While designers work to feed themselves, they should also pay attention to select projects that see the right problems instead of the right money. Instead of working on the next startup idea that provides the most obvious channels for revenue stream, why don't we identify the most obvious, most important problems that the product will solve?

Instead of creating another deal-based startups, why not promote responsible consumption? Instead of doing another location-based app that is looking forward to brand's business pages that nobody cares, why not shift this into something that is promoting local tourism? Instead of another online store that sells "everything-under-the-sun", why not specialise in one or two lines or brands of products, or better yet, locally-produced ones? Instead of fussing about which platform to develop in, why not take one or none at all?

And this is the best of all: instead of taking inspirations of success from overseas products and copying it almost back-to-back, why not solve specific problems?

1. Melaksanakan kewajiban perkuliahan sesuai dengan ketentuan yang diberlakukan oleh Fakultas Seni Rupa dan Desain Institut Teknologi Bandung hingga selesai. Apabila dikemudian hari (30 hari setelah mengikuti perkuliahan perdana) tidak dapat mengikuti perkuliahan dan mengundurkan diri atas keinginan sendiri dan/atau tidak menyelesaikan program pendidikan sesuai jenjang pendidikan yang dipilih, bersedia mengembalikan dana Beasiswa Unggulan ke kas negara sebesar 2 (dua) kali dari biaya yang diterimakan selama masa studinya.
2. Bersedia untuk tidak menerima beasiswa serupa dari pihak lain dan apabila menerima, bersedia dihentikan dan mengembalikan dana Beasiswa Unggulan ke kas negara sebesar 2 (dua) kali dari biaya yang diterimakan selama masa studinya.
3. Bersedia untuk menulis pada jurnal/media massa nasional/internasional (mengkaitkan/menyebutkan Program Beasiswa Unggulan) sebagai pelaksanaan Intellectual Social Responsibility (ISR) sesuai dengan bidang studi yang diambil dan apabila tidak membuat jurnal/media massa nasional/internasional, bersedia untuk tidak menerima beasiswa pada semester/tahun berikutnya.
4. Dalam kondisi anggaran Program Beasiswa Unggulan mengalami perubahan yang dikarenakan antara lain kenaikan harga bahan bakar minyak, bencana alam, krisis ekonomi global dan sebagainya, menyetujui beasiswa yang diterima mengalami keterlambatan pembayarannya.

If you find bullet number four, it says literally that in cases there is an oil price hike, natural disaster, economical crisis and et cetera, the government is not subject to the obligation that they should pay the scholarship in time. It means that during those circumstances (and add the ambiguity of "et cetera", the frustration!), they can pay whenever they want, even if it's late.

This brings two implications:

First, would it mean that there are other undefined, unplanned circumstances that could cause this? I am very suspicious of corrupt government officers.

Second, would it mean that in cases of payment delays, the students will be liable for temporary payment?

Ever since the beginning of receiving this scholarship, I have never felt that the ministry is truly committed, even more when listening to past grantees. I hardly trust the government, and now it's proved. If there's somebody who says we should put faith in Indonesia, it's definitely not the government.

Also, somebody must consult a lawyer before writing legal-binding statements like this.

I won't discuss about the details about the app I'm designing, but for sure, the whole concept is not something entirely new. I just utulized some existing technology, and the content is what I'm focusing more of. There's a habit-changing aspect of this app that I also want to bring on to the table.

Long story short, I explained things to him. Immediately, as I expected, he would say, "So, what's your offering?"

I stopped speaking for a bit, and thinking what this could all mean. This must be about money. I said to him that for my entire life, there's a little chance that I could afford him, so I was trying to engage him in this project as a partner instead.

Turned out it wasn't easy. But I was prepared for this. As a designer myself, I know how picky ourselves are regarding projects that we put our partnership in.

His worries deal less with the production of the app, but more on the continuity and sustainability of it. There's of course financial aspect in it. Would it make sensible return of investments? It all comes down to the money. In cases where an app requires a dedicated server or backend infrastructure, the cost will continue to rise if users love it.

As for my own app, he thinks it's a good concept, only that it's technically resource-intensive, and judging on the character of Indonesian app users, it will not make good success. Indonesian users are lazy pricks. They are not good content producers, if we are to speak about user-generated content apps. Thus some alternative ideas churned up, which was very kind of him.

At this point, he cannot decide whether he would help. I don't think he's interested, probably my concept just doesn't cut it. But that's perfectly fine. I hope to find other feasible solutions, probably to code on my own and build a web app instead. Web apps are something that I'm more closely familiar of.

