Inside Tulisan’s Creative Process #1

Step 1: Preliminary Research and Sketching

As big appreciators of the arts and fashion, most of us are often consumed with the beauty a product presents to us without knowing the elementary stages on how a single bag or brand was formed.

At first glance, the bag at Tulisan may seem to be a simple and illustrated projection of our very own talented founder and illustrator, Melissa Sunjaya, but as French Writer Émile Zola explains, “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work,” everything you see today in our store is a product of intense research before we, ourselves, can strut our way through the beauty of the Tulisan hand carried bags.

Preliminary Research

We agree the gift of the artist remains in the head and hands of creative Melissa Sunjaya, but as she confirms, every illustrated elements were delivered firstly through the constant development of a single idea. The initial steps is to capture her thoughts and infuse her emotions into the surrounding elements she finds – her inspiration can be formed by anything from Art Nouveau to old packages of cigarettes. She takes a further step by understanding varying elements in fashion, arts and culture, and observing consumer patterns to finally cross web her instincts into the context of Tulisan’s characteristics. For the “Love Letters of Roro Mendut” collection, the inspiration she took was based on elements revolving around royalty, emblems, and soft colour palettes.

Sketching

Illustration remains the vital role in the designs of Tulisan’s product. From the selected forecast, Melissa and her team focus on the fashion elements and spends rigorous time in dissecting a proper way to present it visually. By focusing on a certain period highlighting women and royalty, she exhibits a classical Indonesian folks tale, Roro Mendut, emphasizing her sketches on three elements of cloves, chili, and the messenger bird. Here is where the process gets very technical. With the object selected from the research, various techniques of illustration – pointillism, cross-hatching, and vignette – are then explored to get the desired brush of patterns. As the process goes on, the evolution of the pieces comes to play through Melissa’s organic touch, sense of whimsy, and rich tones of both story and colour.