tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54920662122433630832024-02-19T07:21:38.301-08:00binary rileUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-14776121190619675952007-09-07T16:41:00.000-07:002007-09-12T22:30:09.649-07:00Japanese language education and the persistent stereotype<p>As an early student of Japanese, you'll learn that there are some clear-cut grammatical rules of formality. You'll learn that, for example, there are three variations of any given verb that you need to carefully choose to suit your conversation partner and conjugate much as you would a past or present tense. In the most honorific case, there are sometimes entirely different words (the verb "to eat" is one example).</p>
<p>It's a concept that can be very frustrating for Western students. Not only is it more words and conjugations to memorize, it can also be awkward at first to carry on a conversation worrying all the while that you might trip up and say <em>taberu</em> instead of <em>tabemasu</em>—or worse yet, <em>kuu</em>. It can also be trying to come to acceptance of your place in the world of <em>katcho</em>s and <em>bucho</em>s and <em>kakaricho</em>s, and I've seen more than one student reject the role handed down on them and wonder out loud why everyone can't just talk regular.</p>
<p>But for how tedious the memorization and how embarrassing a slip up can be, it's one of those concepts that Western students can accept pretty quickly—unlike verb tenses and the lack of pronouns. It just makes sense. We all know that Japan is a ridgedly hierarchical society in which all members consciously act according to their understanding of their place, right? Stereotypes and cultural anthropologists drill it into our skulls that to understand the Japanese hierarchy is to understand the Japanese.</p>
<p>At a bar in Hokkaido one night with a group of Japanese and non-Japanese friends, one Japanese woman spoke to a new member of the group (an older doctor) in a very informal tone. An American woman in the group, who had just started learning Japanese and was herself experimenting with the levels of polite grammar, immediately picked up on it and jokingly called the woman out for not using the proper formalities of speech. The Japanese woman looked at the American completely bewildered: she spoke naturally to the older doctor, and no one in the group was offended or even surprised by her tone.</p>
<p>I was immediately struck by what should be one of the most obvious lessons: the grammatical rules of formality are well known to the Japanese, indeed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keigo">they're even named</a>, but they're almost entirely <em>subconscious</em>. The formality level that Japanese people speak with is partially based on social status and partially based on their own personality, which explains why someone older than me might speak formally to me while another guy might mix the rough <em>ore</em> ("I") with a <em>desu/masu-kei</em> verb.</p>
<p>It was an important point where I stopped thinking of Japanese as a foreign language with daunting cultural and grammatical mountains to climb. I realized that Japan's hierarchy can be as fluid and flexible as it is in the West (even though we Westerners often don't like to think that such a hierarchy exists in our society), and our speech is allowed liberties. It's more important for us to find a mode of speech that's comfortable, fitting for our personality, and suitable for the situation—exactly what we do in our own languages.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-31910753620833251682007-06-07T10:18:00.000-07:002007-06-07T17:33:44.757-07:00Opinions are like assholes: every client has one, but it's the designer's that smells like rose petals<p>I'm finding myself agreeing less and less with this blog, but on this I agree: <a href="http://www.andyrutledge.com/design-questions.php">the designer's job is to create a visual display for the content and the brand</a>. It sounds obvious enough, but a conversation about the needs of the content with the type of client that thinks designers are just Photoshop monkeys—that the client is the one with the vision of how it should look, and the "designer" is the person who has the technical skills to make that happen—can easily be steered into the realm of typeface choices and color palettes, and our role as visual designer has been undermined.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way. In my defense, I'll say that I never asked the client for his design vision, he offered it to me right off the bat, but I certainly didn't avoid it. He told me that he knew exactly how he wanted the site to look: he wanted it to look just like the site of a popular home furnishings retailer. I did as much as I could to follow the client's design guidelines while also adding my own flair so that the site was not a total knock off.</p>