All the discussion items in that meeting really opened my eyes, but also left me with one big question: Should we just pursue to do what we love and believe, or leave it to the market? I am probably such a hopeless romantic when it comes to crafting something related to what I really love to do, and getting it to the iron doors of commercialism does not seem that appealing to me. I will see.

That quote passed by a friend of mine could apply to most of our efforts today. We search for perfection endlessly that we forget what it takes to have things perfectly: meticulous attention to details and process. All we care is the finished product, the finish line. All we care is to be number one, and get the most cash.

I am highly disappointed by most Indonesian startups or businesses that emphasize nothing less than monetizations, revenue streams, lavish launch and being winners of competitions. Looking closely inside their products, I find lack of attention to details.

Don't get me wrong, there is a fine line between half-finished products and staged releases. Half-finished products will always be wrong in any stage. Staged releases involve wrapping up and perfection in every stage. Every stage is a finished product, no matter what the roadmap is.

I'd rather see a perfect, polished product with half the features of a complete but flawed product.

True, we have to create products that actually sell, but that doesn't mean the have to force it to sell. Good products that seem to naturally sell will not sell automatically, if there is no effort to do so. In better luck, the product will sell itself. However, the most important is the quality and perfection of the product, in any development stage.

So, here's my idea for a startup or any effort in that sense: start small, humble, find perfection in every stage, and care less about monetizing it or accumulating backfiring hypes at the first place. Take your time and don't just get along with climbing the popularity ladder without knowing what you do.

However, blogging is more than just a mechanism, if we are to compare the two scales. Behind the clickety-click publishing system and geeky infrastructure, there is a human concept. If we are to look at blogging as a tool, then we can say anything on it, fire away. However, blogging is a medium in which we may coherently deliver a message. Every post gradually builds it, shaping a brand, a voice.

There are still rooms for well-edited, well-curated blogs or online periodicals out there, especially for Indonesia. I don't think we need huge investments for a quality blog. It's easy to start and design a blog, it's harder to maintain the quality, it's even harder to build a brand and voice out of it. However, it ends up on our commitments.

For me, blogs are still the sure-fire way of accommodating our voices regardless of the bitter fact that we might get unheard of. Submitting articles to publishers and "established" mass media isn't a guarantee that it will get published. Blogs, in the other way, make us easy to put everything online, so easy that it gets a lot noisy out there. To reduce the noise, why can't we all make better blogs?

If you have personal blogs, try by at least curating information and make them your "own". If you research something on the web and you find an article of your interest, try to rewrite it, revise, take another point of view and make a voice of your own. A post doesn't have to be academically lengthy. Also, if you are writing your personal feelings and thoughts, at least edit and see if it is coherent and nice to read.

Thematic blogs have the same rule: edit and curate. Even more, be grammatically correct. They can be overwhelming, but people will appreciate the attitude. Check multiple sources and perspectives. Be good and consistent if you can't be great and innovative. Decide the voice and matters, and how readers would interact (comments, Twitter, or any other forms).

By the end of the day, blog posts are meant to be read casually, unless we are publishing scientific journals. I'd rather read short, coherent and thoughtful one paragraph blog post than a long shot that steals my precious time away.

Feeling truly indifferent on viewing this work by photographic artist Chris Jordan. It's part of a series called "Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption (2003 - 2005)".

I've been working for Oracle Education Foundation for three years, it's a wing of the whole Oracle Education Initiatives, a part of corporate citizenship programs by Oracle. We develop ThinkQuest as a free on-demand application for teachers & students to use to evangelise and facilitate project learning in the classrooms. This session in Singapore was an evaluation and a projection on next year's mission. I can say we had a generally successful year.

So, back to the fun.

I've been to Singapore numerous times before, but only for personal reasons, so this time was different. It's definitely the first time I went to such event after three years in Jakarta office, meeting staff from the Japan & Asia Pacific region and having a memorable team-building session.

It's also the second time I met Galvin Sng, a long-time ThinkQuest winner, which I am a pretty big fan of!

The first evening we also had a team-building session at a Clarke Quay establishment called The Coriander Leaf. I thought we were just going to have dinner. I was wrong. We had to cook our own dinner!

The next day involved an all-day meeting, concluded with a short night out with Lisa Siregar, Vanessa Lorein, Rika Safrina and Amudi Sebastian. Bliss!

Also, I got to feel like a bird viewing this from my hotel window!

Indonesia is no Singapore, or even Malaysia who probably has better shots at design that drives the economy (if not culturally, commercially is fine). Indonesia is also not the Netherlands, Germany or Switzerland whose design roots took place many decades ago. In countries like these, design is a highly-specialised area, evolving, shaping, born and reborn.

Where is Indonesia in this? Is it a crossroad?

