Tell Your Children Singapore: The Studio That Became a Brand
Four illustrators meet at Temasek Polytechnic's School of Design and, instead of scattering into separate freelance careers, start a studio together in 2014. A decade later, Tell Your Children is one of Singapore's most recognisable graphic-led labels, and the reason is simple: most brands hire illustrators. TYC is the illustrators.
Deon Phua, Russell Ong, Lydia Yang and Kevin Too teamed up for a practical reason. As Deon put it in a 2018 interview, "The intention was to take on bigger projects that would be hard for just one person to do solo."
Website: tellyourchildren.shop
Instagram: @tellyourchildren
Where to find it: Online, on their website or follow their IG to find out where is their next pop up!
The Name and the Early Moves
The name sets the tone. "Tell Your Children" is lifted from the original working title of Reefer Madness, the 1936 American cult film. It's a knowing reference, and it signals what TYC is about: irreverence backed by craft.
The early milestones came fast. Within their first year, the crew took their work on tour to six cities across the US and Canada. In 2015 the "Paradise Shores" exhibition landed, and they co-organised SIDETRACK, billed as Singapore's first street meet. That same year British art duo Gilbert & George appropriated a TYC sticker for their Singapore exhibition, which is about as strange a co-sign as a young collective can get.
Street Meets Tropical
TYC once summed up its collective style as "street meets tropical", and more recently as "very illustrative and very graphic." Both hold up. The unisex range runs from graphic tees, ringer tees and hoodies to jerseys, varsity jackets, caps and socks, then spills into homeware with fruit-shaped ceramics and throw rugs.
The motifs do the heavy lifting: birds, bears, snails and stingrays, gardens and fruit, alchemy symbols, and stingray and snakeskin camo. It reads like one sketchbook, because it is.
Client Work as Scaffolding
Here's what separates TYC from the usual "artist makes merch" story. The studio commissions weren't a side hustle. They were the foundation.
Murals and visuals for Razer, MTV World Stage Malaysia, Uniqlo's Singapore flagship, New Balance and Baybeats gave the crew scale and visibility, and the studio has also worked with Nike and Vans. In September 2025, TYC painted a six-panel mural for the Borderlands 4 Southeast Asia launch pop-up at The Centrepoint.
The commercial work didn't dilute the vision. It bankrolled and pressure-tested the visual language that now fills TYC's own collections.
The Wizard and the Way Back
A recent collection, profiled by Her World in December 2025, revolves around a wizard character, with a fantasy narrative that will land with fans of Dungeons & Dragons or The Witcher. The story underneath is personal. In Deon's words, it follows "a powerful wizard who rediscovers his creative magic after years of isolation in his castle," and it mirrors the founders' own path: "After more than a decade of commercial work, we wanted to reconnect with our creative identity."
"To us, accessible art means art that doesn't need an instruction manual," the studio told the magazine. That's the TYC philosophy in one line.
More Than a Label - Tell Your Children
TYC keeps the door open for others. Its Open Studios series on Instagram spotlights fellow creatives, it commissions lesser-known artists for guest graphics, and the TYC Coffee Kiosk with Folk Yard takes the brand into physical community space.
This weekend the label is showing at Common Rare Singapore at Suntec, and we previously flagged it in our Culture Cartel Genesis rundown. What makes this homegrown label worth your attention is ownership: the people setting the visual direction are the same ones running the brand.
Heading to Singapore? Our Singapore streetwear shopping guide covers Dover Street Market and the rest of the city's best stops.
