Studio · 工作室
A workshop
with a website
upstairs.
The shopfront on Reclamation Street, 7pm. The workshop sign is Bend No. 00. We do not count it.
How it started · 開始
The signs came down.
The bench stayed.
In 2019, Wing Kee Neon moved off Reclamation Street and the bench stayed behind, because nobody could get it down the stairs. Mak Wing-sze, the founder’s granddaughter, took the upstairs rooms instead and started a design studio in them.
For two years the studio sold websites and the workshop sold nothing. Then a noodle bar asked for a sign and a site, in that order, and the two halves turned out to be one trade.
Today the workshop takes about a third of the work. The rest is brand and web, made by people who think in lines either way.
Three rules · 規矩
We work
by three.
One line or none
If a brand cannot be drawn without lifting the pen, we keep drawing.
Never fake the glow
AI can widen a layout. It cannot bend glass. We say which is which, on every job.
Black is a colour
Half of every sign is the part we paint over. Half of every brand is what it refuses.
The people · 人
Six of us.
Mak Wing-sze
Tommy Leung
Chan Hoi-lam
Priya Raman
Oscar Ferreira
Yuki Tam
Downstairs · 樓下
Tommy’s bench.
The bench is older than the studio, the street sign and most of the staff. Tommy has run it for fifty years. He still back-paints by hand.
the bench was built
signs bent on it
re-tubing, in 2009
Visit · 到訪
Ring the bell
at number 41.
The street door is usually shut. Ring the bell marked 光管 after 5pm and someone will come down. Bench visits are by appointment, because the bench is small and the stories are long.
We are ten minutes from Yau Ma Tei station, Exit B2. The signs on the stairs are the archive overflow. Do not touch the red one.
If it needs light, tell us.
A brand, a website or a sign over a door. Send us the short version and we’ll reply within two working days.
