A Singapore designer, a Taiwanese scientist and a shared mission to help people sleep better

SG50 logo designer Jackson Tan and chemical engineer John Lee joined forces during the pandemic to create Another Land, a wellness brand bringing together fragrance, science, design and art.

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Jackson Tan – the maverick Singaporean designer behind the SG50 identity and art and design collective Phunk – and his wife Talia Huang were at their home in Kaohsiung when the pandemic closed Taiwan’s borders. As luck would have it, their close friends, Taiwanese chemical engineer John Lee and his wife Ula Wang, lived just a few streets away. Both couples had spent years travelling and rarely saw one another. Now, “COVID grounded all of us and forced us to reset,” Tan said.

With time came conversation, and the conversation kept returning to bad sleep. The couples swapped self-care tips, and other friends reported the same trouble. When the Lees invited the Tans to visit Jolab, their shiny research and manufacturing facility, Tan was impressed by the scale and production quality. He also heard the worry behind the tour: With overseas clients unable to visit, how would they keep an operation that size going? Lee remembered Tan’s verdict: “Anyone who visits Jolab would immediately believe that the products coming out of this place must be safe and effective.” His reply came almost without thought: ‘Then why don’t we create a brand together?’

They did, with Another Land debuting late last year.

It was a creative match made in heaven. Lee holds a PhD in chemical engineering and had already built a skincare label, TTM, which reached Le Bon Marche and Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Selling in France taught him how exacting European standards are when it comes to cosmetics manufacturing and documentation. He came to see that a product has to be effective, safe and sustainable from the first day of development. The company he co-founded, Jola International, is a Taiwan-based biotechnology and manufacturing firm. Its research platform in Kaohsiung, Jolab, is where Another Land’s formulas, like Lee’s other projects, are developed through ingredient selection, texture development, testing and full-scale production.

Another Land’s flagship boutique in Taipei, designed by Teruhiro Yanagihara, features warm terracotta-toned tiles and carefully arranged displays of the brand’s wellness products. (Photo: Sean Marc Lee)

For Another Land, the founders began with a question: “How can we help the world sleep better and live well?” Everything else was missing. “We started with a blank canvas,” Tan said. With no name, no formula and no packaging, Tan’s creative studio, Black, in Singapore, and Lee’s team in Taiwan met every week for four years.

The people Another Land is made for look much like its founders: stretched between work and everyone who depends on them, forgetting themselves somewhere in the blur of deadlines. “We believe time is the greatest luxury. And today, it is one most of us feel we cannot afford,” Tan said. The products offer brief moments of respite through scent and touch, as small escapes to what he calls “a land of wellness”.

Singapore creative studio Black, led by Jackson Tan, developed the visual identity and packaging for Another Land’s wellness products, including its face and body care range, while Taiwanese chemical engineer John Lee oversaw product formulation and development. (Photo: Another Land)

Fragrance came first. In Lee’s earlier work, it had been a “nice-to-have”. Now, it shaped the formulations, and the team ran scent workshops with Taiwanese perfumers Samantha Chen and Eileen Yeh. Participants closed their eyes, breathed in a blind sample and then drew what came to mind. One person drew a cave, another a beach at night. Tan drew an Indian barbershop from his Singapore childhood. “Drawing became a way to communicate a memory, an atmosphere or a feeling,” he said. Another Land’s evening products pair Kashmir lavender with mild bitter orange, and Lee is frank about the evidence. Research on lavender and sleep is inconclusive. “Scent cannot guarantee better sleep. But carefully chosen aromas combined with comforting touch can help create an experience that encourages relaxation,” he said.

Another Land’s flagship boutique in Taipei was conceived as a space that is “100% Another Land, 100% Taiwan”, bringing the wellness brand’s identity into a physical retail setting. (Photo: Sean Marc Lee)

Though the perfumers are Taiwanese, Lee never asked them to work only with Taiwanese ingredients or traditional Taiwanese scent profiles. He picked each ingredient only for its quality, its safety and its effect on the senses, wherever it came from. “Our ambition was to create a global brand designed in Singapore, manufactured in Taiwan,” he said. The fragrances are also gender-neutral. “We didn’t want scents designed for a traditionally masculine or feminine audience. We wanted something versatile that anyone could enjoy anywhere, even inside a car,” Lee said.

