we worked with the team at Pithecanthropus to incorporate different pieces of batik into the tote bags.
The project: The digital launch of two important documentaries about Indonesia for media company SavEarth.
We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with the team at SavEarth Media as we worked towards the digital launch of the Ring of Fire series on iTunes (UK/Aus/USA/Can). Amazing to think that nearly 50 years have passed since filming began. If you'd like to watch it again here's the link.
The Ring of Fire is an epic. 5 individual journeys around Indonesia, from Sulawesi to Papua and Kalimantan. So many people have told us how it inspired them to travel to Indonesia or become filmmakers.
The Blair Brothers sailed with pirates aboard their black-sailed schooners in search of the Bird of Paradise, struggled through rapids and deep jungles searching for elusive nomadic tribes, witnessed veiled forms of human sacrifice and found themselves drawn into ten years of danger and discovery in a magical land where ancient myths still flourish.
Their intimate encounters with the vanishing masters of tribal wisdom were to lead them from a physical adventure, into a deeper, more personal quest of self-discovery. Originally cut from 80 hours of 16mm film in co-production with WGBH, Boston, RING OF FIRE was produced, directed and photographed by Lorne Blair and co-produced and written by Lawrence Blair.
For Ring of Fire, we were very excited to dive into a trove of slide photography from the film’s shoot. Some warped by time or heat (victim of a house fire) and showing the scars of the years that have gone by.
The team at Potato Head hosted a small screening to help celebrate the iTunes launch. Lawrence spoke before the first episode was shown and charmed the audience completely with his stories of Richard Attenborough wanting to buy the footage and how Ringo Starr helped make the shoot possible with his funding. Story below in the audio.
The second of Lawrence’s films has also been digitally remastered for its iTunes launch. Bali: Island of the Dogs is a film about the ancient dogs of Bali and their complicated relationships with humans.
The world’s experts on genetics, at UC Davis, California, pointed out that the dogs of Bali are the richest gene pool of genetic diversity in all of dogdom, and can trace their ancestry right back to the proto-dogs, whereas all our ‘breed’ dogs are barely a couple of centuries old.
The film’s locations include Bali, Australia, and the United States, and features interviews with Balinese high priests on the ancient roles of dogs and man, current world experts on dog genetics, ecology and rabies control, and owners of the remarkable dogs which, largely unrecognized, have such high scientific value and yet face imminent extinction. We ask the question: if we can’t get on with the dog, our closest of natural companions, what hope have we with nature herself?
Sea voyages, far-off islands, spices, and more gave us the inspiration to create 50 (each completely different) custom packaging for Nusa Caña’s VIP gifts, all telling the story of the journey of Indonesian rum across the seas.
We created a series of collages (under the watchful eye of collage artist Dayu Ajeng) with different monoprints—all based on the Nusa Caña palette that morphed into underwater animals, corals & reefs, sailing ships, birds wheeling through the sky, full moons lighting the way, and clouds over smoking volcanic islands.
We were also excited to use a honeycomb paper replacement for bubble wrap to cradle the bottles, even more so when we realized it looked like fishing nets.
A few of the test runs for the different shapes and ideas for the stories we told on each box.
Excited to be supporting Room4Dessert once again in the development of their new learning experience: Room4Dessert Academy:
Room4Dessert proudly presents R4D Academy, our first class series, designed for professionals and amateurs alike.
Join us for a month-long (or weekly) hands-on class, led by Chef Will Goldfarb, and unfold the secrets behind the most talked-about desserts in the world. From 3 May until 29 May, each week we dive into different decadent delights.
We designed the promotional material for this experience for use on social media platforms primarily:
We also developed standing recipe binders for students to use during each week, with a different color folder for each module.
Designing for the Made Griyawan exhibition at John Hardy Seminyak was an honor. Bringing together a classic Bali brand celebrating modern heritage, and a young artist cognizant of 900 years of history and the need for renewal going forward made for great design inspiration.
We created a number of print, including flyers, postcards, and booklets, and digital materials. We also designed and produced a beautiful paper fan featuring Made Griyawan’s work in honor of the occasion. Handmade and finished with naturally dyed indigo thread tassels.
Long postcard.
Exhibition flyers.
The details of our 2019 TEDxUbud bag and badge design
Read MoreJoin us for our eighth edition and a journey of storytelling, innovation, learning, change and more. We're returning to the beautiful Setia Darma House of Masks and Puppets with the theme of...
Everything in the world, and beyond, is constantly moving, in a state of ebb and flow, changing from one form to another.
Some of our movements are deliberate, as when we choose to travel, or dance. Other movements are beyond our control, or impossible to detect. Sometimes it’s not a pleasant sensation, as when we are forced into movement to escape something or have to push against the status quo to make a change.
