What’s Your City Of Dreams ?

Thanks to Amelia from Waggener Edstrom for the invite, I was at the spanking new mall Ion Orchard on Friday night for HP’s City of Dreams Blogger event. This is part of HP Digital Festival by the way, happening all the way till 13th August at Ion Orchard Basement 4 !

HP has always been part of my “design life” in a way since most of my internship work was for HP various projects, so it’s no surprise that HP is heavily involved with the arts and design. I’m quite happy that HP is taking the lead to produce work stations that are specially designed for designers/artists. Sure, Apple may still be more commonly found as the love of all design addicts but it is still easier to switch from softwares to softwares on a PC and once in awhile, you meet clients who do not know how to deal with MAC formats (which honestly, I don’t find it a problem till I met some people who really just don’t get it.)

Anyways, the event was pretty fun ! We sat through the prize presentation for the winning digital arts & animations from ‘HP Lightropolis’ competition. Then we were caught by surprise when we were divided into groups for a small design challenge ! (Thank God that my “artistically inclined” boyfriend isn’t on the same team..HAHA!) I have to comment on the HP workstations, perhaps it was because there were no other running applications, but the computers were really fast – even when we opened like 30+ vector graphics all at one go. I’d probably get the “blue screen of death” if I tried to do that at home ! Winning the challenge with our random-chunk-everything-together-and-change-color-”masterpiece” was a bonus for me and the 2 girls on my team that night ! (Though I wish it was a netbook or the workstation that I carried home instead, teehee!) Oh, we got to take pictures with Ben 10 too ! I’m sad that I didn’t manage to find out whether it was a guy behind the female character’s costume !

At the end of the day, I think it was not about winning the challenge or the workstations but how companies are taking a lead in encouraging the Arts scene in Singapore. I really appreciate how some organizations are putting in the effort and not just looking at making profits because one thing for sure, consumers are smarter than before. It’s not just about the price but how a brand leaves an impact on them or the society as a whole. At least for me, that’s the case. So 2 thumbs up for the HP people and of course thank you to the organizers+team behind this event ! (Just that I’d prefer to have less surprises or guess-what-will-be-coming-up-next in the future..haha!)

And what’s my city of dreams ? It’s white because it’s blank ! =P

note: can’t seem to get the pictures up from my cam..will try again tomorrow!