Category: What and who is it for?

The last time I wrote in this blog was nearly a month ago, my my how times have flies like a bullet train. My last thoughts in this blog was about leave of absence (LOA). Well it is not so much about the LOA but it is what I wanted to write about it the problems that might occur while in our journey while doing a PhD. It is really important to read the PhD or Master’s handbook, know the research policies and know our rights as a research student. I mean you might not realised how important this is until something happen to you such as what had happen to me which I prefer not to discuss on this public space. What I like to discuss is that matter, the possible problem while doing a PhD.

One of the most important part or can aso be a problem later on is the relationship between the candidate and the supervisor. As much as it is stated in most of books about writing research thesis, this part of PhD should not be omitted. Of course, one can say that you cannot know a person until you have worked with them, indeed but it is very important for any candidate to do a research on the background of the potential supervisor and not just merely taking what is provided on the plate. I realised that most of the Malaysian candidate, as I am one of them, with the full sponsored scholarship omitted this part of the research. Mostly the practice is to ask about it to the other peers who currently doing the Phd. Easy ways is to get enough information about the supervisors of the peers and send it application to further the PhD under the same supervisor as the peers. What a pity! With the fully sponsored scholarship, didn’t it give us (Malaysian) a tickets to get in to the best university in the world, provided the amout of work is enough to be accepted to these university. But I guess that is one of the purpose of doing a PhD. To get establish our expertise research areas with the asistance of the expertise in similar areas. On top of the with the establish and most known university around the world, the candidate will also get the 5 starts facilities, including some funding for conference and publication. Isn’t that what we, research candidate want?

Now, that process of research should be conducted before we even send in any application and enrolled. Once the enrollement is process then the next things to do is to start the ice breaking process with supervisor. Some lucky candidate will be able to detacte if the relationship will not work, but most don’t have this special power, so we can continue the process to getting to know each other step. Try to ask your supervisor for coffee or have a casual chat outside of the uni. Some supervisor refuse to do this, as it will not show the professional work ethics. I personally think it is very important for supervisor to spend at least in the beginning to go for ‘outing’ with the candidate and discuss about the research casually. Discussing the research plan outside of the norm environment will not only help the breaking ice process but also will allow the candidate and the supervisor to feel comfortable as it is no longer in the office space. I am not telling that this is the only ways, it all depends on the human character itself. Some people like to go to cafe or to a park to continue the discussion with their supervisor. These candidate I considered them the fortunate one. The relationship they have with the supervisor is growing and productive. Others who didn’t have a chance to talk to supervisor, some even not in the office, this can be the beginning of the supervisor and candidate relasionship problems. I mean it is so simple, relationship needs to be nurture, discuss, honest, and maintained. Not just because it the matter of professional at work that didn’t allow the process of getting to know each other develop. If the beginning of supervisor and candidate relationship is not working..then my guess is it will never work. This is the time when you should start consider to shop around for another potensial supervisor. The earlier the better. Don’t wait until half of the candidature, or giving it a 5th times try, or until some action is taken. As a researcher we are responsible on our research process, and this includes not only the process of our study itself but also the relasionship with the supervisor.

Well, it has been a while since I drop few thought in this blog. There are so many things had happen since that time. To cut it short, I am now on the leave of absence (LOA) for my research study since 1st of September 2009. There is a reason why I have taken the option of LOA, but let’s not focus on the reason. Why because the reason is confidential. However, let’s discuss about the conditions and status that allow any research student to take this option. First, every research student are eligable to take this option LOA, and if you don’t know about it then start asking, not because you should take it but it is good to be aware of the option that you can take just incase if some serious critical situation might accured.

I don’t want to be a superman, like how the American dreams to be. I’m only a graphic designer, a small backup character in a show, and nothing else. But I do think that my small roles can make a small slow different. The process in designing poster, brochure, annual reports, website and many other things that I’m good at doing is significant to be considered as part of the team to save the planet. First, I don’t think this is a question to be answered, instead it is a question to be question, to think about, and to reflect on each of our roles as a human being living and sharing this weak and exhausted planet earth.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to listen to Rick Poynor presentation in a day graphic design conference organised by AGDA (Australian Graphic Design Associations) in Sydney. Although, I had a chance to chat with him and enjoyed our chat, I don’t agree with some of what Rick discussed in his books (No More Rule, Obey, etc), but his presentation for me is food for thoughts, feeding my head space with lots of useful questions to think about. My experiences with his presentation is like when I was reading his book. The part that I like most is the way Rick address the question. This issues of questioning the graphic designer’s roles in saving the world is not a new fashion, or new thoughts, it’s been asked and discussed since the 70’s. A paper written by Victor Papanek in 1975 (Looking closer III) showed similar concerns from designers and have presented ways of practices for graphic designer to be able to help the process of saving the world.

