FOUND: Visual Thinking and Thoughts

visual-thinking

This was how Peter Ong explained visual thinking in a 1994 AMIC paper where he also championed the importance of packaging and design so that newspapers stayed relevant to readers. The way to do so is to be, what I call, a total journalist.

According to Peter, such a journalist should:

  1. Integrate themselves fully into the design process
  2. Learn to think graphically
  3. Look for graphic potential in every story
  4. Collaborate with sub-editors and artists in the final packaging of their stories

The New Paper is one local English paper that I think has such journalists as one can see from how prominently they use infographics. I believe they are the only paper with the post of Infographic Journalist. You can see an archive of their works online here. Below are three of my favourites:

I love how this infographic not only served to categorise the price increases across different sectors but more also how it acted as a distinct visual element to convey the idea of price hikes so simply! Great layout too.

Here, the process of setting up the Singapore Flyer is well explained and readers get a sense of the scale of this world’s tallest observation wheel as it is compared with other megastructures around the world.

The details that go into this one show that infographics need not be simple, but can be jam-packed with information if it is well-designed. I like how the outline of a person is place on the chair to show how comfortable it might be to sleep in one of these seats. The big picture is not forgotten as the detail on the bottom left corner lets the reader know where this chair is in the plane.

We’re so young, have we got time?

When I first began school in WKWSCI, my lecturer showed us Radio Station Forgot To Play My Favourite Song, a rockumentary about the local music scene in Singapore. It turned out to be a final-year project (FYP) by a group of seniors and I told myself my FYP had to be like that — to show Singaporeans another side of their own country.

In my third year, I tried to get the filmmakers down to talk about the film atSingaplural, but unfortunately they were all tied up, so I never got to meet them. As I finally attempt to finish up my own FYP this year, I chanced upon the film again when I was surfing around for local music and found Radio Station by The Padres, the song that played as the film rolled through its credits. After some Googling, I chanced upon one of the filmmaker’s blog, Billy Tan, who wrote a retrospect about the film:

The 3 of us have always enjoyed the compliments over the years but its also a little sad that none of us are within even sniffing distance of the hotshit rockumentarians we were 5 years ago – in fact we’ve all joined the SYSTEM and are civil servants now. If there were still anything remotely creative and edgy left in us, it probably would’ve been shat out of us by now. Sadly, we’re fading away instead of burning out.

In the song Radio Station, The Padres ask, We’re so young, have we got time? and listening to it makes me question how much time I have to grow before I have to take on the world and how much time I have left before my ideals are spent. And as I read Billy’s post, the song ended, There’s no more time… I wondered if I might end up talking like him a few years down the road.

Being Critical of Critique

To offer a critique does not require one to be critical.

This c-word sends shudders down the spine of all creators, conjuring an image of a knife stabbing through the heart of your work and adding a few twists just to make sure it is truly dead. One can never be too sure.

But to be critical does not necessarily mean just disapproving judgements but rather, an analysis of a piece of work to comment on its merits and faults so that people can see its elements and better understand it. Thus, a critique is not about tearing a piece of work apart but rather building it again part by part.

And the reason why we are all so afraid of critique, ableit our fears misplaced, is because everything we do is a part of us, and the greater you love it, the greater you fear losing it to others.