Reflection.

It never came to my mind that I would one day require to blog. Throughout my first 3 months in Taylor’s College, the subject, “Issues in Publication and Design” has given me a lot of knowledge pertaining publication and designing issues. Apart from that, I have also learned how to apply the theories that were taught in my lectures and tutorials in order to create a good document design.


Before this, I have always thought that designing a good document was easy. To me, it has always been only the whole layout of the design. I never knew that for design alone, so many theories exist!


Creating my own factsheet, magazine article, vlog and weblogging has been a great experience. A very important thing I have learned about blogging community is that blogs do not only revolve around writers. In order to keep readers coming back for more, the writer must build a strong relationship with their readers, and also gain their trust.

The Da Vinci Controversy.

If you are a well-known and respectable artist like Leonardo Da Vinci, there is a chance that you paintings live forever. Famous paintings often inspire caricature artists to relate current issues with the paintings. But it is rather disheartening that these caricature artists use these beautiful paintings to mock public figures.

Source: www.indonesianmatters.com (The Last Supper)

In February 2008, a famous Indonesian weekly magazine “Tempo” published its copy with the cover page of a painting inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”. The title of the image was entitled “Setelah Dia Pergi” (After He’s Gone). The image showed Suharto in white, sitting in the middle of the dining table, having a meal with his six children.

Source: www.indonesianmatters.com (Setelah Dia Pergi)

As the picture above possess similarities with “The Last Supper”, this issue created uproar among the Christians. The image is religiously and culturally sensitive. The Christians were angry because they felt that “Tempo” likened the infamous dictator, Suharto to Jesus Christ; and they felt like the magazine was insulting their God in some ways.

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.

As Weber stated, everyone should take responsibility for their own action for it the right and ethical thing to do. (Weber, 1995) “Tempo” made a right choice by taking responsibility to apologizing to the fellow Christian Devotees.

In Malaysia, a similar incident also happened. 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.

List of 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>.

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

O’Mahony, D 2007, What would Jesus do?, viewed 18^th November 2009, available

<http://tinyplanetblog.com/?p=258>

Weber, J H 1995, ’Ethics in scientific and technical communication’, WISENET Journal 38, viewed

18^th November 2009, available <http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=22>

MJ's Final Controversy.

Source: National Photo Group

On the 25^th of June 2009, the whole world was shocked when the “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson was pronounced 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?

Well, sad but true, 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.

The above image was used by many online and printed media when they made a coverage regarding Michael Jackson’s death. But does that dead picture of Michael Jackson looks like a decoration to you?

The answer, is definitely a no. That picture is something that has created a controversy in Hollywood. Many people, especially the fans, including artists Jay-Z and Sean Combs were fumed when the image was published. Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) stated that an image could create a rich meaning and could stand as an independent vessel of communication.

According to Lord Phillips MR in the court case between Michael Douglas and Okay magazine, he stated that “photographs are not merely a method of conveying information that is an alternative to verbal description. They enable the person viewing the photograph to act as a spectator, in some circumstances voyeur would be the more appropriate noun, of whatever it is that the photograph depicts. As a means of invading privacy, a photograph is particularly intrusive.” (Kenyon, AT, Milne, E 2006, p17)

Even though Michael Jackson was a public figure, a dead picture of him should have never been published to the public. His family has privacy rights on his pictures. It is not right for Paparazzis to violate the privacy of celebrities.

List of References:

Kenyon, AT & Milne, E 2006, Images of Celebrity: Publicity, Privacy, Law, Legal Studies Research Paper No. 142, Melbourne Law School, pp. 17

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

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>

Another Facebook Makeover.

Facebook has done it again! This is not the first time that Facebook leaving its users fuming. The Australian.com in September 2008 reported that, 100 millions of users were unhappy with the changes of the new outlook of Facebook.

Layout changes made by Facebook (2004 & 2009).

Facebook’s new changes were due to the trend of wanting to share videos and photos instantly. According to the vice president of marketing Chamath Palihapitiya, they “want to make sure it is easy for people to push and pull information in the form of bite-size content rather quickly."

