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Welcome to Kawan—our vibrant community of data heads and storytellers. We’re all about improving data literacy and sharing nuanced stories about Asia. Come hang!
the power of play— issue #64
My childhood was distinctly marked by improvisation. In the days before screens and social media, we played masak-masak and make-believe, using the everyday things around us to bring our imaginary worlds to life. The corridors of our HDB block became a makeshift supermarket aisle, a blanket transformed into a fort,
Bite-sized indulgences
There's something magical about childhood snacks. They're time machines wrapped in crinkly packages, portals to simpler days when 20 cents could buy happiness and sticky fingers were badges of honour, rather than inconveniences to be sanitised away. When I think about my own skittish excitement licking
How COVID-19 has changed the data storytelling landscape
We’re at the midway point of 2020 and, quite unbelievably, the world has been brought to its knees by the invisible yet pervasive COVID-19…
Designing data visualisations for social media
As Kontinentalist’s Multimedia Designer, one of the things I’m in charge of is creating social media assets as teasers for our stories…
Humans of Kontinentalist: Kenneth Wee
Before you read this interview, there are some basic facts you need to know about Kenneth: 1. He is a penguin 2. Coffee flows through his…
Helping the environment by staying home — issue #11
What does the future of travel look like? Singapore has been in a semi-lockdown (or circuit breaker, as we call it) for almost two months. There's been hot debate on how life may return "back to normal". Like nearly everywhere else in the world, the real
Let’s talk about mental health!
Editor’s note: This roundtable was organised by our former intern, Zu Xiang, in January 2020, before the Circuit Breaker was implemented…
Humans of Kontinentalist: Siti Aishah
Today we are chatting (remotely) with Aishah to find out more about her and the work that she does at Kontinentalist!
Coding a Konti Story
In my 8 months of working with Konti as a front-end web-developer, I’d worked on 5 hard-coded stories, and a handful of auxiliary data viz…
Humans of Kontinentalist: Gwyneth Cheng
Today, we are catching up with our writer, Gwyneth. You may have seen her most recent story on the Cross-Island Line project. As we are…
Imagining a Singapore before COVID-19 — issue #10
If you're anything like me, you've rather heard enough about COVID-19. Day in, day out, it seems like all we can talk about is COVID-19, our daily case numbers, and how the virus is rapidly changing our world. This should surprise no one—we are living
How I write data-driven stories
I’ve been a writer for almost two years now at Kontinentalist, a data-driven editorial studio in Singapore. In that time, I’ve interviewed…
Asian specialty coffee—that’s a thing?
Your local coffee shop roasts local beans, too
All of Singapore's COVID-19 clusters, in one chart — issue #9
When did you last step into the office? I did this morning, at 8 am, and realised I haven't been in the office, or seen Team A (we split our team into two) in 9 days. That's right around 168 hours, but so much has happened