This week it turn out to be my turn to present my ‘working progress’ PhD work to all Comm. Design Postgrade members. We tried to make everyone stand up and present. Also it’s good for our new postgrade members who didn’t know what others research about. This week is my turn. So I did. As usual, I’m a bit nervous and sometimes lost in my own thought while presenting. But I manage to communicate to them, at last. Here are some interesting thought from them about my topic. I thought i should put it in before i forgot about it. (i would scan and put in my mapping plan too…later) you will understand clearly if you refer to the map.
My main area is still broad…huge. I have to narrow it down now! I’m still wondering and going around these 3 words – DESIGN (I’m referring to Graphic Design), CULTURE (mostly identity related) and BRANDING ( I’m referring to product, interested in Traditional products). All of these area, I’m looking it in Malaysian Context. I also presented some of my finding from the MI Online Forum (www.malaysianidentity.com). Interestingly in the begining of my Forum Idea, my intention it to look for Malaysian Identity. I thought i would find one. And I guess i did find, but many and its very complex to explain it. Trust me you don’t want to know about it yet. Not until I manage to explain it to myself first.
I know that Identity is my area too..somehow. Why? Because I think that it represent, relates, changes, sustained and create my 3 main area, DESIGN, CULTURE + BRANDING. Well let me just try to explain just a little bit what I mean in this context by identity. I would say at this stage the Identity in my understanding can be divided in two main area. The first one I called it Nation Identity (individual identity). It is about the behaviour emaotional feeling that can represent the society, the group of community they belong to and also the country. Most certainly it also contains cultural and traditional practises in their life styles. Websters dictionary states identity is the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. Identity begins with our names, addresses, family groups, and cultural backgrounds”.
The other one is National Identity. The notion of identity that the goverment position what the nation are to others. This has been practiced in mainly tourism areas. It is part of the substance to promote the country. I guess that are some of my understanding or finding at this stage about Identity. Back to what my dear friend said in the presentation.
1. Jeremy said: – Why Malaysia? What is interesting about Malaysia? (Perhaps I list down why I choose Malaysia?)
2. Yoko point out interesting view too – The Online Forum can be argued as a form of ‘cultural probes’, online cultural probes. She said it would be good if i play around more with the design of the forum. try to use it as cultural probes to investigate the identity. To use it as a method and try some other methods too. Then I can value all the methods.
3. Laurene said two things – a) that I haven’t been looking at the relationship or differences between the traditional way of making crafts and the commercial ways to make the crafts. Why did this happen and did this happen in Malaysia?
4. Our new members, Marious also mention about another interesting topic – ‘Brand Conversation’ ( this is interesting )
I also mention in my presentation, that perhaps for my next plan, I would like to do a semiotic analysis, this is referring to Barthes theory about sign, signified and signifier. I would analyse the layout, design, text and color. I might be looking at Malaysian ad, design, promotional items.