Why do parents permit or even encourage their children to study design? What motivates the students at the first place? Most students were inspired by design as part of the commercial arts they see everyday: motion graphics in television, computer & multimedia apps, the world wide web, mobile devices... even in more conventional medias like magazines, books and in some, comic books.

As an economy, it is clear that Indonesia is not fully driven by a consensus that design matters in leveraging values of a product. Most of the products sold in Indonesia where design plays a large role are imported ones. Most design or advertising agencies only communicate a brand through larger campaigns. Some might build a brand, probably thoroughly from all perspectives (some which all 360 degrees branding or anything like that), but how many of those are local products? How many of those are then successful to maintain a consistent brand, and to communicate it further? The most nerving question would be, can the product itself compete?

Where is the place of Indonesian graphic design students and graduates here? Some or most of them would be willing to work in international creative agencies or in-house companies, helping foreign products sell; some others would stick to small yet creative & fulfilling works for local products with less to care about the products; some others would strive in helping design education by teaching. Some others will not deal with design anymore somewhere in the path of their lives.

Another issue is with specialisations in graphic or visual communication design. In many cases, visual communication is taught academically for about four years teaching just about everything, structured autonomously by each institution, some "tailored to industry needs", some "pride on the importance of conceptual strength"; but rarely on something that is related to specific focus: why can't we have focus studies on typography, branding, or illustration? Why can't we have more flexibility?

Then again, how are people outside going to deal with these unfamiliar jargons that only the discerning designers know why those matter?

Is design only for the idealists? Could it be that design students have ample time and money at their expense to explore without worrying about making monthly salary? If you ask design students, "why do you want to study design and what are your plans for your future with design?", would they give tangible answers?

It probably takes Indonesia many more decades for design to be really appreciated, and design graduates have promising careers in their hands. Or, in the worst scenario, this hope might never materialise.

Is indecisiveness okay? Is it a state of mind, or is it a reality? What's with the urge of being decided? Can we project ourselves into a certain path and let our life in the years forward become defined by this path? Is being decided a good thing?

Decisions sometimes kill. They kill possibilities. When you decide on buying a pair of shoes, you risk not liking them, you risk not having them for a long time. You're having a closure. You risk not having that better pair of shoes out there. But, perhaps, you might not need that better pair of shoes. For now. Maybe you should stick with the bad pair of shoes for a length of time and see the gems of the experience. Next time, you might or might not get that better pair of shoes, because "better" is a mind-framing of your own. Life probably wants you to be adventurous.

What is life for? What is a job for? What do you do for your life? What is it that you do with your job? Do you even know what you're doing? If not, then what makes you think you should be decided with a certain path? Can we just sway away from the firmness of decisions and let loose? Can we take the risk of being indecisive and not be dragged away by regrets?

In five or ten years time, let's be able to look back and convert all the regrets to values. That there was nothing wrong with what we have chosen, that they were actually part of our scenario. Sometimes, forgiving ourselves for not making or making a choice is the hardest thing.

Arial

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Happy spotting!

Have you ever been defined by a taste? Or perhaps, have you been judged for your taste? When we were in high school this probably was the only thing to recognize someone else. We had to develop certain tastes, to be able to mingle with some groups: clothing, music, sports, and probably dozens of other cultural products. Hardly were we judged with our ability to produce or create. It's probably fair for high school. But not when we grow up.

How many of us are merely using rather than creating? We make selections on consumer products endlessly almost on a daily basis. The taxi we take, the clothes we buy, the food we pick for lunch, the way we relax and enjoy our evenings, the gadgets we purchase. We make a gradual loyalty to certain products, certain brands, and certain lifestyle. It's not necessarily one brand, it could be a series of brands as long as they belong to the same lifestyle. However, the point in this is one: we never really made those products. We only paid for the services or items. We didn't even think about those particular ideas proposed by the products we use. We were sold to some ideas the manufacturers (or the advertising agencies) proposed to us. Sometimes, we didn't even know we needed a product. These ideas that we have sold ourselves into would accumulate and evolve into normalcy. They become our needs. They become what we are. They become a taste, a certain quality we are after for. They define us.

It is hard to return to a lower "taste". Once we are accustomed to one level of taste, we're more likely to go up rather than down. It probably takes years or a drastic change of work & life environment to shift this idealism.

What defines taste, then? Many things. Who we are, what we are, what we do for a living, where we live, who we meet, what we eat, how we are told to do and face problems. It is never the same for every individual, even when they live in the same household. We are raised based on the ideals set forth by our parents, and to some extent, our closest friends. When we grow up, we become even more defined by our job(s), the people we frequent and the ideas we submit ourselves into.

