Posted by jessette on March 8, 2011
Confectionery shops always appeal to me, its “deliciousness” arrest my design sensibilities. One fine afternoon in mid-November last year, I was scurrying along Orchard Road when my eyes were arrested by these delicious Christmas motifs from Marks & Spencer. Their biscuits and chocolate packaging designs are a feast for the eyes. I ran my hand on their glorious tin cans and an image of a gingerbread house caught my eye.
You can just imagine me standing there, staring at that tin box with all the intensity of a child whose eyes gazed upon a coveted dream toy. And that’s how the idea of a gingerbread house appeared before me.
I want to have fun with our Forecepts’ corporate Christmas eCards, so I created this simple, fun and quirky illustration of a gingerbread house. I added those four tiny birds flying up towards the top of the house carrying four Asian-inspired house accents. I have used curly Christmas trees in our last year’s Christmas eCard, I want to keep that as a “trademark”. 
Forecepts Gingerbread House
The fun had not ended that Christmas Season. I’m living in a country where people all get hyped up for Chinese New Year the same way that I used to get hyped up on Christmas Day when I was still a kid. My gingerbread house morphed into an eclectic mix of orange hues with pseudo-Chinese elements. And oh, the rabbits, they must be cute and at the same time, help to usher in a new year of prosperity. This time, we sent out Chinese New Year postcards to our clients.
Forecepts Chinese New Year Postcard
Gingerbread:
The harder German-style Gingerbread is often used to build gingerbread houses similar to the “witch’s house” encountered by Hansel and Gretel. These houses, covered with a variety of candies and icing, are popular Christmas decoration [5] often built by children with the help of their parents. This form of Gingerbread houses is also popular in Norway. (Source:Wikipedia)
The Rabbit:
Cuddly, warm and affectionate are the attributes of the Rabbit. Mysterious and a great party-giver and host, the Rabbit enjoys being the centre of attention once in a while. The Rabbit is occasionally over cautious and can be a bit boring. He is also one of the luckiest signs in the Chinese Astrology chart.
**This blog entry was first posted in my personal website: http://www.crayonslife.com/2011/02/gingerbread-house-and-rabbits.php
Posted by leepeng on September 10, 2010
We had our first Citibank payment gateway integration on Jan 2008 and I think it will be good to share our experience.
Citibank provide a good alternative for the available payment gateways in Singapore (PayPal, WorldPay, eNets, NERA etc). I think the good point with Citibank is flexibility. Programmer can basically implement all kind of workflow after mastering the architecture and API. In addition, Citibank do provide full set of payment options (SALE, AUTH/CAPTURE, VBV). However, it is technically more complicated, require more correspondences and take longer time to implement (and of-course it can be more expensive)
Ask yourself these questions before you call Citibank
- Do you really need Citibank? Do you need a full fledged payment engine? Or simpler payment interface like PayPal and WorldPay can satisfy your need?
- Is Citibank already your aquirer? Have you negotiate a good rate with them?
- What payment mode do you need, SALE or AUTH/CAPTURE?
- Do you need to be protected through VbV (Verify by Visa)?
SALE, AUTH/CAPTURE, VbV???
These can sound foreign if you are new to payment gateway integration.
SALE – Credit will be deducted immediately once transaction successful.
AUTH/CAPTURE – AUTH perform the card verification process and authorise the card (reserve the amount). CAPTURE will do the actual deduction from the reserved amount. AUTH/CAPTURE mode is particularly suitable for reservation (e.g. hotels, flights) and deposit payment.
VbV stands for Verify by Visa (and Master). With VbV activated, card holder with VbV activated will required to key in a security code during online payment. This security code is normally set when the card issuer issued the card and normally can be reset / changed via bank’s online portal or ATM machine. With VbV activated, merchant can reduce the charged back risk if fraud case happen.
The Process
It is not that straight forward to get this payment up and running. In summary here are the steps
1.) Approach Citibank online payment team to create a payment gateway account. You will need to decide the currency, the payment mode (SALE or AUTH/CAPTURE) and if you need VbV to be activated. These will eventually affects the number of online payment accounts you need to open with Citibank.
2.) Receive test account from Citibank
3.) Payment gateway development and integration based on the test account
4.) Payment testing based on test account. Citibank will then required a test report to be submitted to them in order for them to issue the LIVE account.
5.) Issue of LIVE account (not activated)
6.) Payment testing based on LIVE account. Additional test cases will be needed if VbV is turned on and this can only be done at the LIVE account. Citibank will then required a comprehensive test report to be submitted before they giving green light to activate the LIVE account.
7.) LIVE account activated and you can start collecting money.
Posted by jessette on September 3, 2010
In a designer’s life, there are those rare moments when we stumble upon clients and projects that inspire us – projects that remind us why we are in this industry and why we love what we do. When this cosmic circumstance happened, a good design comes out of it: that is Etre Bon.
Etre Bon Gallery and Academy invited us to pitch a design for their web design and e-commerce project. Etre Bon is a sub-brand of Bon Café, which aims to teach and expose Singaporeans and residents to appreciate the art of coffee-making by conducting Coffee Journey Tours and Barista Workshops. As an exclusive agent in Singapore for selling Ascaso Dream Espresso Machines, the website is also targeted for online selling/ordering of this machine as well as barista tools.
