Salon des Refusés

When numerous artists whose works for exhibition at the annual Salon Paris were turned down by the jury, they found an unexpected champion, none other than Emperor Napoleon III. Responding to public concern over the decisions of the jurors, Napoleon set up the Salon des Refusés in 1863 to let the rejected works gain some public exposure, deservedly or not. Read more here. In my career I have faced many such "refusés" situations, but instead of letting them get me down, I just filed away the works. Some eventually metamorphosised into new works, others are still languishing in my portfolios. In this blog I will resurrect some of the stuff that my clients rejected and post them for public review. Roses or rotten tomatoes, I'll take them in my stride. Preparation works including scanning of pre-digital pieces are ongoing for new posts.

While working on some export promotional packaging for spice paste maker Asian Home Gourmet at the turn of the millennium, I was invited to pitch for a print advertising campaign. These products take the chore out of cooking traditional local specialties like curries, stews, roasts and stir-fries which involve gathering many ingredients that are then pounded or ground in stone pestle and mortar implements. The arrival of electric food processors do help, but AHG’s spice pastes take it one step further by providing all the key ingredients in a ready-to-use sachet. The old way is so yesterday and literally so Stone Age using those granite grinding devices. Hence the theme adopted here to bring out the wow factor of convenience in a bag. The first concept (above)  was to be rendered in comics style, telling of a family rescued from stone age drudgery. I toyed with another headline "Stone Age tribe found in Singapore" but decided prudence was the better part of valo