“Design education typically begins at the college level, but if we wait until then to teach design thinking we are missing critical points in the growth of young minds, whose ability to think creatively is boundless. Teaching high school students to think like designers would help shape the way they look at the world around them and positively affect their future endeavors”
“Adapting” Avatar
Avatar just won Best Picture and Best Director yesterday at the Golden Globes. I don’t think this Indonesian “adaptation” by LunarFilm titled “Petualangan Bersama Suku Biru” (Adventure With the Blue Tribe) aired mere minutes ago on TPI can be described as anything complimentary.
There’s a handful of clips I’m thinking of sharing next time I’m in range of a decent Internet access.
Sent from my iPhone
Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
— Steve Jobs
Just what we need, a mark of sarcasm
“Anyone concerned that the irony of their email or text message might not be appreciated by its recipient can use the symbol to close their sentence, thereby avoiding awkward misunderstandings.” SarcMark – The Telegraph http://bit.ly/5ovJhG
Well that would certainly make everything clear now doesn’t it? I mean after all, being clear is what being sarcastic is all about.
Sent from my iPhone
586. THE WORLD WILL NOT END IN 2012.
Di konpers Hatta, cuma 1 hal yg ngebet banget pengen gw tanya: “Apakah dengan terpilih menjadi Ketum, Anda berencana semir rambut?”. Penting bgt nih!
Marischka Prudence
Reaching out to Bloggers
If you’re thinking of pitching your product to a blogger, it’s not as easy as you think. In fact, you could be in for a lot more work than you think. Naturally you need to know the reach of those bloggers, how they communicate, how they perceive and react to products, and so on. In short, get to know your bloggers.
Chris Brogan put together a few tips for vendors and PR people on how to get bloggers to talk about products.
A lot of the times you’ll get bloggers who aren’t interested in your products or find your product less than ideal. Don’t ever push them to retract or complain about them because you’ll tend to earn quite a thrashing and you’ll end up with an even more negative press.
If your product is useful to them and works as expected, they’ll talk about it and say good things about it. If your product under-delivers, or is uninteresting, they either won’t spend their time talking about it or they will but negatively. These are just issues that you’ll have to live with.
The case of the mixed languages
Talk about irony, this post is in English talking about an article about the increasing lack of grasp of the Indonesian language by today’s Indonesians. The piece is in Indonesian which was posted in October last year. In essence, the writer lamented the lack of using proper Indonesian in not only daily conversations among its people but in formal occasions as well such as presidential speeches and parliamentary hearings.
While the intent is noble and admirable, I’d like to knock some sense a little. The Indonesian language as we know it did not come to be until sometime in the late 1970’s, that’s no more than 40 years ago. The country’s second president who ruled for 32 years failed to use Indonesian properly in all of his speeches, stumbling over certain pronunciations and misusing certain words constantly (notable one being the use of “daripada” instead of “dari” when denoting the origin of a subject). The third and current presidents slip a lot of English words into their speeches.
As someone who’s not even sure whether he’s part of Gen-X or Gen-Y (no thanks to dubious categorization) and grew up with multiple languages in constant use at home, this almost sounds like a propaganda push to adopt what is in fact an artificially made language. It doesn’t seem to be but it sounds that way.
Many of my generation’s parents and grandparents commonly used a combination of languages including English, Javanese, Japanese, and Dutch. Specifically Dutch when it comes to grandparents thanks to the extended period of Dutch invasion of the archipelago.
When people ask what my mother tongue is, it’s rather difficult to say, just like when people ask me about my ethnicity (Mix of Chinese, Arabic, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Indian – I feel for my daughter whose ethnicity is even more mixed up. Add European into that mix)
In addition, a great number of Indonesian words are actually loan words from Arabic, Portuguese, and Dutch. Very few were from English but you don’t need to be a linguist to know that. The thing is, with the ever increasing English influence into today’s use of Indonesian, there seems to be a concerted effort to reject the assimilation or adoption of most English words, something that would have been the opposite had the English been a major influence in the nation’s past.
Many of today’s youth grew up with a significant influence of English from multiple sources, specifically anything related to technology. Many of us went overseas for our education and it just so happens the popular destination countries are United States, United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia. Guess what they have in common?
Okay so the founding fathers of this nation got together and declared Indonesian as the uniting language for what was then going to be a new nation. But what makes up Indonesian which was derived primarily from the Sumatran language of Malay? As I mentioned above, it contains innumerable mix of words from foreign as well as local languages.
Not to mention the significant disparity between the standard or written form and the conversational form of Indonesian. Unlike English where the forms are mostly similar, at least before you go into English in specific professions or industries.
Anyway, the language was chosen to unite the people back in the late 1920’s. 80 years later, the nation is already united, the people are… well, mostly united when called for anyway. The language? it’s something that evolves and adapts. How the youth uses Indonesian seems to be at odds with how the “powers that be” over at Pusat Bahasa think the language should be used. Factoring in the rapid adoption of English-oriented terms of the technology world, this battle won’t be over any time soon.
Creative minds, ’00 style
Why have I been sharing mashup videos this morning? We’re about to close the decade (either in a few hours of in 12 months depending on how you calculate stuff) and the rise of digital media along with the widening of creative outputs have placed copyright issues and content protection as one of the major elements of the decade. I figured the way today’s minds process creative output is by taking existing works and combining them to produce something that while not entirely new, appeals to a large audience and evokes particular emotions.
The skills that are required to create such mashups are not simplistic. The artists (yes, I’m calling them mashup artists) have to understand the audience, the material, and how to not only put them together but make them seamless as to remove the doubt on the subject of the parody or the reference. Mashups are not simple copy and paste. You need to have the ability to spot similar or identical elements to combine the content and make them look or feel professional. Anyone can create a good movie but it takes skills and experience to create a really good movie. he same principles apply here. See the video below to understand was put into creating the Magnum P.I + Star Wars mashup.
Copyrights? Of course, there are copyright issues but most mashups were made with no commercial intent. These works were created because they have a high appreciation of the original contents that they use.
They want to create something that is cool for them and their peers. While the contents may not be new, the end result is often something fresh. In fact, mashups promote original content because without which, there would be no mashups to create. Those who watch mashup videos or listen to mashup songs become exposed to the original works that are used.
AuliaSays 