Vince Low: Seeing Faces in Lines

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  24 Oct 2013 in Features

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The series has evolved beyond just an ad campaign of course, Vince has taken a personal grip of it, making it his first artistic endeavour that had him drawing portraits of not just necessarily famous people with dyslexia. The reason for this is because as suggested by his Creative Director during the initial stages of the dyslexia campaign, he was convinced that he should sell himself as a dyslexic who has made it as a successful abled person, so to speak. “[My Creative Director] asked me to draw something unique to sell myself, then I thought, drawing is something everyone can do, so how do I draw something unique?” he asks hypothetically. The answer to which you and us already knew.

With the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia planning a gallery for Vince’s works at KLCC soon (a first for him), for the very first time, he finally feels like an artist. “[I feel] very appreciated,” he tells us, saying that he will continue to do art for his own purposes now instead of just as a day job. Getting a bit philosophical, he waxes that “sometimes life is not about working for money, it’s about enjoying what we are doing – only from there you can get more than what you already have.”

It wasn’t always hunky-dory for him though, as it is with most dyslexics, Vince was only diagnosed with the condition much later in life. To be specific, it was 4 years ago, when Grey Group Malaysia first worked on a campaign with Dyslexia Association of Malaysia. He hadn’t heard of the word at all prior to that; “At the time, I asked [my Creative Director], what was dyslexia? So he told me that a dyslexic is a person who can’t read… I laughed at that, where got people can’t read?!”

After being a shown a video of how dyslexics see words, Vince was completely stumped. All this while he thought everyone who is disinterested in reading, like him, had the same comprehension problem with words and letters. Immediately taking an interest in the campaign, he made it something of a personal quest.

“I really wanted to be involved, I want to help the new generation of dyslexics to understand about the condition and not go through what I had to.”