I couldn’t afford the cassette.
But I stood in that record store anyway — sometimes for hours — just flipping through albums. Reading covers I couldn’t fully understand. Looking at artwork from bands I had never heard.
Scorpions. Black Sabbath. Metallica. Bands from the US and Europe whose music had never played on any radio station I knew. Whose lyrics were in a language we never spoke at home in Felda.
But something kept pulling me back to that store.
Not the music. Not the price. Not the language.
The visual.
The Record Store Was My First Art Gallery
For a kampung boy with no formal design education, no exposure to galleries or museums — that record store was everything.
Every album cover was a world. Conceptual. Layered. Sometimes dark, sometimes surreal, sometimes just — strange in a way I couldn’t explain but couldn’t look away from.
I didn’t need to understand the lyrics. I didn’t need to know the band’s history.
The cover invited me in. And I went.
That’s when I understood — for the first time, without having the language to say it — that visual is not decoration. Visual is the language before language.
It communicates before words. Before price. Before understanding.
When I Had The Chance To Fly
Years later, as a flight steward, I found myself in record stores across the world during night stops.
Paris. London. Amsterdam. Frankfurt.
Same ritual. Different stores. Flipping through vinyl. Reading covers. Standing in front of albums for longer than made sense.
I collected some vinyl during those years. Not because I was a serious collector. But because the covers felt like pieces of a world I wanted to keep close.
The visual had become a lifelong language for me — one I spoke before I knew I was speaking it.
The Debate Nobody Is Having Correctly
Today everyone argues about AI image generation.
Is it real design? Is it cheating? Does it replace human creativity? Should designers be afraid?
And I understand the anxiety. I’ve lived on both sides of it — the traditional designer and the AI visual experimenter.
But I think the debate is missing the point entirely.
The question was never which tool.
The question was always — which human are you trying to reach? And what do you want them to feel?
You can generate 1,000 AI images in an hour. Or you can hand-draw every single frame. Or you can photograph. Or paint. Or collage.
None of that matters if the visual doesn’t invite someone in.
If it doesn’t stop them. If it doesn’t make them curious. If it doesn’t make them feel — even for a second — that this was made for them.
What The Metal Bands Understood
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about for thirty years without knowing how to say it:
Those metal bands — the ones with the conceptual covers, the dark artwork, the elaborate visual worlds — they understood something most brands still don’t.
They built the identity before the product reached you.
By the time I heard the first note — I already believed in them. The visual had done its work. It had invited me into a world. Made me feel like I belonged there — or wanted to.
That’s not marketing. That’s not branding strategy. That’s something older and more human than any framework.
That’s the understanding that there is always a human being on the other side.
A human with desires. With curiosity. With a need to find things that feel like they were made for them.
Speak to that human. Invite that human.
With whatever tool you have.
The Boy In The Record Store
I couldn’t afford the cassette.
I didn’t speak the language.
I had no cultural context for what I was looking at.
But I was invited in anyway.
Thirty years later — I’m still trying to understand what that invitation felt like. And how to create it for others.
Not with any specific tool. Not with any particular style.
Just with the intention to reach the human on the other side.
That’s the only thing that has ever mattered.
P.S. At Majalah BIKIN, I write about human experience, UX, and business psychology — drawn from 30 years across airlines, banking, design, and the field. Read more and follow along.