Reflection

I never knew that taking up degree courses would end up creating a blog and blog about things that we learn, apply theories that we learn. I am a blogger (not a famous one though) but blogging for this Issues in Publication and Design course is something really different from what I usually blog in my own personal blog.


However, in this subject I really did learn a lot in publishing and designs such as designing fact sheet. I would never in my life learn how to design a fact sheet as I always do wonder how to do brochures that is always given out in shopping complexes or public places.


Now, I am learning more about media studies like this. Before this I was really an outdated person where I do not always keep myself updated in things like this. Don't say in this subject, even other subjects I learn a lot about Media Ethics which is really important for our field when we are out to work. Now I have more skills in designing, brainstorming and even know about the ethics in the Media world. Before I end my last words in this post, I would like to thank my lecturer Ms. Jenny for guiding me throughout this whole semester which I would say it is torturous *giggles*. Thank you :)

- Weng See -

Privacy

Privacy is like something people would like to have. Why do we need privacy in the new millennium? The rapid pace of change has highlighted one of the most enduring understandings of philosophy: new technology sometimes raise old questions in novel ways.(Patterson and Wilkins, 2008, pp. 149) As for example the most famous social networking site, Facebook. Philosopher Louis W. hidges has attempted to focus attention on the need for privacy. He says that " without some degree of privacy, civilized life would be impossible" (Hodges 1983).


Now, talking about Facebook privacy, may i use a real life example that happened to my friend few months back. Her facebook account was being hacked by some people, and the person who used her facebook account, did asked one of her friend to lend "him" money.


Source: http://nerdy-aya.blogspot.com



Source: http://nerdy-aya.blogspot.com


The pictures above are the conversation that my friend's friend managed to take with the scammer.


However it is, Social Networking sites like this might not be as safe as it is. There are scammers around, to con money from people. What's more? My friend is one of the real life example can be taken to experience.


Reference

Patterson. P and Wilkins. L, 2008, Media Ethics, Issues and Cases, 6th edn, Mcgraw Hill Higher Education, pp. 149 - 150

Michael Jackson’s Death Photo Stirs Controversy

On the 25^th of June 2009, the whole world was shocked when the “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson was pronounced dead.Well during his death, I was still in Perth, Australia and when I woke up, my cousin told me he was dead. Not only did the entertainment world suffer a great loss; the whole world suffer a great lost. The first thing that comes to everyone’s mind at the time the news was delivered to them was, could this be real? Could it be another hoax of Michael Jackson’s death like the one in 2007?

Source: National Photo Group

Well unfortunately, this time, it is true. Sometimes I wonder why good souls are always taken earlier. The above image has created a mayhem in Hollywood when the time it was released. People wondered if that was the picture Michael Jackson was photographed alive or, the first picture of him, dead.

According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), texts are the vessels of meaning in old literacy, and the only way to understand is by reading the text. Images in old literacy are just used for decorations.So people would think that it was just another fake news to grab people's attention. Does the picture showing you it is like a decoration? Of course it is not a decoration, but it is a real picture where people took it when he was pushing into the ambulance. But why would people still like to take pictures of him and does not want to leave him in peace? Perhaps, it is one way to write a story in their magazines or maybe the picture is going to be published on television.

Magazines around too had the sympathetic title, which triggered comments about the relationship between images, words and other elements of the composition (Kristen, 2008)


As I said, magazine would take pictures like these to publish it in their magazine to hit the top sales of the month. Same goes with our Malaysian local films director, and our very own Petronas ads creator, Yasmin Ahmad, she was dead

Source: Google


If the readers think of ethical photography as a “picture of reality”, it is the unethical alterations (Thomas, 2002). Yes, it is definitely unethical at all because they are not giving them any respect to the dead. Just because they do want to make more money by hitting sales everymonth, they put the "juiciest" pictures and what's more? They will definitely exaggerate the story to make it more :juicy" and interesting.


Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2^nd edn, Routledge, London, Chapter 6: The Meaning of Composition.

Kristen E. Sukalac, 1st April 2008, PR Conversations, Ethics and Images, viewed on 18th November 2009, at http://www.prconversations.com/?p=411

Snead, E 2009, OK! Cover of Michael Jackson’s Death Photo Stirs Controversy, viewed 18 November 2009, available

<http://blog.zap2it.com/thedishrag/2009/07/release-of-michael-jacksons-death-photo-stirs-controversy-.html>

Thomas H. Wheeler, ‘Photo Truth or Photo Fiction?, viewed on 18th November 2009 at http://bit.ly/2mdIpp

International version of Kindle out for Christmas

Technology is growning VERY FAST as there are now out with a electronic device for reading. Kindle ebook is an electronic device where people can carry around and read instead of newspaper. It is not a computer and wireless or synching required. It allows readers to access over 90,000 books. The advantages of E-book compared to printed book is that this small device can store like thousands of difference kind of books in there. Convenience as it does not need any subscriptions needed anymore and it is even lighter compare holding on a book. Short summary is given and it is easy to be scanned. Here the Kindle E-book successfully portrays the good document design introduced by Putnis and Petelin (1996) where the document design creates a clear-cut informative content. E-book targeted on the older generation as they find the Kindle a worth to purchase. Besides that it is able to zoom nearer for people to read comfortably without stressing and hurting their eyes. Because of the grey screen which is not glaring like computers and all.

Source: Google.com

The picture above is an example of the Kindle Ebook

Source: Google.com

While the picture above an example of the printed version instead of the Kindle Ebook

Michael Angier (2003) introduced 10 top reasons why E-books are better than printed books which is:-

1. They're quicker to obtain.
2. E-books are more easily updated and upgraded.
3. Usually get far more than just the book.
4. Take up less space.
5. Do not use up trees.
6. They're more portable.
7. References can be hot-linked.
8. Readers can custom brand the E-books.
9. Can do global searches and find information quickly.
10. Better technology.