<p>Revision after revision, I followed the client's suggestions: bringing the color palette closer to that of the retailer's site (and away from that of the company's recently redesigned logo), changing the type faces, changing my underlying grid, and sometimes putting it back to the way it was in previous versions. What we came up with was hideous. It was a mix of styles with a willy nilly color palette and typography. It definitely didn't reflect my own aesthetic, but what I didn't realize until it was too late was that it failed to satisfy the client's hope to make it feel like the retailer's site. I should have realized that he was dissatisfied early on (although, he kept telling me that we were getting close) and redesigned it myself instead of following his instructions that I knew weren't working. In the end, the client decided to fire me and hire another designer. I can't help but think that had I fully taken the design reigns from the start, I would have at least convinced the client that I could accomplish the job.</p>
<p>I know that it's not easy getting started, but even as young designers, we need to understand that <strong>our</strong> job is to solve design problems, and we stop doing our job when we start following every whim of the client. Of course, we need to produce something that the client is happy with, but the best way to do that is to trust our own instincts and design what we know is right.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-53257988037786509352007-04-26T10:32:00.000-07:002007-05-02T17:46:19.245-07:00Flash upgrade; XHTML downgrade<img src="http://www.mtvlabs.tv/uploaded_images/hats-793906.jpg" alt="MTV's HATs" />
<p>I've really been enjoying reading all the reactions to the <a href="http://www.mtv.com/">MTV.com</a> redesign.<p>
<p>The story goes that MTV.com decided to switch from a Flash site to an XHTML site in response to complaints of users and because they wanted a quicker-loading, search-engine friendly site, an advantage properly coded XHTML has over Flash. They even enlisted one of the best to work on the code: Dan Cederholm of <a href="http://www.simplebits.com/">SimpleBits</a>. All in all, seems like a sound plan for success.</p>
<p>But when MTV announced the launch of the redesign on <a href="http://www.mtvlabs.tv/2007/04/new-html-mtvcom.html">their blog</a>, users overwhelmingly disapproved in the ensuing comments. Someone on <a href="http://www.k10k.net/news/14580/">Kaliber 10K</a> also gave it a thumbs down, although he doesn't say why. The comments on the MTV Labs blog, however, (the ones that are more constructive than "the new site sucks") reveal a common thread that a move away from anything but Flash for the entire site is a downgrade.</p>
<h3>The XHTML downgrade</h3>
<p>Take away the HATs (rotating Header Art Treatment), and you've got a pretty vanilla site. Sure, it's clean, a bit airy, and has some CSS drop-down menus that everyone loves these days, but it's not much we haven't seen elsewhere. Where has the unique user experience gone?</p>
<p>Because of this poor redesign, a lot of (but thankfully <a href="http://www.uxmag.com/short-news/254/mtv-drops-flash-in-a-flash#comments">not all</a>) people are pointing blame at XHTML, calling it a downgrade and asking MTV to upgrade back to the old Flash site. I'll give them this much: XHTML/CSS designers tend to be developers first and designers second, and their sites can sometimes reflect that. Dan Cederholm, for example, is known more for his opinions on XHTML/CSS and web standards than for his command of kerning or mastery of the web grid.</p>
<p>Flash web designers, on the other hand, generally come from graphic design, interactive design, and art backgrounds, and <a href="http://styleboost.com/links/1236/">rumor has it that they make a lot more money</a>. They focus on creating more of a unique interactive experience—usually so much so that it takes a little time to figure out how to use the site. If you flip through the portfolios of some of these designers, you'll see sites that don't look at all like web sites—they're abstract, they're experimental, and they ask the user to play instead of simply retrieve content.</p>
<p>As a technology, Flash is great for video, animation, games, interactive art, and even some text replacement, but as a platform for dishing out massive amounts of content, Flash is a poor choice. So, I think that MTV made the right decision switching to XHTML, and a lot of neigh-sayers may change their minds when they realize that, for example, you can now post videos from MTV on your own site like you can with YouTube. What gets me, though, (especially as an XHTML/CSS designer) is that this redesign is unnecessarily giving XHTML/CSS design a bad name. The creative interfaces of Flash can just as well be done in XHTML. Throw in some DOM scripting for interaction, and you can create almost the exact same thing.</p>