The two men disagree productively. Tan remembers choosing a specific Pantone colour for the home fragrance sprays and wanting every visible part to match. The parts came from different suppliers in different materials, and after months of work, one piece of the pump under the cap was still white. Lee, whose formula was ready, wanted to launch. Tan resisted. “No, this cannot work. We have to do better,” Lee recalled him saying. The launch was delayed by several months, and Lee now agrees it was worth the wait.

Another Land has partnered with The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, where its Swaying Forest Pillow Mist is part of the hotel’s evening turndown service. (Photo: Another Land)

Black designs the brand’s visual language and applies it across all packaging and collateral. Ula and the Jolab team handle sourcing, materials and production. Tan also brought in artists he admired. Finnish artist Kustaa Saksi was his first call, made before a single product existed. Saksi’s layered, kaleidoscopic work draws on the visual migraine auras he has experienced since childhood, and he explores healing through art and, one supposes, vice versa. A few weeks after Tan wrote to him, Saksi returned with “an artwork that blew our minds”, which became a defining image for the brand. Japanese illustrator Saki Obata, whom Tan discovered through a friend who is her agent, tells manga-style stories across the Live Well, Sleep Well and Travel Well gift sets.

Jackson Tan invited Finnish artist Kustaa Saksi to collaborate with Another Land before the wellness brand had even launched. The resulting artwork became a defining image for the brand. (Photo: Another Land)

“It took us four years to give birth to this baby, so finally sharing it with the world was a very special moment for all of us,” Tan said of Another Land’s 2025 launch. The flagship store is in Taipei, in a former ground-floor apartment opposite Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, and was designed by Teruhiro Yanagihara. Before the renovation, Tan and Lee flew Yanagihara and his team over to see the apartment in its original state. The brief was to create a space that is “100% Another Land, 100% Taiwan”.

The entrance arch is inspired by Tao Yuanming’s fable The Peach Blossom Spring, reimagined as a modern-day utopia. Yanagihara and his team created a gateway which Tan describes as “somewhere between the real and the imagined, familiar yet faraway”. The arch was built with stones from Yilan in north-east Taiwan, in a shape that echoes the brand symbol. The original pine-green serpentine marble floors were preserved and paired with Danto ceramic tiles in warm terracotta tones. Sculptural works by Nota Shop and visual merchandising by Tomomi Nagayama complete the interior, which also holds an adjoining gallery.

Finnish artist Kustaa Saksi’s vibrant, layered artwork brings a distinctive visual identity to Another Land’s The Art of Self-care box set. (Photo: Another Land)

In Singapore, the brand began with pop-ups, including a takeover of the Capybara Bath House, before finding its way into the rooms at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore. The introduction came through a contact from Lee’s TTM days. Halfway through the pitch, Lee noticed the hotel managers’ attention drifting towards their phones, so he sprayed the Waking Breeze Room Mist and told them, half jokingly, that it could chase away negative energy. A housekeeping manager perked up. “I need something to restore the energy!” she said. For the toilet mist, Lee had a line ready: “This one can save your marriage!”

Tan calls Singapore and Taiwan the brand’s two legs. “We need to stand firmly on both before we can walk towards the rest of the world and eventually run,” he said. Japan is next, where the brand has already worked with the spa at the Four Seasons Hotel in Osaka. Lee is also experimenting with themed rooms at the Fleur de Chine Hotel at Sun Moon Lake where guests find the products, framed art and newsletters in the room, and an installation of Obata’s illustration of a woman pushing open archway doors that face the real lake outside the windows. Lee wants the brand to become “something people can step into, stay in, and experience”.

Singapore ceramicist Genevieve Ang is among the artists and makers featured in Stories from Another Land, a series exploring creativity, balance and personal wellbeing. (Photo: Another Land)

The next round of collaborations is in the works, and Tan hopes to draw more on Singapore’s creative scene. Furniture designer Nathan Yong, artist-jeweller Shing and ceramicist Genevieve Ang have already appeared in Stories from Another Land, a smartly edited series of editorial and images about people the brand calls Another Landers – “artists, makers, thinkers and movers crafting lives of balance and purpose, making time to create their own land of wellness.”

Much the same way, it turns out, that Tan and his partners made theirs in Kaohsiung, in the middle of an enervating global lockdown, with a factory tour and a shared question about better sleep.