Month: July 2009

“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.