<h3>The MTV experience</h3>
<p>Really, this is what MTV should have done. Unless Fantasy Interactive held on to some copyrights, which is unlikely, there probably wasn't much good reason to change the design of the site's interface. That unique interface was what <a href="http://wisdump.com/design/mtvcom-all-flash-done-right/">some people applauded so much</a> late last year. And now this new design is, for some, another example of why good design is only done with Flash.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-19577197115646304492007-04-23T16:04:00.000-07:002007-04-23T16:13:42.165-07:00<p><a href="http://www.catune.com/asmeias/main/index.html">New As Meias out</a>. I <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/bseventyseven/">really like</a> this direction the band is heading in. They're playing a show on Wednesday in Nagoya and another on Friday in Shibuya.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-2940193281189117942007-04-23T15:56:00.000-07:002007-04-23T15:59:33.246-07:00Crosswired 4|20<p>Damn, edIT's new stuff is good.</p>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seventysevendesigns/470527805/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/470527805_0be7302989_o.jpg" width="480" height="640" alt="Crosswired 4/20" /></a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seventysevendesigns/470527795/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/227/470527795_209c03b89b_o.jpg" width="480" height="640" alt="Crosswired 4/20" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-1957068116524416802007-04-20T10:56:00.000-07:002007-04-20T10:58:47.037-07:00<p><a href="http://pingmag.jp/2007/04/20/dainippon-type-organization/">Fun with the Dainippon Type Organization</a></p>
<p>These take a little getting used to before you can start to see them. Damn, I'm going to start seeing kanji this way.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-2535811232552648552007-04-19T11:02:00.000-07:002007-04-19T11:09:00.468-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/04/2channel">In Japan, speaking out risks public humiliation, so many don't.</a></blockquote>
<p>Right, and in the US, we can stand on a busy street corner shouting about how we think that Bush should be thrown out of office, and no one would think us strange. And we can use our workplace as a platform for spreading our religious beliefs without fear of punishment.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-15615488142962572402007-04-18T10:40:00.000-07:002007-04-18T10:43:44.692-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11623&feedId=space_rss20">Magnetic "deflector shields" could one day guard astronauts against dangerous space radiation, if experiments now underway pay off.</a></blockquote>
<p>You gotta see the scientist's "imaginative view."</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-56556624307940001502007-04-09T00:18:00.000-07:002007-04-09T00:55:14.399-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.andyrutledge.com/an-inconvenient-war-on-truth.php">Those interested in truth rather than misguided ideology know that the responsible science on issues of climate change is clear and in direct conflict with the perverted versions made most public for purposes of anarchist propaganda and political demagoguery.</a></blockquote>
<p>O, and I was enjoying reading this blog. My past experience in the scientific publishing industry has taught me that (1) the scientific community is overwhelmingly at a consensus over global warming and the effects industry has on it, and (2) that friendsofscience.org and co2science.org are not leaders of the pack in peer-reviewed science. Frankly, it reminds me of those scientists who try to claim that the issue of evolution is still up in the air.</p>
<p>But I initially agreed with the author's response to smashLAB's project. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the end of his post, I realized that my reasons were the polar opposite: designers don't "drive and define conversations" nor do they "determine the impact of specific messages". Designers have the talent and skill to create a clear and properly balanced message. They can steer your eyes to a specific element of the message. And maybe they can even help the client to galvanize their message, but at the end of the day, the message <strong>must</strong> be bought by the client.</p>
<p>Example: If a designer believes in the evils of sweatshops and understands that Nike is contracting their work out to South East Asian factories with poor working conditions, that message will never get into an magazine spread for Air Jordans.</p>
