Meet Passionate People: The Alphabet Press

If you have not heard about them, you better be now. The Alphabet Press is a printmaking workspace dedicated to letterpress, design and curation. We are proud to say that we may be the only contemporary letterpress printmaker in Malaysia.

We were very fortunate to be accommodated with a 2-hour sharing session with The Strategist, Cliff, and The Printmaker, Zeejay, learning what letterpress is all about.

What makes these passionate people go all in to bring letterpress into Malaysia?

"We tried to look for letterpress printers for our collateral but found none in the country. With much courage and affection to make this service available for all, we began our journey to make this dream come true."

"It was not easy," Cliff said, when asked how they manage to get three Heidelberg Press. No one is producing these machine anymore so to source for spare parts was part of the big challenge.

A lot of details and attention are given to each print out because the entire process is manual and carefully planned to ensure each piece of printing is perfectly done and we cannot agree more when Zeejay explained to us the steps involved to operate the press.

We believe the founders have gone a long way to be where they are now, and a lot more longer still. Nonetheless, the outcome of letterpress printing is unbeatable and truly unique. Keep up the good work and we wish The Alphabet Press make an impact in the local print industry.

Visit their Website (http://the-alphabet-press.myshopify.com/) or Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/TheAlphabetPress

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Building a Better Team in XiMnet

To move ourselves forward and achieve great success, the secret ingredient is to groom a great team.

A great team moves mountains as one. While it is not easy to keep every team member engaged, here are the things we do in order to knit ourselves closer to each other and aim for great results for our clients!

Shake Things Up

Nobody likes routine so we take the effort to shake things up every now and then. Like how you ask? Cooking Contest! Not good enough? What about Gratitude Day, #LoveAtWork, Tuesday Sharings and Music Nights? All we wish say is that, it is not about who is the boss. It's about who has got the best ideas or initiatives in mind to share.

Out-of-The-Office Day

As a creative digital agency, we understand the importance of a good environment to craft ground breaking ideas. Don't get us wrong, we’ve received many compliments on our cosy office space, but knowing our team, sometimes it is also good to hold discussions in a more casual environment, such as a café.

In fact, we do more than that. We hold sightseeing trips as well as weekly sports sessions away from the office. These sessions keep work exciting.

Celebrate Our Success All The Time

We acknowledge our team members’ dedication and commitment in delivering a great outcome to our clients. Therefore, one way to keep everyone encouraged and appreciated is to reward each and every one of them in all possible ways. It is not always expensive but in XiMnet, we value true support - as simple as a genuine thank you to one another.

Having said all that, a strong and effective team is not built overnight. We will continue to put in time and effort in building a positive culture and a loving environment for everyone to feel loved and rewarded at work.

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The Culture of Saying #ThankYou

Everyone wish to be appreciated because it motivates us, both at work and in life. 

In XiMnet, saying genuine "Thank You" is not uncommon among the team members. It's an incredibly powerful pair of words to keep us going despite the challenges we face. It builds stronger and meaningful relationships. In fact, saying thank you with a heart of gratitude can change lives.

And by saying thank you and meaning it, you could change a very bad day into a day of joy. Have you changed somebody's bad day into a better one?

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Work Culture: Pressing The "Send" Email Button

All of us at work receive approximately 100 e-mails per day if not more with 50% of them unopened and accumulated into thousands of unread e-mails in a year.

While e-mail is a formal mode of communication in the workplace, we believe it's also good to think twice before sending the e-mail to our colleagues and clients. This is because there are times when walking over to speak to our colleagues, or a phone call to the clients is a more effective way to convey our message.

Still undecided if you should be sending the e-mail out? We hope the flowchart below helps.

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Can Love Exist At Work?

Image by Camdiluv

Don't get us wrong here. What we are about to share here today is about the choice of leadership, and in this case, at work.

While we are often fed with the idea that people and processes need to be crude, cold and emotionless in the business world, we beg to differ.

It's all about the choice we make, that is, to get things running with the power of Love or Fear in your organization.

A company which is driven by Fear often produce resistance among team members. It may be an effective motivator at the beginning but it loses its impact in the long run because we will eventually give up trying to do a good job, especially when you know your  supervisor will end up screaming at us no matter how hard we try.

