Introduction
Our staff feature today is OOm’s Senior Digital Designer, Herlene Chng. Her lively and outgoing personality coupled with her proactiveness in giving suggestions to improve the design creatives within the team makes working with her such a joy!
Describe your role in OOm as a Senior Digital Designer.
As a Senior Digital Designer, my main role is to turn ideas into engaging visuals and deliver our clients’ message to their target audiences. It is essential for a designer to be constantly updated with design trends and apply them in our work.
Tell me about one memorable incident / experience you had while working in OOm.
I joined OOm back in April 2020. Of course we cannot forget what happened in April 2020, it was Singapore’s Covid-19 circuit breaker. Never have I ever experienced working from home within a month after joining a new firm. I continued working fully from home for the next 6 months!
When it’s around 3 months into working from home (WFH), I struggle with getting my creativity flowing into my designs. I started to be more critical towards my work and ended up working past the working hours to fix it. It got worse and mainly I think it was because I was stuck in the house. So I decided to stay connected with my colleagues through social media and started doing things I like to de-stress after the working hours – playing games and taking a walk. I started seeing improvements after establishing a routine for a balanced work life for myself.
I think it was a very good experience because it pushed me to be more responsible for my physical and mental health as well as productivity at work. WFH has made me discover a lot about myself and helped a lot with my time management to complete my work within the working hours to meet deadlines. It also highlighted the importance of catering time for myself to rest and for self-care.
After more than a year of WFH, now, I’ve adjusted myself to the new norm.
Tell us some of your favourite activities.
I do have a lot of hobbies and most of them are very active activities! If anyone wants to go for high-elements outings, ask me along! I love doing obstacle courses. Cycling is also very fun! I usually go cycling over the weekends with my friends.
What do you do during your free time?
I would say documentaries on true crime scenes intrigues me! I really really love this show called BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime! 10/10! 😘
I enjoy drinking tea too, especially chinese tea. It is therapeutic as it gives me a sense of calmness. I love drinking my tea without sugar.
What’s your favourite food?
I love all kinds of food 🤤 I am always on a Cafe Hopping adventure! Exploring Singapore to look for good food with my loved ones is such a precious activity to me as I treasure the time spent with them.
If you could only eat 3 cuisines your whole life, what would it be?
That is a really tough choice! 😰 If I really can only choose 3, they will be Japanese, Western and Chinese Food. I love Japanese cuisine the most because they focus on enhancing the natural flavours of the ingredients instead of using additional sauces for flavouring.
What are your pet peeves?
Misalignments in creatives. My job as a designer gave me OCD when it comes to alignments. Especially in photos, logos and any other creatives! I think it is a good occupational disease as it is important to produce creatives that are properly aligned.
Name your favourite activity.
Hanging out with animals. I love animals – cats, dogs and rabbits – but I am sadly allergic to fine fur. I do have a hamster at home even though it gives me an allergic reaction 😅
As I cannot own a bigger pet, I visit cat and dog cafes. Pre-covid, before masks were common, I would wear them when I interact with animals (took it down for the pictures). On times that I experience allergic reactions, I will endure the discomfort. Visiting them there is the only way I can spend time with fur friends because I cannot own one. 😭