“Rick Poynor will be in Sydney”, to know more about this I then log in to my computer and search. I found the website of design for a better world which will be held on from the 1st to 16th of August this year. Then I did the extra online research like many of us will do. Browsing around the AGDA website, one of the organizer of the event, I found myself at the AGDA Poster Annual 2009 – Call for entries.

There you can view and vote for the poster you like, or you think the rational and the visual make sense to you. So I end up viewing most of the posters available on the site. Before I continue further about this, below are The Brief for the poster. More information about this can be found through this link.

Sampling The Future “ Society is in a continual state of flux. We are now dominated by five major global conditions:

* Climate change
* Diminishing fossil fuels
* Globalised economic crisis
* Generational change, and
* New technologies

Using the poster format, demonstrate how design holds the potential to lead the parallel trajectories of business, science and society towards a common future. Judges will look for entries that best demonstrate creative thinking in regards to the points above, a progressive use of graphic design and an insight into the theme.

Majorities talks in visual language about those listed issues, few discussed about world peace, or human rights. In the site there are some who appeared to understand the brief and have express their voice loud and clear. Others, which I thought many of them, are just following the brief and not much is said in their medium. I wonder if this is the similar situation in the real world graphic design practice. Yes we could see or take the brief as the client, and we designers will try to negotiate the goals with the client so both parties agreed.

Negotiate in this case is not only involved 1) what kind of message we want the people to hear, or 2) if the visual are clearly communicate with people, but also by asking ourselves what impact will graphic design artifacts gave to the societies?. Here I mean that the visual for example does not only contained one meaning, clearly it is contained with multi-layers of information; sign, the signifier and how or what it signified (Barthes 1957). It is there, and depending on which background of practices, culture, education etc we are from we will pick one of these meaning.

To add further in this process is, comparing to the amount of graphic design artifact out there, it is not easy to stop and think which layers of meaning that we should pick and therefore will make us understand the message. Surprisingly this process also include the work of our unconscious state of mind. We consciously didn’t get to work out the choice. It is like it already chosen for us. Could I argue and ask if the process that I have described more or less are influenced by our way of life, the way we think, the way we views the world? In this case if the answer is yes, then the next questions is who or what influenced or shall I say who prompt our lifestyle and thinking behaviors?

Is there big possibilities that the influences also might be from the constructions of concepts of identity from the community or country we come from?

For example, take Havana, in Cuba, and lets compare this to Tokyo, Japan. The city of Havana for example, one can say that the city is sort of stop moving, or stop developing when the mass communication aren’t there. There are no posters, advertisements, bill board or any sort of information for brands or products. In comparison to Tokyo, if you walk in the CBD you can be lost in your way just because of too much information are feed in you memory and distract you from focussing on finding directions. But my point here to extend from the questions I asked is what is the roles of the government in this process, who allowed the mass communication to stop or to published unlimited.

Clearly who ever have the authorities to own the mass communication in those countries also have the position to influences the societies and the nation. But what more interesting here is do people or the society have the same rights? What do you think?

It’s a long painful process indeed.. as I stroll down to the writing ‘lane’. It’s not really my kind of lane, I’m more a hands-on ‘lane’ rather than writing kind of ‘lane’, but this is the ‘lane’ I decided to take since I decided to start this PhD.

As I go through this process, continuous learning is inevitable, leaning how to read and write, how to construct the stories, or how to tell the stories, learning new vocabulary and many other interesting little processes. That lead to the answer why it’s been a few weeks I didn’t spend time writing in this blog. I have been spending or try to spend most of my time on the effort of writing chapter of my PhD. To be able to write well is to be able to read and understood well any writing, well in this case serious writing. So reading is also part of my new hobbies. Apart from that I also spend six days in Kuala Lumpur. I have make this plan in May, main reason is to reinvestigate Lat’s cartoon in News Straits Times newspaper’s resource centre.

Spend all day in the centre, and had discovered some news stuff which would be helpful in my writing. Now, I’m getting back to my writing process. Today, I went to the supermarket and bought myself lots of cookies, snacks, bars of chocolate, fruits, nuts and some juices. ‘Stocks’ as some of my friends who knows my intentions said. Yes, indeed. I tend to chew a lot when I write and because I don’t want to let myself get distracted to start something else rather than trying to write, I situated some of the ‘stocks’ around me. Just grab when I need them. The trouble I’m facing with writing is how to start.. My guess almost everybody is facing the same situation when writing process involved. Then, just after I managed to get the slow momentum going, I tend to drag the story line like there’s no end of it. ‘Dragging’, Yes, I tend to do that quite often. Some people said, as an advice, is to start with structure, like what do you want to write or what do want to say…, which sometime does help in my hard and slow process, but not all the time. I tend to ‘drag’ the structure and cannot keep it short. Others mentioned about bullet point, same things happen.

