When I first started my illustration journey, I had no grand plan for a studio with a team. It was just me. So, when it came time to name that initial effort in 2015, I settled on Behind 90.

The name was a direct translation of “millennial” in Chinese.

Back then, the millennial movement was everywhere, it had a young, disruptive energy that felt right.

My initial intention was simple: I wanted to challenge the status quo of the illustration industry in Malaysia. At the time, illustration wasn’t even considered a viable option for serious brands; it was often dismissed as mere “cartoon” work, and corporate clients had a genuine second thought about including it in their advertisements.

I still remember my first illustration for a truly “serious” brand: a Merdeka campaign for Perodua Malaysia. That illustration was published as a full-page advert in the newspaper, and I keep a copy of it to this day.

It felt like a win.

The more work we put out, the more people started seeing the true potential of pairing illustration with their brand identity.

Soon, we were busy with seasonal campaigns, bespoke sampul designs, ang pow packets, and many core key visual projects. We were working with everyone—from small, local coffee businesses to global giants like Petronas and Netflix.

But by 2020, the word “90s” no longer felt “in thing.”

I started to notice that having a number in the company name wasn’t quite timeless. Even though my team didn’t see an issue, and clients still loved the work, I felt that the name Behind 90 no longer represented my current state of mind.

It was a wonderful legacy, but I was ready for something new.

When the opportunity arose for a joint venture and a fresh restart, I was determined to find a name that paid respect to our past while speaking to our future. I needed something that felt like the next logical step.

That’s when the word “Beyond” struck me so hard.

It perfectly represents my current state of mind. Behind 90 is what successfully carried me from a young illustrator to running a successful studio. Now, we are ready to go beyond that legacy. We are ready to lean on new partners to expand further, achieve bigger things, and cultivate an even better creative culture.

Most importantly, we are dedicated to serving the creative market in Malaysia with the promise of producing nothing but good work, especially as we navigate the current AI landscape (more on that in the next post).

And that is how we got the name Studio Beyond as our new form of identity.

— Lai