Bodonation

Had a chat with friends after the design dialogues.

Despite their experiences of presenting personal works in different conferences and lectures, it seems that every presentation is a new challenge.

• To keep it meaningful, understandable and inspiring but to be careful not to trip into the areas of self-glorification.
• To understand that among the audience there would be fans and there would be strangers. There would also be old cynical designers amongst the young eager students.
• To maintain a level of insightful engagement and yet be entertaining.

By organising design events, I have the privilege of looking at how designers frantically tweak their presentations before the actual show - tweaking to make it more relevant to the audience:

"Would Malaysians understand this sort of things?"
"Is the audience mainly professionals or students?"
"Is this boring or is this interesting?"

In actual fact, presenting to designers (seasoned or aspiring) is a
daunting task, especially when creative people are generally known as
the most critical bunch.

Speaking about being critical.

On a typical morning like today, I would be going through my lecture presentation - adding/deleting slides and rearranging sequences, knowing very well that I will not attain 100% approval of the class.

• The smart-wise folks will think this is too simple for them. "Boring!" I can anticipate them sms-ing each other, probably checking on who’s going to Zouk (or Redbox) on Friday night.
• The simple-conservative group will think this is too complex. "What is he talking about?" I can almost envision their dazed-and-confused expression.
• The eager-to-learn-everything group will find this a revelation. "Interesting!" I am expecting them to see me after class to ask me more questions.
• The I-am-not-bothered group will find this irrelevant. "Not my kind of design." I can imagine all the territory+idn+vector graphics dancing in front of their eyes.
• The I-thought-I-knew-everything people will be suddenly inspired. "I never knew it could be done this way…" I can imagine them transforming into grid-freaks.
• The it’s-just-another-class people will always be harping on "when’s the deadline?" since nothing else matters. I can forsee them staying this way for the next few semesters.

It will never be an easy task communicating without being judgmental to a target audience as such.

I supposed it is the same way around. Being avail for public scrutiny means to be prepared for comments concerning my hair to my shoes. It means accepting the perception of being either an inspiring individual, a lame duck or a boring twat.

I am still wondering why I ever took on lecturing.

Penning down my thoughts for the few designers (IZ, if you are reading this) who are contemplating lecturing. This is what you will get for making yourself avail.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 5:52 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.