Wow today was very busy and tiring for the class but it was fun. We went to Pavillion for our scheduled field trip today to research design and technology. Pavillion is a recently opened shopping mall in KL with many high-class and expensive brands. We expect to see many cool concepts of brands or shop outlets using design and technology. Everyone met at Starbucks to get a short briefing from our lecturer Teresa and then we were off in groups to find design and technology to do our presentation. My group members were me, Nasreen, Samah, Mayeesha and Jean. Here are the girls:

The display they are standing in front of is one of the first examples of design and technology that we found. Sportswear brands like Nike, Adidas and Reebok are well-known for the technology in sporting outfit and outerwear such as shoes. That is the display for Adidas football shoes featuring technology that provides better air circulation and comfortable wear while being hardy enough to be used in footie. Also there were many shops that had shoes with the same technology, only sometimes in different designs and for different functions. There were many examples of design and tech around Pavillion and we did try to take some pics without getting caught. The architecture and interior of Pavillion is a good example, as are shops like the one below called a beauty centre – ~H2O+ which used cool blue lighting all over its shop to make it look like watery and it matches the identity of the shop too.

Then after our research, we met up with the class again at 4pm and had a short meeting with Teresa to talk about our presentation, our research outcome and our ideas. We decided to do a presentation on the use of technology to create lights and lighting effects for shops display and perhaps other industries.

The video clip below is a group presentation done in my home place for socio psychology class. Since almost all of us are multimedia students, our group members decided to do a video clip with graphical notations instead of presenting it using power point slide shows. Our aim was to present it in a unique style which would grab others attentions as we present it.

This presentation was about showing a futuristic piece (by means of design) that’s going to be in the market near future. Anyways this is the first video clip we ever made using a bit of animations. Basically the simple animations done in this clip is by using after effects. Ofcourse we know that the scenes are a bit obscure to watch since we got a very limited time to finish this up and also for the time been we had to eliminate certain diagnosis which would be required to do a proper and good quality video clip. Did our best though…

The Futuristic design..

Based upon the researches we went through, we came up with a brand, which is widely and commonly used around the world which is all time favorite “Nokia”. Nokia’s futuristic mobile phone which is called as “Nokia Morph” has a new concept that would be right at home… in the nearby future. The Nokia morph is designed in such a way that it can exhibit catalog, and boasts the ability to stretch and flex to almost any shape a user could think of. The technology implemented in this mobile phone (nanotechnology) would deliver transparent electronics, self-cleaning surfaces, and the malleability to transform into any number of configurations. Some people say that the actual technology required to put this together is years or even decades away, though Nokia expects to see some of these innovations making their way into high-end products within seven years.

During Presentation:

During the presentation, the topic that I chose to speak out in the video clip was “technology in design” where I have to talk about the technologies implemented on the “Nokia Morph” and its use abilities.

The key points that I presented are:

- How technological research and development has progressed during the past years.

- The massive changes that evoke and how life became easy.

- What is Spider Silk Technology and how it reinforces the unit with thin elastic structure and how it transforms the shape for the suitable task

- The flexibility of Nokia Morph and how the electronic s can be integrated into devices from interconnects to sensors.

- The material used to built the unit which is the biodegradable materials, making the production and recycling.

There was an interesting lecture about design and technology today. Ms Teresa showed us presentation and some cool videos about technology in fashion design. The fashion designer is named Hussein Chalayan and he created many types of clothes with unusual and distinctive materials instead of normal fabric. My research on him has let me know that he uses unconventional and strange materials like airplane-building material and envelope paper to design his unique outfits. His creative extremely out-of-the box techniques has led him to create blown-up skirts, armchair covers which transform into dresses, chairs into suitcases, a coffee table reveals itself to be a wooden skirt… One of his most famous outfits is called the ‘video dress’ which has 15000+ LEDs on the dress to make it glow and change colours.

So Ms Teresa told us that fashion is not the only industry where technology is widely implemented and it is an interesting subject to read about because I have always liked technological advancement in our society. It is amazing what the human mind can create especially in modern tech. Besides technology, as a graphic designer myself I looked up other forms of design or art that had elements of technology in it and I found this picture done by a famous Mexican artist called Diego Rivera. In between 1932-33, he completed 27 frescoes known as ‘Detroit Industry’ at the Detroit Institute of Art. Although as an artist he doesn’t really implement heavy elements of technology in all of his artwork, this piece of artwork was exceptionally outstanding because at during the 1930s he had a very futuristic sort of mentality to be able to paint something like that. Here’s his artwork:

So we were told that we’ll be going to Pavillion on a research trip for our next project – a presentation.

