L9L.co
Personal experimental project
L9L is a brand I founded to experiment and explore a creative side that is not fulfilled in my professional career. L9L stands for 亂㞗嚟, which means doing something fucking recklessly in Cantonese. It is the antithesis of wanting to be perfect and being hesitant to start a project.
Go to L9L website
I have always wanted to fabricate an oversized coin. For no particular reason, really, I just wanted to make one. So, one day, I decided to start by tracing coins from Hong Kong that I grew up with. The ones that had Queen Elizabeth II on it. One day, while I was tracer her majesty, the news of her passing came on, and at that moment I felt a strange feeling. Hong Kongers have a nickname for Queen Elizabeth II, it was "事頭婆" (see tau por), which is a very local slang that translates to "Boss Woman". Like all British colonies, she's had her face on currencies and on the walls of government buildings. Subconsciously, her image has become almost god-like, as in Chinese religious households would often have god statues and imageries on display. Having lived more than 30 years, Boss Woman had always been on display since before I was born. So, the idea that she can also die had never came to my mind, she's always just been there.
The combination of my contemplation of her death with the fact that I was also literally drawing her face on Illustrator, I felt the need to do something. I looked for random manufacterers in Taiwan until I came across rubber coasters. Then I thought metal ones would be a lot cooler. Went through all the research on the price and processes.
I've made some samples from the manufacturer, and it was too thin. Initially, I wanted to make it with the exact ratio on the thickness, however it was too pricey to justify the cost. In the end, we found a perfect thickness that was thin enough for the cost to make sense but still easy to pick up with my fingernails, and also did not feel cheap on the hands.
Go to L9L website