<p>I believe in the power of design, but I believe that it's a tool used, more often than not, by others.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-24652954845845758532007-04-03T09:40:00.001-07:002007-04-03T09:41:40.789-07:00<style type="text/css">.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeansnow/440852111/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/210/440852111_49021184cb.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a></div>
<p>Muji wine?!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-9829272109413413622007-03-28T12:54:00.000-07:002007-03-28T14:11:46.155-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-bike28mar28,1,2942571,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true">It was the biggest bicycle a Japanese department store carried and it's still too small for me.</a></blockquote>
<p>I imagine that scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray struggles to deal with the low shower head. Although we can clearly see that the head can be raised to a height comfortable even to Bill Murray, the joke still works cause we all know that the Japanese are shorter than us, right?</p>
<p>I'm of average height in the West. I never had problems with low shower heads, and I comfortably rode my bike around Tokyo—experiences that contradict the Japanese-are-short stereotype much like the LA Times' author's experience with the stolen bike contradict the Tokyo-is-perfectly-safe stereotype. Maybe the author is just innocently looking to profit from the popularity of that movie with those three or so short comments, or maybe he's so nauseatingly tall that he's never experienced a situation where his height was not an issue.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-60856732969204755122007-03-21T11:50:00.000-07:002007-03-26T11:03:41.903-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2007/03/sxsw-and-the-pa.html">Since nobody behind this operation seems to have any idea to bring Japanese bands with some semblance of appeal to American indie rock audiences and instead let big labels throw them some bands, we got a weird mix of newcomers, old-timers, and garage bands on holiday.</a></blockquote>
<p>Although these bands probably are without <a href="http://binaryrile.blogspot.com/2007/03/part-of-me-is-surprised-that-i-didnt.html">an expected level of popularity for a band playing at SXSW</a>, I'm sure they still earned fans solely for being Japanese.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-5868326882236992802007-03-20T12:01:00.000-07:002007-03-21T11:50:21.786-07:00My grid<p>Too bad that Subtraction <a href="http://blog.popstalin.com/according-to-the-seventh-annual-weblog-awards/trackback/">didn't win Best Blog Design</a>. To me, it really stands out as very different and more well thought out than the other nominees—no gradients, drop shadows, or mirrored text; strong grid that supports all elements on the site; black and white (yeah!). Besides that, it's really the only blog from the nominees that I faithfully check out.</p>
<p>And inspired by <a href="http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0318_oh_yeeaahh.php">a recent post on grids and web design</a>, I'm posting here the grid I used for this site.</p>
<div style="height: 300px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seventysevendesigns/428388112/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/165/428388112_de1f9ba70a_b.jpg" width="313" height="1024" alt="my grid" /></a></div>
<p>The blog is (so far) fairly simple. I decided on a two-column layout based on the Golden Ratio of 5:3 (close enough, right?). I've got a total of 9 units making up the two columns. It's a fixed size designed for at least a 1024x768 resolution. I really didn't want the main content column to exceed 500 pixels wide (which I find to be a comfortable reading width), and I wanted to maintain the Golden Ratio as much as I could. If in the future, I decide that it needs to be updated to accommodate different content, then maybe I'll also make it a flexible size. For now, I think this looks just fine.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-32163919698258705232007-03-17T13:19:00.000-07:002007-03-17T13:24:44.992-07:00<p>A post over at <a href="http://jeansnow.net/2007/03/17/tbpensar-001/">Jean Snow's site</a> reminded me that I've been meaning to post links to my two favorite issues of Nineaem:</p>
<ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0; padding: 0;">
<li><a href="http://www.nineaem.com/002/">Nineaem 002</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nineaem.com/004/">Nineaem 004</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Unfortunately, it looks like Nineaem is no more, but that's not confirmed.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-2624765106403225422007-03-17T13:15:00.000-07:002008-12-10T04:59:16.927-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.monocle.com/"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdYdc4hmxZ_nnYoEBHygrh2tUpkW0A1G-zCLY8uhQ7k-zvgYU3ZVdjuAmxDeBO2R0Dl6rmAVJuS5mhmqeU0WeuwLaqjgvJsQG34TI8evY7oRx8Wl-yKwW-MloGynoOjoeEyhiR4NoAJVo/s400/monocle.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