When we say we are moved, we usually talk about emotion arising in our bodies, changing us in some way. When we talk about a movement, we talk about people working together to create social change or spread a new idea across the globe.
Movement is something we all share and participate in—a universal part of the human story as we cross the borders, lines and boundaries that structure our lives.
We worked with the East West Center to create the visual identity for the March 2019 edition of the YSEALI (Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative) for eco entrepreneurs here in Bali.
“Impact eXL is an innovative YSEALI Regional Workshop providing professional development to existing entrepreneurs to improve environmental performance and for environmentalists to incorporate entrepreneurship and modern business practices to their activities. This training will introduce attendees to startup incubators in Bali and incorporate sustainable development, innovation, leadership, strategic philanthropy, and other topics to emphasize how entrepreneurs and businesses can improve their environmental performance.”
For this event, we created a set of icons closely related to Bali and also symbolic of the places and people the participants would be visiting. We created designs for digital flyers, backdrops, standing banners, tote bags, t-shirts, notebooks, folders, and name tags, keeping in mind a strong sense of place and also the age of the attendees (under 30).
For the name tag design, we were very inspired by the focus on eco-entrepeneurship and environmental values held by the event. We decided to produce the name tag with Green School’s iHub, a green prototyping facility, and one of the host venues for the workshop. We chose bamboo for its sustainable and strong features as we needed to create a tag that would still look after 4 days of wear but was plastic-free.
We hung the tag on natural indigo-dyed organic cotton cloth sourced at Threads of Life. Threads of Life commits to full transparency for planting, harvesting and production, and their cloth was a perfect fit for the lanyards. The lanyards were produced by a local tailor in Ubud to support small local businesses.
When we started to work on DUMBO's branding we were spoiled for choice. Jono had a huge range of influences and many sources of inspiration for us to explore, including our personal favorite- his hand-illustrated notebooks chronicling every thought he had during the creation of the space, menu and feel of DUMBO. It was an incredible period of growth and experimentation as we crafted DUMBO's visual identity.
When it came time to create the invitation for the grand launch event, we wanted to create something special for each invitee, something physical they could keep if they wanted, hand delivered to their home or place of business.
The striped element was taken from the main menu design with foil accents and metallic strips to seal each envelope.
Inside each envelope was a simple invitation with Jono's signature playful copy and a customized name badge for each invitee and another slightly smaller badge for their plus ones. The badge design incorporated 80s design elements with neon accents and a custom bubble font. The idea of the name badges were a nod to the name badges worn by wait staff at DUMBO.
The inside of the envelope and the back of the invitation featured the visage of the timeless Sophia Loren. At the very beginning of the design process, Jono mentioned he wanted to see this Italian icon make an appearance. Originally we created a series of physical collages using the gelatin printing process and classic black and white Sophia photos. These collages were then digitalized, enlarged and became part of the bathroom design at DUMBO.
When it came time for the invitation design, we couldn't resist incorporating some of this artwork.
The theme for TEDxUbud for 2018 is Seen/Unseen. When we started casting around for ideas for this year's visual identity we kept coming back to the idea of optical illusions: images that appear and disappear; spectrums of light and what is invisible to the naked eye; and tools that let us see into and past the surface, like MRI and Xray machines. Our exploration and research took us down some amazing rabbit holes. We found a pack of these cards featuring classic optical illusions that every graphic designer learns in their first year of school and we keep finding them all over our desks as we discover another card we love.
We also made a choice to bring as much color as possible into the design for 2018, pulling on inspiration from infrared and ultra violet images.
The speaker announcements came alive with a fun and dynamic vibe. We incorporated the iconic X in the background and the TED red in a few of the flyers.
Updated: In April 2018 we were very saddened to hear of the sudden passing of this very talented artist. We extend our condolences to his friends and family.
The theme for the 2018 edition of TEDxUbud is Seen/Unseen. When we saw Gentur Suria's work, we immediately knew how we wanted to announce the TEDxUbud date and theme for 2018.
The event itself will be exploring topics related to the visible and invisible, the tangible and intangible, of the world around us so it was interesting to explore a 'hidden in plain sight' announcement on TEDxUbud's social media. When we started to get feedback regarding how long it took people to understand what they were looking at, or when they told us the images disturbed them in some way, we realized it had worked perfectly.
Elami Productions creates and designs events in Bali. Producers of Ubud Open Studios and TEDxUbud.
Big or small, we’re an email away.
hello@elami.co
Event design, production, experiential marketing, brand storytelling.
© 2014-2025 PT Elami Daya Cipta
