Another GRC past, and I realised that my time is running fast, hopefully I could catch up with it. GRC went well, apart from the amount of work I need to cope with in 6 month period time.
I need to continue reading, the more the better and keep on writing and make some mark and point in my research. I have to explicitly articulate my argument in my research. I come to realised that this research is not so much about Malaysian Identity, it is more about the image and visual representation of it, and how it create the perceptions?
Clearly design plays significant roles in these process. But what is it and how does it plays the roles is an interesting areas to investigate as what I’m researching now. It is fascinating to discover some things in this research. I’m discovering another Malaysia, its representations of identity and designer’s roles in this. I asked these questions in my GRC and would be nice to hear some thought about it.
Can it be said that part of designer roles is also capturing the history and record it through their creation. Do designer deliberately re-use this elements of history to modify, and provide perception as a way to communicate with the audience? Can it be said the designers are partly responsible perpetuate the myth of national cultural identity?
Here’s an interesting quote that might give you some ideas about what I’m trying to say up there:
Advertising and design have more in common than the postmodern trend for vernacularism (or the anesthetization of timeworn artifacts) reveals. Advertising and graphic design are equally concerned with selling, communication and entertaining. To appreciate one, the other is imperative. But more important, if graphic design history does not expand to include advertising and other related studies, it will ultimately succumb to the dead-end thinking that will be the evitable consequence of being arrested in a state of continual adolescence.Steven Heller, ˜Advertising the Mother of Graphic Design, from Eye, no.17. vol.5 summer 1995.