Document design refers to the physical appearance of a document as the written text and its presentation work together to provide readers with the information they need (Reep, 2006). Both the E-book and printed book do have a perfect physical appearance but E-book is more on technology wise and it makes people easier to read and all. However, in the 21st century, people are more likely to support the E-book because of convenient wise, as everyone now prefer convenience and everything must be in fast pace.

Reference

Michael Angier 15th October 2003, Top ten reasons why ebooks are better than printed books, viewed on 16 November 2009 at http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol127/ebooks.htm

Putnis & Petelin, 1996, Professional Communication, Principles and Applications, Writing for Communicate, Prentice Hall, Sydney.


Reep, DC 2006, ‘Document design’, Technical writing: principles, strategies and readings, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York, Chapter 6, pp. 133-172.

Indonesian Weekly Apologises Over Last Supper Suharto Cover

This article is actually about one of Indonesia's top news weeklies called "TEMPO" in apologizing about the cover of its latest issue,which depicts former president Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. The following picture is the cover of the imitation of the Last Supper but with Suharto and his children's face in it



Source: http://nick131086.blogspot.com
Suharto' Last Supper


Source: http://nick131086.blogspot.com
Jesus's Last Supper


There are a few reasons that they might want to do this;
- to create propaganda
- to promote more themselves
- to commemorate Suharto
- because they thinks that Suharto is a powerful man in their country


According to Kress and van Leeuwen, (2006, pp.35), he opine that semiotic landscape differs from society to society as it is influenced by social, cultural and individual interpretation. It also means that, different people has different cultural influential. In other words, different cultural has different interpretation from every visual. For example, the pictures above.



Based on the visual interpretation of the readers over the topic(Indonesian weekly apologies over last supper Suharto cover), it eventually caused an upset to many Christians believers about it tarnishes the meaning behind the original painting. The editors of “Tempo” should understand when an unsuitable visual is used, misinterpretation will happen. (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Soon after the magazine was published, the chief editor of “Tempo”, Toriq Hadad apologized to the Christians saying that “Tempo” had no intention of upsetting the Christians, for they were just inspired by the composition of the famous painting.


There was a similar incident also happened in Malaysia before. This involved a Tamil-language press, Makkal Ossai publishing a controversial of Jesus Christ Christ holding a cigarette and a can of beer on the other.

Source: www.tinyplanetblog.com

Although none of the image published were intentional, document designers, especially caricature artists should take into consideration the purpose, context and audience when designing a document. (Putnis & Petelin, 1996) The most important thing to consider is the cultural context as we would not like offending any of our audiences. As I said earlier, the cultural context is the most important thing that should consider, because different countries has different culture.



References

ABC News, 2008, Indonesian weekly apologies over Last Supper Suharto cover, viewed 18^th November 2009, available <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm


Jesus Christ All About (2008), Jesus and the Last Supper, Viewed 18th November,
http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/jesus-and-the-last-supper-faq.htm


Kress, G & Leeuwen, V 2006, Reading Images: visual communication, Routledge, New York.

New Forms of Media Publishing

There are many new forms of Media Publishing, there is by device which is very new to people. Publishing videos, and movies and songs especially devices like mobile phones and also IPOD which one of the most famous and wanted gadgets around. Besides IPOD, Iphone is also one of the multifunction device that you can use.

Source: appleinsider.com


Besides that, there are many more new forms of media publishing, such as VLOG instead of blog. Vlog is also known as Video Logging where people talk infront of the camera instead of typing. According to Walsh (2006, pp, 26) that in the "new" visual literacy, written text is no longer the dominant part of the message.

Then according to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), text and graphics are used together to form greater meaning as both these modes support each other. So when you talk, it is texted and graphics which is your image during vlogging. Besides that, alot of vlog can also be found in Youtube. Youtube is one of the most place where people would go because of the free videos you can viewed from there

Source: Google.com

Reference

Kress G., & van Leeuwen T., 2006, Reading Images, Chapter 1; The Semiotic Landscape: Language and Visual Communication.

Walsh M 2006, “The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts”, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

Online Vs. Print Media

Technology has been chasing up so quickly where instead of reading news in the newspaper, you can even read it online by just going to the website. Like for example, whenever you are already leaving in oversea but you still do want to update yourself with Malaysia current news by reading it at The Star Online. Now in the current environment there is wireless connection and even mobiles having to read their news from compared to the traditional printed version. However, the printed documents are documents which forces audience to read from left to right or even top to bottom (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006).




For me, I would run through the newspapers (printed form) just to know what happening information for the day is. Penman (1998) calls this kind of individuals as ‘flippers’. Flippers are readers which are most likely stop to read when something catches their attention. for example of a print is shown below.





Virtual newspaper readers allow to scan through the documents simpler (Nielsen 1997). Furthermore, by using the virtual newspaper, it allows quicker, simpler, concise and has the highlighted keywords and hyperlinks for further understanding (Nielsen, 1997). But as my opinion, normally people would prefer printed newspaper rather than virtual ones because of staring so much on the computer, the screen is too glaring. However, this is an example of a virtual news paper is shown below from The Star Online.




Reference

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006. Reading images. Chapter 1:
The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication.

Nielsen, J, 1997. How Users Read on the Web, viewed 5th May 2008 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html


Penman R 1998, " Document structures and reader's habits', Communication news, vol. 11.