About
Jay in his studio, Lichtenberg, Berlin.
About the Brand
*Herr PONG Berlin is a Berlin based independent brand designing and producing Leather goods - from Small Leather Goods to Bags, Cute Key Rings to practical Wallets, Stationeries to Travel Accessories. The Key holder collection items were all nicely packed in hand stamped gift box, comes along the hand carved & printed linocut greeting cards.
Named after Jay Pong, the designer behind the brand, the brand focuses on producing thoughtful gifts perfect for birthdays, Christmas, house warmings or weddings, and perhaps a lovely souvenir from Berlin.
“Since I have moved to Berlin, where ever I go, to meet people, by post, by phone call, they call me Herr Pong. This is my identity in this city.”
Herr PONG Berlin was found by a Berlin based Industrial Designer - Jay Pong in 2015.
*(Herr means Mister in German)
About the Designer
Jay is always passionate about fashion-related product design. After graduating in 2011, he immediately began to work for an Italian leather goods brand Fedon 1919 as a Bags and Accessories Designer in Hong Kong. His main duties were Product Design and Product Development for Asia region. Besides creating design drawings, he had to daily telecommunicate between the Italian office, Hong Kong office, Sales Managers and regularly travel to their House Factory/ Material Suppliers in China for the prototypes. During his time in Fedon 1919, he has done 2 Men’s bags and accessories collections for the brand, as well as a small computer bags collection and iPhone cases collections for Official Apple Store Asia Pacific region.
After two years working for the Italian brand, Jay decided to move on with his career, he resigned and relocated in Berlin, Germany. He started to work in a local leather bag studio – Anke Runge Berlin (Jan 2014) as an leather crafts apprentice for 8 months, in order to learn how to design and handcraft high-end leather bags and small leather goods from scratch to finish, including creating patterns, using leather skiving machine and industrial sewing machine. And since September 2014 he was working full-time in the same studio for one year. He was daily designing new leather bags collection(m/f) as well as assisting the company in any design matters including graphic design, product photography and designing the new online shop.
At the end of 2015, Jay has started to produce his own collections with the name Herr PONG Berlin.
Design Inspirations
Jay often gets his inspirations from his travel experiences and people surround him. Many of his work were made as gifts for his friends, and later they became a a part of his collections. He loves to either make something very useful, practical or completely useless but cute thing to make people smile :)
Designer's Background
Skills
- Procient in Photoshop, Illustrator and Keynote
- InDesign, Premiere and iWork
- Hand sketches, Pattern Pieces/ Techpack creation for Leather goods
- Procient in Leather bags structures, internal reinforcement
- Industrial sewing machine, leather skiving machine
- Well experieced working with Leather, PU, Canvas, Nylon etc., metal parts
- Linoleum cut print making
Work Experiences
Anke Runge Berlin
Freelancer – September 2015 – December 2017
Product Designer – September 2014 – August 2015
Apprentice – January 2014 – August 2014
Berlin Area, Germany
Fedon 1919
Designer – August 2011 - September 2013 (2 years 2 months), Hong Kong
Natalie Dissel Jewlry
Internship July 2010 - August 2010 (2 months), Bali, Indonesia
Education
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
BA(HONS), DESIGN – Industrial & Product Design 2008 – 2011
Graduated with 1st Class Honours
Carnegie Mellon University
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Industrial Design 2010 Spring Semester Exchange