Well, here, I’m not trying to feed you with my problems of the writing process, but just to start practicing my writing as I am writing you this piece of short uninteresting point about writing, the beginners problems. One things I like to do before I start writing is to start reading, here’s an advice, don’t read any relevant books to what you want to write. Read something else that got nothing to do with the writing content, just to ‘warming up’ the ‘writing engine’. For me, it did help, and of course lots of sweets, chocolates, chips and juices to sweeten your day. Hope you enjoy reading this short little thoughts.

Now, I should be moving off to my words document to stroll on my writing journey again, another attempt, better be hurry before the mood goes away… Till next time, enjoy the nibbles.

The last time I wrote in this blog is when I was going around trying to understand terminologies in graphic design.. I am now no longer interesting in the design terminology as I think it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is my understanding of the process, the practice and so on, regardless what ever people call them, and language is the barrier in this case. As Shakespeare said ‘ What’s in the name?’..But this process is like finding your own practice identity..Who are you? Are you a graphic design? Interaction designer? Communication designer? Visual Designer? Or does it really matter?

I have also changed my research title from “Questioning the designer’s roles in construction of Malaysian National Identity” to ” Questioning the graphic design influences in shaping the construction of Malaysia national identity“. I will talk about the rational behind the changes later on. Before I start, I would like to discuss, still, about the terminologies in design that been haunting me for a while. I think it’s good to share it here, so if anyone reading this blog have faced similar situation I would be more that happy to discuss about it. You can reach me through my RMIT email address [nurul.rahman[at]rmit.edu.au].

Now the terminology in design..I’m quite comfortable using the terms ‘graphic design’ in my research title rather than communication design. In my research most of my project are constructed around graphic design artifacts such as advertisements, mainly poster based, cartoons in newspaper and magazine covers. Interestingly, after going through the process of trying to understand and defining the terminology in design, the puzzle between ‘communication design’ and ‘graphic design’, I came out with other option which I will discuss later in after explaining the terminologies in design.

I have read Jorge Frascara (2004) his books on ‘Communication Design’, where he gave his quite a limited definition of what is communication design. I wasn’t convince with what he suggested, instead I found myself confuse with this suggestions. For Frascara (2004:3), communication design is like a music composer, where the communication designer roles is similar to the roles of ‘a mixer’ who brings parts of the music instruments together and later on produce some music from it. The designer have enough understanding and knowledge to be able to choose what kind of the instruments he want to be in the music he is producing.

My reaction after reading Frascara descriptions is ‘So what is the different between Frascara definition of Communication design with what Graphic Designer’s practices now?”. I think that is what most of graphic designer been doing, composing the visual representation to convey their message. One parts that I think could be taken forward in defining communication design, is as Frascara suggested, (I’ll add in the quote later), communication design aims to study the communication process happening before the process of creation and the impact after the production towards the society. But there are many authors who criticize the role of graphic design in similar position such as Malcomn Barnard (2005), Steven Heller (1997) to name few

I would argue that perhaps many the old school graphic designer have much more skills in printing process, printing quality, colour management and material used for printing rather than the newly grad graphic designer or some communication designer, therefore how would it be possible to have the knowledge to compose them together?. I feel that the term communication design is too broad, and it allow almost anyone who have the basic knowledge of design, the fundamental of design, can call themselves a communication designer. That process have thought to understand the terminologies in design and found terms ‘visual communication’ and would call myself a ‘visual communicators’, the term that are often used to described design process and practices by Rick Poynor (2004). Visual communication, for me reflected my practices, study, teaching and involvements in graphic design areas a lot more than graphic designer. In my practice I have used different visual medium such as photograph, painting, drawing, sketches, typography, computer effect in conveying my message to the audience, or to express my interest or awareness to others. Visual communicator have no need to have a reason to convey, client to please, or people to transmit the message to. Graphic designer work with client, message the transmitting, people they intend to convey and budget that need to consider.

Therefore, I’m a visual communicator, at least for now I found myself smiling comfortably using this terms.

I’m stuck with terminology when it comes to design, particularly between graphic design, visual design and communication design. As I’m doing this PhD under Communication Design I wonder what it really means. What I’m trying to say here is do we have a clear definition of what do we all mean when we claim we’re doing a study under communication design?