So what makes Facebook a good design interface?

According to Martinec & van Leeuwen (2006), the hierarchy of information must be clear, as in, the centre of information must be on the highest hierarchy; which is the most important factor in a social networking site. Facebook has consistency in their website. Affiliate seeking (2004) stated that, the navigation of a website’s buttons and bars must be easy to understand and use. Nowadays, we can see that Facebook pages are able to load quickly. Pictures (by album upload) can also be uploaded fast with the existence of Java.

The recent changes that Facebook made this year (2009), enables its users to personalize the updates they wish to prioritize, making it more user-friendly.

Side bar(features) can be arrange according to preference.

Although I am satisfied with the new changes made by Facebook, there are still ways to improve the design layout of the site. Firstly, Facebook could try to arrange its users’ friends list in a hierarchical order (by prioritizing friends that we often interact with). Apart from that, simple design layout can be applied.

Simple layout recommended for Facebook.

Gawdy designs (from Myspace profile) Facebook should avoid.

According to Lynn all facebook profiles has the same white background and blue banner which makes it look clean, modern and sophisticated. However, there are too much white space which can be improved by utilizing it. The weight balance should also be distributed evenly.

White space and weight balance should be distributed evenly.

Facbook has been successfully popular in the world today eversince it was founded in 2004. However, each time Facebook tries to improve by redesigning their layout, users get mad. Some even create hate groups like “We hate the new Facebook layout, give us the old one back.” In terms of audience acceptance, it takes time for users to get used to each layout. All Facebook ever did was respond to the suggestions its users give to improve themselves. They deserve two thumbs up!

List of References:


AffiliateSeeking.com, 2004. Web Page Design with Graphic Button,viewed 18 November 2009, available http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ashow/151.html


AFP, 2008, Facebook Makeover Leaves some devotees Fuming, viewed 18 November 2009, available
<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/facebook-makeover-leaves-some-devotees-fuming/story-e6frgamx-1111117453632>


Agrawal, R 2009, 9 Ways to Improve the Facebook News Feed, viewed 18 November 2009, available < http://blog.agrawals.org/2009/04/15/9-ways-to-improve-the-facebook-news-feed/>


Lynn, R. 2009, ‘Learning to Like Facebook?’ Effects of Cultural and Educational Capital on the Use of Social Network Sites in a Population of University Students. Thesis, University of Missouri: St. Louis.


Martinec, R & van Leeuwen, T, 2006. The Language of New Media: Theory and Practice. Kentucky: Routledge.

The Power of Photography

In December 2008, the ABC aired a media report entitled “The Power of Photography”. ABC’s Karin Zsivanovits paid a visit to Queensland College of Art at Griffith University in Brisbane as the students were on their way completing their production on a collection of photographic essays entitled “The Australian Photojournalist.”

According to their website, “The Australian Photojournalist” (APJ, 2009) is a non-profit publication that publishes their journal annually. The undergraduate and postgraduate journalists run the editorial board of the APJ. The photographs and contents of the APJ are supplied by professional photojournalist from all over the world.

There’s an old cliché saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Basically this issue stresses on the importance of photographs in journalism. Photojournalism means telling a story with a photograph and a caption of a few sentences. Horn (1999, p27) asserts that “the tight coupling of words, images, and shapes into a unified communication unit. ‘Tight coupling’ means that you cannot remove the words or the images or the shapes from a piece of visual language without destroying or radically diminishing the meaning a reader can obtain from it.” We no longer read in a mono-modal way, thus, images play an important part in document design.

Walsh (2006, p29) says that "images have other effects that are different from words, particularly at affective, aesthetic and imaginative levels."

"You would imagine that people from a country that has massive oil reserves have been blessed. But in many countries we went to we were told, unfortunately we have oil. It has been a curse not a blessing." Paolo Woods.

