Category: What and who is it for?

Interesting article by Rick Poynor discussing about graphic design and criticism is a must read.
http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/what-is-this-thing-called-graphic-design-criticism

 

The State of Design in Malaysia – A Roundtable discourse in IcoD Design Week in Sarawak.

This is a dossier that was done through the discussion about design in Malaysia among local and international designers, educators and practitioners in the Sarawak Design week in 2012.

It was released rather late. I got to know about it in 2014. But at least its out. What’s more important is the content of the discussions. Its rate to have the design discourse in Malaysia documented as such. For that an applause should be given to the people who have put their efforts and hard work in making this happen.

I think we should have more design discourse (which is currently happening a lot in Malaysia) just that not many of the discourse can be accessed. This is because most of it focus on discussions but not on documentation. To get the voice out is to get the information spread out widely to every part of Malaysia (and the world if possible) to every designer (the first and foremost) and to others who is interested.

We should have a hub that provide all this archive beside that are fully funded and supported by the design industry and institutions such as MRM. Sadly it is more an efforts ( a very good effort) made by the Malaysian design archive to host it.

Its a valuable reference and it should be read by all so called designer and design academic in Malaysia. This is hope that the designers in Malaysia can have an idea about the state of design in Malaysia, or at least to have an overview of Malaysian design status. Furthermore to know the design community in Malaysia and who is Dato Johan Ariff.

You can read more about the Dossier The State of Design in Malaysia here.

This year Chinese New Year (CNY) is the monkey year. Let’s hope that all the monkey business will go well and that we all will be happy and live well together in this year.

Happy New Year my dear bloggers and visitors.

When I saw this video published by a friend in YouTube I was stunned watching Jihong Yeom a Korean designer twisting the wired hanger and transforming it to what ever you can think of. But what more interesting here is not only his ability to transform the hangers to another object but also his ways of seeing or visualising what he will do and also plans everything in his head.
I would like to discuss here the latter part in the this blog and yes if you watch his series in the Youtube you might be thinking ‘This is easy, anyone can do this, all you need is a hanger and a plier’. Indeed it looks easy, but what you’re missing here just, which would happen when you actually try to do it yourself, is that you have not much ideas of what to do and how to do it.
This is the technic of design thinking that anyone should be learning, and be aware that the wired hanger is just a tool to make anything that you think of happen. What really interesting is the thinking behind the designer Jihong Yeom, his process of visualising the object in a short time and then making it happen. His skills is not an overnight skills. It takes practice, trying and finding error, rework, rebuilt, rethink of a better way to approach and so on. Isn’t this is the design process that most successful designers do in their everyday life?

Yeom’s idea of designing the book holder was just to facilitates the way we can improve our life. to make life easier and to help each other. Not so much of to design something big, something awesome or something fantastic. Simple idea can grow, and that is what each of us should be focussing on.

Watch Jihong Yeom

This is a project that I did with my Visual Communication class. The idea comes from Dr. Chris Kueh from Edith Cowan University in Perth who is also working on the similar plan for his design students. We thought that it would be interesting to have a similar project based on a different city. So Chris will work on city of Freemantle, Perth and I will work on George Town, Penang.

In my visual comm class the project runs for 14 weeks with 110 students from different areas of design and arts, a mix between Graphic Comm. Design students, New Media Design students, Product Design Students, and Fine Arts students. The brief was short, as the whole idea of the project is based on the design thinking and the ideas that the students will discovered through out the process. The brief of the project is to visualised this: What does Happiness means for George Town, as a city? The students were taken on a trip to George Town in 2 buses, accompany by myself, and three tutors. I have designed the path for the students to go through and gathered some information. The idea behind this is to get the students (1st, 2nd and 3rd year of degree program) to discover the problems and then think of a way to facilitates the problem through design. Each of the students have to start documenting their design journey through personal blog. Most of the students are not familiar with having their own personal blog, as they are used to the site of social media such as FB and Instagram to post their thoughts, so creating their own blog is a new discovery for them.

