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 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
Posted by leepeng on May 1, 2010
During lunch meeting yesterday, we have decided to change our default support of Internet Explorer from Ver 7 to Ver 8.
IE8 has formally launched since Mar 2009 and its now 1 year old.
According to statistics of w3counter.com, IE8 has overtook IE7 became most usage browser.
In addition IE8 is more compliant to W3C standard and better support for CSS.
Conclusion… We can build our website faster as the same code will work in major browsers. No more patches and workaround fix for Internet Explorer 
Posted by leepeng on March 12, 2010
Our dear Kee Perng realised that some of his colleague have used too much toilet paper when came out from the toilet. Especially those like to wash their face and wipe their hand using toilet roll.
So he came out with this design (recycled from cake box) and I’m pleased to give him our first invention award.
SJ will give him the prize by treating him dinner tonight 
Posted by leepeng on July 3, 2009
Have you ever encounter the situation which after getting your hosting for a while, you start to notice the email send from your server couldn’t reach your recipient; especially when the email is sent direct from the webserver using sendmail (e.g. mail function of PHP)
I myself is not hosting expert. However, after a few shocks, I somehow figure out some simple mis-configuration that easily happen to hosting engineers while setting up new server.
Two main cause: 1st is the missing of qualified domain name and second is missing of SPF setting.
These two can be observe easily by looking at the email header content in GMail. Try create a simple testmail.php which will send email to your GMail account using PHP’s mail function.
<?php
mail("leepeng@gmail.com", "Test Mail", "Test 123", "From: something@xx.com");
?>
Then open the source / original message of the email.
Here is an example of “Healthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs50083wfq;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.255.12 with SMTP id c12mr12997276wai.11.1246352633584;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <bounce@organisedmum.com.sg>
Received: from organisedmum.com.sg (organisedmum.com.sg [116.12.50.227])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 1si12092283pxi.65.2009.06.30.02.03.52;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) client-ip=116.12.50.227;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=bounce@organisedmum.com.sg
Received: (qmail 20407 invoked by uid 48); 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Date: 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Message-ID: <20090630090351.20397.qmail@organisedmum.com.sg>
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Here is an example of “unhealthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs126200wfq;
Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:18:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.224.28.130 with SMTP id m2mr10174634qac.52.1246519115111;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:35 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <nobody@vm4.kfc>
Received: from vm4.kfc (202-150-217-11.rev.ne.com.sg [202.150.217.11])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 15si3872346yxe.130.2009.07.02.00.18.34;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) client-ip=202.150.217.11;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) smtp.mail=nobody@vm4.kfc
Received: from nobody by vm4.kfc with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <nobody@vm4.kfc>)
id 1MMGZG-0005GT-VS
for leepeng79.chen@gmail.com; Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:18:51 +0800
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
If you observe, you will notice that the “healthy” example has a qualified domain name which associate with the IP address. However the “unhealthy” exmple does not have a qualified domain name. The mis-configure one will either has setting localhost or just the server name in the private network (vm4.kfc for this example)
Second is the “healthy” example can pass GMail’s SPF check but the “unhealthy” one have the mark of neutral. SPF is to help make sure the server is not used for spamming. When GMail said it is neutral, it means GMail don’t know if the server is right or wrong.
My experience is that GMail has been very generous in their antispam as it will accept most of the emails. However, if you notice these 2 mis-configuration, it will be likely the mail would not able to deliver to Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or some corporate email addresses.
So now you have something to argue with the hosting engineer 
The last thing to check is to make sure your server’s IP address is not blacklisted. One common place to check is at www.spamhaus.org
Posted by John on July 2, 2009
Posted by John on June 9, 2009
We are happy to inform that Forecepts have upgraded to a bigger space. Don’t worry, we are still located in the same building, we just moved to another unit #03-01C. Do take note of the change in our unit number for future mail correspondence. We will be happy if you can visit us sometime and see us at our new office.