(Source: http://cdp.edu.au/cdp/photojournalist-article/oil-crude-world-paolo-woods)

The above photograph was taken from the APJ website. Without the captions we would not know what the photograph is trying to tell us. The caption tells us that oil is the many reasons why war happens; and the countries that have oil thinks having oil as a natural resource is not lucky after all.

Parker (2008), a professional photographer said in the interview that the increasing developments of new forms of media like Flickr and Facebook has decreased the power of traditional still images. To make a living out of photography nowadays, one has to move from the changing times. There is no longer just depending on a still photograph, but a moving image (videography) as well. In order to successfully communicate with our audience and capture their attention, multi-modal text must be present.

List of References:

Griffith University Queensland College of Art, 2009, About, viewed 18 November 2009, available

<http://cdp.edu.au/cdp/photojournalist/about>

Horn, RE 1999, Information design: Emergence of a new profession Jacobson, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Parker, DD 2008, The Media Report: The Power of Photography, viewed 18 November 2009, available

<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2447666.htm>

Walsh, M. 2006, ‘The Textual Shift': Examining the Reading Process with

Print, Visual and Multimodal Texts’, Australian Journal of Text and Literacy, vol. 29.

New Forms of Media Publishing

The information technology world has never failed to surprise us with new inventions everyday. At first there was myspace, and then blogging. Just when we were starting to get used to a new form of media publishing, a new one comes up. Tech-savvy users are juggling to keep themselves up to date with the latest media trends.

New forms of media publishing have altered the roles of journalism. The best thing about these new media publishing is that there are no gatekeepers online and people are free to speak their mind. Nations no longer rely only on biased report filtered by the government on national newspapers.

As new forms of media such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter starts emerging, online issues start arising as well.

Putnis and Petelin (1996) stated that expressive theorist value “truth” and “authentic voice” and that knowledge lie within individuals. This means freedom of speech. One of the issues pertaining blogging is the controversial article “Let’s send Altantuya’s Murderers to Hell” posted by Raja Petra. He alleged that our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and the First Lady was involved in the bombing of Altantuya.

Following the release of the article, Raja Petra was charged by the Internal Security Act. A sentence from www.blawg.joshua3.com stated that “You can say anything you want in your speech. It's your freedom after your speech that is in question!" So, are we really free to speak our mind through the new media publishing?

List of References:

Loone, S 2008, Raja Petra Investigated for Sedition due to Altantuya Article, viewed 18 November 2009,

<http://sloone.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/police-high-on-heels-of-raja-petra-due-to-altantuya-article/>

LegallyBlawg, 2007, Freedom of Speech: How qualified is Malaysia?, viewed 18 November 2009,

<http://blawg.joshua3.com/?p=5>

Putnis, P Petelin, R 1996, Professional Communication: Principles and Applications: Writing to Communicate, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Online vs. Print

Designing for print and web are two completely different things. Before we start designing, it is important for us to first understand the types of media that we will be dealing with. What looks good on print does not necessarily looks good on the web.

In printed media, words dominate the whole document. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p204) states that pages that are densely printed are to be read the way they are designed. That means, from left to right, word by word and line to line. This method of reading is called reading in a linear way. Reading on printed pages can be a tiring experience.

Nielsen (2006) discovered that web contents are read in an F-shaped pattern. Web contents are not read thoroughly.

Source: www.4.bp.blogspot.com

In the printed newspaper above, we can see the domination of text. According to Nielsen (1999), reading information on print design is based on the eye movement. Images on print are limited as they are likely sponsored by advertisers, therefore print design cannot afford to waste their space.

Source: www.unplug.com

Nielsen (1999) stated that hands move information in web design by scrolling the mouse. Web pages have the advantages when it comes to pictures. We cannot compare which in better in both print and web as both designs will work well if the right theory and design principles are applied.

List of References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, Routledge, New York.

Nielsen, J 1999, Differences between print design and web design, viewed 18 November 2009,
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Nielsen, J 2006, F-shaped pattern for reading web content, useit.com, viewed 18 November 2009,
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html >.