My whole academic and practice background is very much related to Graphic Design, but then I’m a bit bewildered between the terminology and the practice. One of the few reasons that makes me puzzled with the graphic design term is it’s roles. Please correct me one but I think the classic reason is most of graphic designers ‘like to play safe’ when they’re in the act of designing and indirectly point the finger at the client and the purpose of the design artifacts, when it comes to the impact of their own reproduction.Perhaps it is because, I was one of them not sure now but at least now I’m taking full responsibilities of my work and would argued and questioned my client when it comes to the designing process. I used to think that ‘ the client is always right’, who the hell created this term anyway?

Well, at this moment, I’m not comfortable to use the communication design term. I guess the term is too broad and vague. What we have as a reference is very much Frascara term. Is that really what is communication design, as Frascara stated, I’m not that sure anymore. Poynour’s term of visual communications makes me at ease, but still not very sure why. Perhaps because literally it means using ‘visual to communicate (transfer ideas/message)’, I mean he did stated more than just as the message translater, but I feel much more confortable with this term.

At this point, I’m juggling between the theminology between graphic design and visual communication, but I guess Yoko’s advice could be handy ‘it is just the term and what define it is your understanding of it’. I’m hoping to get some of your point of view about this, any thought?

Yes, again it’s really been a while since I last wrote in this blog, been busy you see..been writing a lot and still hoping to produce something really good or clear enough to the readers. Had a discussion with Yoko yesterday, and week before a discussion with Laurene, Chris and Yoko about my 1st chapter submissions. At least it’s a good news, they seems happy with the work and wanted more. Of course there’s many changes and restructuring I have to do, not to mention the grammar but overall it seems fine and I’m back on the track. What a relief..

As for my research, I feel much more confident in articulating my thoughts. Apart from the struggle of clarifying my arguments and definitions of the designer’s role. I’m not sure about the title ‘graphic design’ but more comfortable in using the term ‘visual communication’. Why? Perhaps because I feel that graphic designer’s roles is very limited to the visual improvisations, visual identity constructions and as the message conveyer. Most of graphic designer, now I’m talking about graphic designer in general, work are based on the purpose of creating an artifacts, mainly following the client requirements. I know this is the classic discussions but still the activities seems to be going on, so until the activities change, we can move on to another discussion.

Client and purpose seems to be the core structure in graphic design process. Questions like ‘who is this poster for?’, ‘what do we want to inform here’, ‘what do we want to say’ to name few is the questions graphic designer’s will ask before the brain storming process even start. But what about ‘What will this design impact others’ or ‘What influence will this design make to others apart from communicating the message?’ is the questions that usually been omitted by designers. Not that the designer’s refused to questions, some did, but always been turn down by the purpose and the client requirements.

Inevitably, with or without the designer’s attentions, what ever design creation the designer’s produce, it will and does give an impact to the societies. For examples, just walk out of out premises, what do we see or takes out eyes attention when we walk on the street. We see posters everywhere informing us about what’s going on around the areas, educating us about directions on the streets or behaviors, or even provoking our common sense about people, politics, culture, economic to name few. Designer’s do play a significant roles here, with permission of the client or not. Not only telling or informing us but also shaping our way of life, the way we behave, stimulating our thoughts, and shaping or construct our identity.. And yet some designer’s says their behaviors or design actions is ‘neutral’..is it really?

I guess I’m now entering the most appalling stage in my research, at least at this stage, I wonder if it will be worse, but from hearing others, it seems like it will continue until the end. Now I started writing my first chapters last year in November and submitted the 1st draft to my supervisor in December before I left for overseas. When I’m back in Melbourne in January, I did revised the version and submitted the 2nd draft and the process go on until now I’ve submitted the 3rd draft of the 1st chapter and started my 1st draft on the second chapter of my PhD.

The first chapter is the written documentation of the online forum project www.malaysianidentity.com that I did in the very beginning of my PhD three years ago. Apart from that I also wrote about the outcome of the project and why the online forum project is significant in my research. It includes the early ideas of the projects, the design methods and process, literature reviews that help to strengthen the concepts, collaboration work with non-designers, promotional process and designing, and problems and issues that occured from this online discussion.

The second chapters is focussing on the investigation of the role of visual communication designer in realtion to Malaysian National Identity. Using cartoons I choose Lat, that I considered the most influencial Malaysian Communication Designer as the case study I have explored and discussed technics and tactics, elements and methods that visual communicators used in transmitting their messages to the specific readers. Here, I also discussed, examined and guided the readers together with some insight information about Malaysia, through the visual designing process and the show the effectiveness of different methods used in this process.

I also in the process of skeching the map of my research journey. Three years is quite a long year and lots have been done in this period of time. I have to be able to articulate the process clearly and link each project to each other. That’s how far I’ve been in my research.