There are lots our theres but here are some links.

Nur Azreen Ng Seen Yen Blog Joan’s Blog Wong Shin Nin Blog Pong Ee Lin Blog Polly Lee Blog Nur Diyana Blog Chan Keat Tan Blog Amyhappyproject NgYunLai ChinPeiJun

Here is a video done by one of the student Ahnaf Hakimi.

Try not to take short cuts in designing logos.
Sample: An online Malaysian Akses ‘logo design’ similar to Melbourne City Council Logo. #designersnotetoself #drnuruldesignresearchmsia

Akses Malaysia http://aksesmalaysia.com/

City of Melbourne http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Can Malaysian private and national agencies stop doing logo competition and ask the students to design it? The creation of Logo is the most important part of establishing your company visual identity, it should be thought carefully, and to be designed completely in the whole branding process. If you think this will save some money then wait till years to come and see how much you will spend in rebranding it. Think and take action before its too late. Visual identity represent your brand. Logo can be cheap but it have to be thought carefully. It can be a collaborative project for the whole branding process but not just creating a logo and that’s it. What about the other part of the visual identity creation? Whose going to do it? the clerk?

This topic have come to my interest since 2006, when I learn about the country branding from Simon Anholt. I thought at that time, and was heavily driven by the idea that branding can help to improve any country. But then after a long time researching and reading about branding the good, the bad and the ugly, I come to realised that branding might be the wrong choice to take in promoting the country. So then I stop giving my pro opinion about how a country should take that role.

But this year I have came to view an interesting turn by Simon Anholt. I guess we can say that he have seen a lot and might be agree with me that branding in many ways might provide damage than improved. So he started again in different path. I like this path. To see how branding can be taken differently, to provide good to the others, and to do good to the others. Remind me of a good friend of mine David Berman’s book Do Good Design, which I have translated in Bahasa Malaysia in 2013.

Now this is the idea: Good Country vs Bad Country? Is that really that simple? You just have to listen to Anholt’s talk and think about it. Here are some captions of his talk.

“This is about the government and the people, the culture, and the good practice.” The Good Country Index – The Good Country.org. “Enough hearing about competitive country, prosperous, happy country. Because at the end it is still selfish”

This is a very interesting talk by Simon Anholt.

“Anyone should ask about being good? Is that the behaviour of a good country? ”
“I want to live in a good country and I so so hope that you would do too”….

 

Filmed June 2014 at TEDSalon Berlin 2014

 

 

 

“Malaysia’s globally popular cartoonist Lat and the imagery of city/country , globalism/islamicism that can be found in his work co-authored with the breathtakingly dynamic design academics and theorists Nurul Rahman Wargny and Nasya Bahfen – perfect academic partners who bring nothing but abundant ideas and creativity to the table” – Juliette Peers, RMIT.

The paper can be read online at

http://www.fusion-journal.com/issue/004-fusion-the-town-and-the-city/kampung-village-dreaming-rural-and-urban-icons-of-malaysian-modernity-in-the-cartoons-of-lat/

 

It has been eight years since I started writing this blog entries. I thought that I would write more about design and life as a designer and educator after I completed my PhD. That was wrong. I barely wrote about anything in this blog after my PhD. But this year resolution is about writing interesting journeys, design experiences, teaching jokes and memorable moments in this blog.

For a start, while browsing through the net looking for an old image of Penang Botanical Garden Project proposal that I am currently preparing, I found this interesting blog by R.S. Murthi, a writer, editor, musician and a cyclist. In his blog there are collections of songs, photos old and news, and short stories. You can find him here http://www.rsmurthi.com/index.html

I must be a bit behind as I have only got the chance to know some fantastic bloggers but, it’s never too late to catch up with the updates.

Happy 2014 and look out for more stories in this blog.

DrNR