Then, we do collisions of ideas and tastes. We fight, we speak up against others'. Sometimes, we don't even realise we are too self-centric, or too submissive to whatever our ideas are we don't care or despise what others prefer.

We live in a multi-cultured, multi-perspective world and one idea could be entirely different to another, while some would be related to some others. There is no single answer to everything, there is no one way to do everything. The only aggressive way to force an idea into someone else's mind is probably to create something and implant the concept you bring into someone else's minds. Merely evolving your ideas into taste, and trying to sell that to someone else, will just result in rejections and doubts.

So, do and finish things. Yes, so create. Write. Code. Draw. Take photographs. Make a product and sell. And, be consistent.

There are various factors that somebody consider when picking up technology products. They could be the nature of their job, their interests, logical/mathematical considerations (you know some would obsess about specs more than anyone else), to the most intangible reason imaginable: a profound obsession over a brand. You see, the last one is something that is the hardest to change.

I never obsess about a brand. If I frequent a brand, then it is because (a) the way their products do things follow the way I do things very closely and (b) the products minimise the time I need to think about the way it works. When I have dedicated an amount of money to be invested in a technology product, I'd also like to (c) give my first shot the best shot. I wouldn't want to sacrifice a small amount of money for more money when that small amount of money didn't work (read: cheap products fail).

Let's explore by each point.

(a) the way their products do things follow the way I do things very closely

With personal devices, I am my own self first, even before my professional use. I use web browser first more than anything else. Then, I use social, navigation and taks management apps obsessively. Everything else comes after that. Yes, that includes entertainment. I don't listen too much music or watch movies on my devices (not anymore, I used to do that, though).

The products I use must allow me to do these successively without hindrance. I don't like being obstructed with unnecessary apps, popups, messages, everything else. I love simple and direct interfaces. I love the widest view there could be. I like things to start fast, and empty. Just type, and go. Just think, and find. I don't like multiple logins. I love drag and drops. I love great multitasking management interface. I love interfaces that resemble closely to real life objects. I hate hardware that even feels like billboards: full of promotional, technical jargons we don't understand.

Then, I am a graphic designer. I use Adobe software package intensively at work. I want my folders to be uncluttered, labeled and easy to find in an instant. I want the best calibration. I want to be as close to industry-standard procedures.

(b) the products minimise the time I need to think about the way it works

I don't know how many times in the past that I spent so much time figuring out how one thing got into an error message, or just why it didn't work. Even for simple tasks like connecting to a wi-fi network. And more importantly, how they would work constantly good in the long run.

I don't care how good the hardware specs are if the software is under par, or it will burn in just six months. That doesn't event count the risk that the operating system would be burnt out because of some threatening executables like spyware, malware or even virus! I love continued, long-run stability, even if it's slower than that new VGA cards you bought at cheap tech shops in some shanty wholesaler.

I also don't care how I am so dumb about doing that syntax or command line thing, even though that really is a faster way to do it, if they don't have simple, ergonomic graphical user interface to do that job.

(c) give my first shot the best shot

I've bought a phone naively thinking that I could live up with that. Turned out I couldn't. It cost me more to buy another phone that actually worked to my liking. I don't want this to happen again. I'd rather save and pay premium for premium products when they really suit my productive activities, or get the best-designed cheapest thing there on the market. I don't want to own three or four devices just to be able to use a browser (read: a BlackBerry, an iPod Touch, a mi-fi device).

Conclusion?

I love ergonomic design. I would like to just use my technology products without having to scrutinise what's inside, do my jobs without obstructions, and finish the day's tasks with a big, happy smile. And do that all over again, for three years.

It just happens that the brand I frequent is Apple.

I've always wanted to have a coherent personal website that hosts my design work and facilitate streams of thought the easy way. It is never easy to do this, particularly when you're so occupied with full time job. My first website did have a separate portfolio site and a running blog, but they were pretty much of a different "room". The next one was kind of the same, but I managed to make the design consistent a little. This time, I want everything to be in one place.

The first priority was to find a good content management system for my design work. I tried utilising blogging platforms (you could say that they're actually CMSes, while I think they're just there to facilitate publishing) to host design work, but it required a lot of patience. Long story short, I switched to a remotely-hosted exhibit system like Cargo Collective.

Once the design work is taken care of, I moved on to the rest. Movable Type was the first tool I used when I started blogging back in 2002. I wanted to give it another try. It might not be the best out there, but surely it does the job pretty well. Not the easiest to customise either. Many nights later, I managed to set up four separate blogs to host each of the sections (About, Blog, Links & Photos).

If you're visiting this website for the first time, pardon me for this housekeeping work that is going on starting today. I might even try to repost some of my Tumblr posts here, since importing from Tumblr proved to be quite a tedious job.