In approaching the design for this project, I focused on this particular statement from their brochure. “JOURNEY FROM CROP TO CUP. It may appear to be simple, but behind every cup of coffee lies a stirring story.” The solution doesn’t involve any rocket science or philosophical art. The solution is simple: I just created a simple illustration of the “story of coffee”, focusing on the idea, from “crop” to “cup” and the processes involved in-between.
coffee illustrations
I used some of the elements from their branding such as the striped gray line on top of the rich, black background and added some small, hand illustrated icons on the section pages.
I created some burst of colour for the e-commerce page and enjoyed designing the rest of the styling for all the pages.
Etre Bon Homepage Design
The programming team, especially Elliot and Ross, our flash guy extraordinaire, did a good job in the execution of this project. I want to thank Xiong Zhou and Ian, for bringing us this gem of a client for us to work on.
Cheers to us! Or would I rather say, a cup of coffee for all of us!
Posted by leepeng on August 29, 2010
I just ponder about this question. Forecepts, beside been your web design / development vendor; who else we are?
I came out with some quick answer by my daily observations:
We are:
1.) Web Technology Chaser
We keep our eyes on the latest technologies to solve problems or improve our solutions
2.) Your 2nd Brain
We found out that many time we actually involved in brainstorming business ideas, business solutions, operational and management workflows, accounting procedures before we really got into the actual IT solutions for our clients.
3.) Artist
I must say we have great design team with great ideas. So please please appreciate our creativity and listen to our presentation before you come to the conclusion to use back a pre-conceptual design idea that plug from various websites and trying to assemble them together. We want to be your creative artist, not your drawing machine.
4.) User
We are web user. And we develop products for web user.
5.) Your friend
We listen to you when you complaint about your boss and colleagues
We come to your office so that you can have a reason to call for a internal team meeting
We help you organise and priotise your tasks
We crack jokes with you or listen to your joke of the day
We always wait for the great meal that you want to buy for us… the next time we meet
Posted by leepeng on August 25, 2010
Received this picture couple of months ago. Suppose to be something for us to feel funny and laugh at.
However, the similar picture was actually printed on my university software engineering text book.
It makes me ponder on communications.
A solution can only considered good if it meet client’s objective and solve their problem. In order to do this, understanding and passing of correct information is very important.
In industry practice, we have tools like functional specs, flow charts, screen prototypes and different kind of diagrams.
So do we come out with these documents just to fulfill the software engineering lifecycle or because we quoted documentation or just for the sake of coming out some documents so that both client and us feels good?
I felt documents is useless if it is not a tool for communication. When we draft a functional specs, we have to think in clients’ perspective to come out with something that they can understand so that we can discuss and confirm various business concepts and requirements using the document. At the same time, if we need client to visualise, we have to come out with screens so that we can discuss further or to trigger more views from them so we can have deeper understanding of their needs.
We are learning and doing our best to improve our communications so that we can have more happy customers.
Posted by leepeng on
Why SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer.
SSL pages/sites are start with HTTPS (e.g. https://www.ctc.com.sg/paygate/payment.php)
You will see a lock icon in browser if it is SSL
It provide 2 main function: Encryption and Authentication.
Encryption
When we fill in a form in browser and submit, in default setting, the information in the form is transmit to the server as plain text.
This become not secure if the form ask us for sensitive information like NRIC, credit card info etc.
SSL can encrypt the transmission of info to ensure security.
Authentication
When a visitor come to a website, especially those require payment, he will always want to be sure that the identity of the website is what it claim to be.
Consider the website www.sony-asia.com. How we know this website really belongs to Sony. I can always register a domain call www.sony-southafrica.com and impersonalized as Sony.
SSL contains Digital Certificate to certified the website as who it claimed to be.
SSL Selection
There are many SSL provider and price can be very different depends on function and brands.
In general, there are 2 groups
SSL Cert with Domain name Authentication Only
This will certified that the domain A is really belongs to domain A.
We will recommend this if the website is just a pure online store and the business is not of big brand.
Another reason is the website only need SSL to utilise the encryption feature and authentication is not a big concern.
** Notice the Common Name (CN) and Organization (O) are the domain name.
Here are some package options
https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl.asp (Standard SSL)
https://www.thawte.com/ssl-digital-certificates/ssl123/index.html
http://www.geotrust.com/ssl/quick-ssl-certificates/
SSL Cert with Business Identity Authentication
This will certified that the website belongs to a certain business.
The approval might require more email authentication or event submit a fax or telephone call.
** Notice the Organization (O) is stated as TakeMeToAsia Pte Ltd
Here are some package options
https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl.asp (Deluxe SSL)
https://www.thawte.com/ssl-digital-certificates/ssl/index.html
http://www.geotrust.com/ssl/ssl-certificates/
http://www.verisign.com.sg/ssl/buy-ssl-certificates/secure-site-ssl-certificates/
Posted by jessette on May 20, 2010
At Forecepts, we believe that travelling opens the mind and widen one’s horizon. That’s why we decided to refresh our minds and embark our team on a little adventure. In line with this, we wish to inform you that Forecepts team will be on a SHORT BREAK.
Our office will be CLOSED on the 26th and 27th of May for our company trip.
Thank you for your continued support and partnership with us. We will resume business on the 31st of May.
forecepts edm