On the contrary, Love works the exactly the opposite. Love builds positive social interactions between people and knit team members closer together. Love begets love. A workplace filled with care and trust give us great comfort to give deliver the best to the team, as well as to the organization.

Having that said, XiMnet strengthened this value system at work by having a small in-house #LoveAtWork initiative to show our love and appreciation among the team members. Check out how some of our team members put love into action!



So, how would you like to run your organization?

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Creating A Creative Workplace

Your work environment directly influences your mood and ability to generate creative ideas and feasible solutions. Creative workplaces usually have interesting and visually stimulating things throughout the work space. But it's not just that, here are some ideas how to keep your (and your team members) creativity flowing.

1. Allow Play Time!
Play time, outings and fun activities bring the brain into a relaxed phase that is conducive to creative idea generation. Research has shown that positive moods stimulate creativity. It is important to cultivate a fun and positive working environment that supports the flow of creative juices.

What we play in our office? We've got XBOX Kinect, Taboo and nevertheless UNO!




2. Provide Creative Outlets
Providing freedom for creative expression in the workplace is crucial. For instance, let employees decorate their personal work area the way they like it to be. Develop channels for employees to voice their ideas by using an internal blog-sphere or suggestion box. This will encourage employees to share freely their ideas and thoughts.

3. Keep A Criticism-Free Environment
Criticism or cynical attitudes kills creativity. Responses like – “This is ridiculous” or “This has never been done before!” and other similar comments emanate from closed and rigid minds. Resistance can destroy ideas and stifle creative culture, and should be avoided.

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Peanut Ways To Be More Productive @ Work

In today’s busy world, we seem to be obsessed with the idea of “productivity” and “work hacks”.

It’s easy to see why: being able to get more done allows us to get ahead in life, and even gives us more time to do the things we love outside of work.

The problem we run into, however, is that it is easy to get motivated, but hard to stay disciplined.



Source: AsapScience, Sparring Mind

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Company Retreat @ The Dusun

Yes, we took a quick break last weekend to this wonderful place named, The Dusun in Seremban.

Alongside with the time for our Q1 Performance Review, it was decided perhaps it's better to host it somewhere different. Somewhere fun.

In fact, we had a lot of fun.

But we did not forget the main reason of the retreat too. Several rounds of serious discussions were held. This is to evaluate how far we are from our goals for year 2013. We want to be sure this year will be a great one for the team, as well as our customers.

The Chief Alchemist with his opening speech. *Even the cat's listening*

Till then!

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Infusing Play Into Mundane Tasks

Article written by Leo Babauta, featured in Design Taxi.

When I write about loving every moment and loving what you do, people often ask, “What about when you have to do something you don’t like?”

You can’t always enjoy what you’re doing, right? Actually, you can. You just have to remember what it’s like to be a child.

• Sing as you do chores
• Use dishwashing as a form of mindfulness practice
• Make a game of computer tasks—see how fast you can get your inbox to empty (set a timer)
• Give yourself points for checking off your tasks, and see how many points you can get each day
• Skip instead of walk
• Imagine you are in a movie when you walk into a meeting
• Give yourself challenges
• Make bets with friends when it comes to doing things you don’t normally like doing
• Play music, dance around
• Do a victory dance after you do anything good
• Annoy your co-workers by calling them Jeeves
• Only text people in Spanish
• Play games to learn things
• When you send an email, make fax noises
• When you have to clean something, give a play-by-play of your actions with a Howard Cossell voice
• Imagine that your co-workers are robots, or vampires (Bella?)
• Talk to your computer, and give it a name
• Pretend you’ve never been anywhere before, and that everywhere is new
• Anytime you do something, ask, “What would Dwight Schrute Do?” (WWDSD?)
• Try to rhyme your emails or tweets

Sure, there are things we have to do every day that we might think are boring: household chores, errands, routine tasks at work, being in a meeting that’s makes you want to pound your head on the table. But those are only boring because we’ve chosen to make them boring.

Though I don’t want to tell you how to play, by request, here are a few quick examples: OK, those weren’t all great, but I’m sure you could think of better ones once you get into the right mindset. We’ve had the play pounded out of us, from years of schooling and work. Bring the play back, by watching a kid and seeing how amazing life is for them.

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