<p>Does anyone know where <a href="http://www.monocle.com/">Monocle</a> can be bought in the LA area?</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-34553507894066707132007-03-15T11:50:00.001-07:002007-03-15T11:51:58.604-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/400998">The Japanese have only started eating sushi since World War II. Koreans and Chinese have been making sushi and sashimi for thousands of years.</a></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-40072473118822515792007-03-15T11:50:00.000-07:002007-03-15T11:51:47.878-07:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/400998">The Japanese have only started eating sushi since World War II. Koreans and Chinese have been making sushi and sashimi for thousands of years.</a></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-35265828536387321772007-03-14T22:11:00.000-07:002007-03-21T11:49:27.998-07:00<p>Part of me is surprised that none of the Japanese bands I know and have played with are at <a href="http://sxsw-asia.com/">SXSW</a> this year, but frankly, it's a small part.</p>
<p>I'm always curious to see what Japanese bands get attention in America. By and large, they tend not to have the same popularity in Japan. I think that <a href="http://www.sonzairecords.com/envy.html">Envy</a> is the only band of their social circle and genre that has reached a somewhat proportional level of popularity in the States. This is thanks in part to <a href="http://www.dimmak.com/">Steve Aoki</a>, but Steve's also introduced some <a href="http://www.unproducts.com/grokplastique">other incredible Japanese bands</a> into the American scene without as much success. (Full disclosure: Although, I did play bass in <a href="http://www.catune.com/asmeias/">a band</a> with the guitarist from There Is A Light That Never Goes Out/Z, I was a There Is A Light fan long before.)</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-5783853511154165802007-03-14T22:10:00.000-07:002007-03-14T22:11:24.188-07:00I really like <a href="http://knufflebunneh.blogspot.com/2007/03/sakurasaku-glass.html">these</a>. Very timely.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-16198348244679210262007-03-14T01:02:00.000-07:002007-03-14T01:12:29.750-07:00Despite the fact that all faithful New York Times readers know that the Japanese are, to a fault, unrelenting in their national collectivism and patriotism, I was glad to see that the AP didn't turn <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Japan-Markets.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin">a drop in a Japanese stock market</a> into <a href="http://btriley.googlepages.com/Livedoor.pdf">"a blow to the nation's pride"</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-4027206628813944132007-03-09T10:27:00.000-08:002007-03-09T10:28:51.913-08:00<blockquote><a href="http://imomus.livejournal.com/269026.html">This dependence on local services as extensions of one's tiny living space makes for an effervescent and vital city, with lots of youthful fizz in public places.</a></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-49025327831728111382007-03-08T11:42:00.005-08:002007-03-19T22:04:27.161-07:00<div class="flickr-frame"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/61205570@N00/413879765/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/413879765_14c08b4d1a.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-28622365244405520892007-03-08T11:42:00.003-08:002007-03-19T22:05:03.840-07:00<div class="flickr-frame"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/room929/414587765/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/414587765_47c8cd0cb6.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-64879772014948843312007-03-08T11:42:00.001-08:002007-03-19T22:05:24.124-07:00<div class="flickr-frame"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewet/414749767/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/178/414749767_9adca13148.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5492066212243363083.post-60147362322304639252007-03-07T16:11:00.000-08:002007-03-07T16:15:58.127-08:00<blockquote><a href="http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/400704">Australian beef exports to Japan will fall by 5% over the next two years due to increased competition from U.S. beef, the government's chief rural economic forecaster said Tuesday.</a></blockquote>
<blockquote><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-clone4mar04,1,4931619.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true">I'd rather eat my running shoes than eat meat from a cloned animal.</a></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0