Ugly Malaysiana: Finding Beauty in Malaysia’s Bad Design

By Danial Martinus  •  27 Mar 2025 in Features

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In a world obsessed with sleek branding and picture-perfect aesthetics, there’s something oddly liberating about the unapologetically ugly.

The kind of ugly that isn’t just an eyesore but an experience—a cacophony of pixelated fonts, grotesque colour schemes, and signage so bizarre you’d think it was satire. But it’s not. It’s just Malaysia.

And no one gets this better than Jun Kit, the mysterious mind behind ‘Ugly Malaysiana‘.

“Just a slow and silly little ‘sharing’ project”

What started over a decade ago as a personal collection of low-res snapshots—crappy phone pictures taken for laughs—has evolved into a cult Instagram project. Jun Kit never really meant for it to become a thing. He just had an archive of images that spoke to him, in all their dysfunctional glory.

Shoddy advertisements, bizarre shop names, chaotic urban planning decisions—each post is a little glimpse into the absurdity of everyday Malaysia.

But Ugly Malaysiana is not just about how things look. It’s about what they reveal.

“The feelings they evoked for me personally was something I wanted to share,” Jun Kit tells JUICE. “Shock, or frustration, or the surprise that something like that was approved—basically a crying-laughing situation.”

And Malaysians get it.

A designer who learned to love the chaos of it all

Jun Kit is, ironically, a graphic designer. Trained to recognise hierarchy, balance, and readability, he was taught the golden rules of good design.

So, encountering Malaysia’s visual landscape—where rules seemed optional and everything had the aesthetic sensibility of someone who just discovered Photoshop filters—was initially frustrating.

For a long time, he envied places like Singapore, where the government commissions polished, high-concept branding. Meanwhile, most of Malaysia’s official websites look like relics from the ’90s, stuck in an eternal loop of bad gradients and Times New Roman.

“But over time, there was something comical and badass about that too,” he shares.

“I guess I wanted to shift that sense of frustration into something more lighthearted? To just own it, since it’s really part of our visual culture… You see it everywhere—ah beng flyers, Ramadan bazaar stall banners, etc.”

Ugly Malaysiana became his way of celebrating the accidental, unintentional design choices that make Malaysia, well… Malaysia.

When bad is good

Ugly Malaysiana was never meant to be a major project. Even now, Jun Kit says it’s just something he updates whenever he feels like it. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not just a niche humour project—it’s tapped into something deeper.

Jun Kit posted about the now-infamous ‘Visit Malaysia 2020’ logo, featuring an orangutan, a proboscis monkey, and a turtle wearing shades. It was a tragic mishmash of graphic sins that looked like it belonged on a 2001 PowerPoint slide, and Malaysians on social media seemed to agree at the time.

“Ugly” is relative, but Ugly Malaysiana exists in that liminal space between bad taste and cultural artefact. It’s so bad, it loops back around to being brilliant. And we’re not just talking about that old VMY 2020 logo.

Horribly maintained infrastructure, cars haphazardly parked under ‘no park zone–cars will be towed’ signs, and Ramadan bazaar banners with fonts so stretched and warped they look like they’re screaming. None of it should work. And yet, it does.

It’s a certain kind of ugly—one that Malaysians don’t just recognise but feel.

In a way, Ugly Malaysiana is also a rebellion against the curated perfection of Instagram.

Back in the late 2000s, social media was all about clean, minimal aesthetics—Kinfolk Magazine, latte art, beige linen. Jun Kit found it more interesting to archive something completely opposite.

“This project was a response to that too, just thinking it was bad ass to ‘archive’ something so in-your-face,” says Jun Kit.

“Latte art, a wooden cottage, flowers, and then, some fucked up mannequin against a poster of the Eiffel Tower and the words ‘Boutique de Fairy’… I think that sense of rudeness or impudence can be notti and funny.”

Ugly, but make it kurlass

The name Ugly Malaysiana itself is a tongue-in-cheek play. It’s a strange fusion of trashy and sophisticated.

“Kind of camp and ‘high kurlasss‘ at the same time, like it could sound like the name of a drag queen, or an ‘upscale’ nouveau riche homestay, or like that magazine, Impiana, about ‘English-inspired’ interiors attributed to Datuk/Datin-aspirants,” Jun Kit jokes.

And while it remains an underground, indie project, its influence is quietly expanding.

There’s no backlash (yet), but a couple of comments have accused the page of being condescending. Jun Kit just shrugs. “People who follow it or know about it are people who ‘get it’ and find amusement with it,” he shares.

Even fellow designers find it amusing—there’s a growing appreciation for “anti-design,” where ugliness is intentional, rules don’t exist, and bad taste is worn like a badge of honour.

Jun Kit has released several Ugly Malaysiana zines—a curation of Malaysia’s worst (best) tangible and intangible design—with a new one currently in the works.

Beyond that, Jun Kit has no concrete plans.

“An exhibition would be fun, but really everywhere around us is an exhibit of Malaysiana,” he quips.

“From the fucked up road signs (some look like horror posters at night with black goo typography instead of it being clean and reflective) to assy, entitled elite behaviour and nasty parliamentary debates.”

It’s all right there, in the open.

Ugly isn’t just an aesthetic. It’s an identity. And Jun Kit is its most dedicated archivist.

Follow Ugly Malaysiana on Instagram!

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