The brainchild of former Newsweek executive Frank Proctor, Muse began as a publication to fill what was seen as a ‘cultural hole’ in Hong Kong, celebrating and promoting local writers, critics, artists, poets, photographers and other creative types. Publisher Frank and editor Perry Lam’s single-minded dedication to the advancement of arts & culture in Hong Kong set Muse apart from the outset. But if that wasn’t enough, the brave decision to combine English and Cantonese as complementary editorial voices (as opposed to merely translations of each other) was something that had never been done before.
As non-Cantonese-speaking designers, this posed multiple challenges in itself. It’s difficult enough to create effective typographic hierarchies in your native language, let alone one that uses a completely different alphabet—where even adding too much letter-spacing can completely change the meaning of a word or phrase. Add to this the initially extremely loose editorial structure and lack of any visual collaborators locally, and the task becomes much bigger than ‘merely’ creating an entire magazine template from scratch.
Through sheer determination on Frank’s part, a full editorial team was assembled and an office opened on Hong Kong Island. After much research and cold-calling, a network of artists, illustrators and photographers was slowly built to complement the stable of writers who rapidly agreed to come on board. Once the template was designed (a long and laborious—but highly enjoyable—process), the last piece of the puzzle was finding the right art director to take charge of ongoing editions. This took much longer than expected, and meant Katherine made multiple trips to the Muse office, to fill in as art director and designer for the first handful of issues.
Working in a foreign environment with high-pressure deadlines (and chicken’s feet for lunch) taught Katherine some valuable lessons in both diplomacy and tenacity—lessons she has since taken into multiple pressure-cooker situations at home and abroad.
The dedication shown by the design and editorial team, and most of all the unfailing optimism of the publisher, has helped build Muse into a strong voice for arts & culture in Hong Kong. And although it is no longer in magazine form, Muse continues to play an integral role in the continual flourishing of arts & culture in Hong Kong as a publisher, teacher and benefactor. If Muse set out to fill a cultural hole, it has certainly achieved far more.
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| Covers featured artworks by local artists commissioned specifically for Muse. |
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| The upfront section featured ‘my diary’, featuring everything one could possibly want to know about upcoming cultural events. Oftentimes irreverent and always entertaining, ‘my diary’ provided the light to some of the deeper articles’ shade. |
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| The complimentary way English and Cantonese was used earned Muse the Society of Publishers in Asia Award for Editorial Excellence (local English category), two years in a row. |