The Essentiality of Mobile Media in the Modern Age of Connectivity

Based on the research theme ‘Myth in Contemporary Design, Media and Fashion’, my essay topic is ‘The Essentiality of Mobile Media in the Modern Age of Connectivity’ – basically a discussion on how crucial mobile media has gotten to be in these times; connecting individuals to the world via fuss-free media. We see mobile media everywhere in our daily lives and yet some of us are not wary of the role it plays in making day-to-day communications easier. Some of us are not even clear on what defines mobile media. Take this situation at the local university bus stop where out of the fifteen people there, eight of them are using any given sort of mobile device; being mobile phones or laptops or otherwise. Even the wireless headphones I am wearing are a form of mobile media,

In the modern age of telecommunication, mobile media is defined as a channel for free-flowing means of communication; also fluidity and portability in human connectivity. Although cellphones and laptops immediately come to mind when mobile media is mentioned, it is not confined to these two electronic gadgets. In fact if we were to take a step back in time, roughly quoting Paul Levinson, author of “Cellphone”, in his book he made a point that ‘the moment Man thought of writing on a stone tablet instead of the nearby wall, mobile media was essentially born.’

With regard to human need and desire to have continual and limitless access, media capabilities in respect to their function are changed and improved at a rate no longer considered phenomenal in this age and time. From that one idea of carving on a stone tablet, mobile media now encompasses a wide range including visual media, internet media, printed media, audio media and telephonic media. These also include the networks and accessibilities that have been developed for their specific functions. And just when it would seem that mobile media cannot possibly get anymore mobile than it already is, consumer demands continue pushing boundaries on the mobile media expansion.

This brings to mind a thought of what were to happen if mobile media didn’t exist in our time? Can we really live without mobile media; is it just an urban myth that the absence of mobile media spells the demise of modern connectivity as we know it today? And just what is the limit when it comes to the development of mobile media capabilities?

DOES THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA…

In class few weeks back, we watched a movie that exemplified myth in the real world, like the fashion world. It was ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and many more. It was based on a book of the same title by Lauren Weisberger. The idea of watching this movie is to see how icons of the fashion world are regarded as “rockstars” who live life on the fast lane especially in a never-stopping city like New York.

The movie being about glamour and fashion, the first impression of the fashion world is likely to be “hectic” and “aloof”. It is not wrong to say people who venerate characters of the fashion world tend to believe these people are from a higher hierarchical level. This movie gives us a more diverse view towards the glamorous world of styles and trends. Although, the diva editor of the trendy fashion magazine Runway, Ms. Miranda Priestly, who is portrayed as an unforgiving and egoistical woman, she concedes to being thought of as cold and distant yet most admirable. On the other hand the main character Andy or Andrea Sachs takes on a more nonchalant approach to the fashion world because she has no clue or interest about it in the beginning and wants only to work her way up to the top with great will power. Despite her private life falling apart she managed to achieve her goal the ordinary way, by hard work. By this placing such a rooted, down-to-earth character like Andy Sachs in a fast-paced movie with posh settings and outrageous characters, it symbolizes that the fashion world where ambitions take so much to achieve and is believed to be “unreachable” is actually attainable.

After watching the movie though, the only question isn’t about ethics and measures people are willing to take to achieve their goals or protect their positions especially in a cutthroat industry like fashion. Other questions that make me think are such as how real these people actually are under their business-like exterior. Even now in today’s world, not only in the fashion world but in music, media, advertising and other industries, the ‘rock stars’ or ‘legends’ such as Steve Jobs of the iconic Apple Inc, are all real human beings with emotions, strengths and weaknesses too. They are only ‘myths’ or ‘legends’ because today’s society made them so.

hmm..today..what short of a class we had..todays class more like a kindergarten school doing some crazy collage thing. But i do know that the creativity evolves from these basic concepts. Anyways the class was fun. Had a good team work i guess. Reminds me a lot of things though. Here is our final collage, done by me, Nasreen, Samah, Mayeesha and Jean. Other classmates also did their own collages in groups and i noticed a lot of them did something to do with the environment.

Anyways, Jean explained to class during a short talk on our collage. The dark colours at the bottom represent gravel or the road in life, the one everyone walks on. The green colours are also walked on but it is the grass that we walk on, and both have the meaning of the different paths in life that teenagers like us choose, I suppose.

SO our class was shown a presentation by our lecturer Ms Teresa about a culture that is very influential in our lives especially for artist and designers. It is the Pop Art culture. Pop art started during the 1950s in Britain and its famed artists are such as Andy Warhol who did the Campbell Soup Cans artwork and Roy Lichtenstein who did the cartoon strip artwork.

can anybody help me to figure this out.anybody who’s pro enough to deal with blogs please feel free to help me..well since this is my first time dealing with a blog, i am really having some confusions over here. But this really seems to be very interesting though since i always wanted to do website designing. whenever i come across some high classified designed websites some thing like “www.2advanced.com”, i wonder how do they do all those animations and how do they do all the html coding, java scripting and all shorts of crytograms. Its seems a lot of work. so far what i know about a website is there are two types of it and its dynamic website and non dynamic websites…and i am hoping that by the end of this semister i would be able to get a basic knowledge of what a website is..

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