Intercultural Designs

Date : Jan/31/2023

Name : Mabuchi Arata

Lecture : Video and Sound Production

Lecturer's name : Martin Chong Yuh Lin

ID : 0351579

1, Introduction

In the previous weeks, I've decided to work on introducing Malaysian event for all foreigners visually as my intercultural design work and creating a calendar for this project. Unlike other group's work, I am working on individually and post my slide to the lecturers who help me. In this e-portfolio, I am going to explain about brief idea/draft work for my project.

2, Progress

First of all, I am thinking that i couldn't just make a simple calendar which is just separating image and period of days and month with typical week name, I need to have a plan to represent the Malaysian celebration in unique way, therefore I started to make a plan to represent my calendar in unique ways first for this project.

1, Brief idea

First of all, I already noticed that simple calendar isn't enough for this project, I thought I needed to design calendar with image, I need to represent Malaysian celebration visualy. To explain this more, I suggest the idea that making one image that represent monthly event for each, big image can provide much better impression for each event, and the impact of calendar itself isn't going to be big as how it should be for project work. As I explain so far, I can’t make an ordinary calendar, I need to make a calendar with visual impression., therefore I decided to research through pinterest to find out any good references for my project.

After I researched through pinterest to find out ideas to represent monthlu Malaysian celebration as "Image & calender combination". After some some research I've done, I found " an idea that represent Malaysia itself by whole calendar.

Calendar format can be the way to represent monthly cultural event, for example, the kite can be used to represent days in month.

This kind of calendar tend to be just separating image and calendar format, however, it may be a good idea to combine both image and calendar format, it can be represent each Malaysian cultural event in unique way." After several researching for my project idea, I start to make a draft works for my project as shown below.

3, Week 3

During previous week, I've completed my work and ready for my presentation, but I found that there could be much better improvement as shown below. :

・ Project detail refered to cultural features

・ Expand ideas based on the ideas you suggest in the first step

・ Detailed sketch

・ You need to explain ...

・ Cultural background

・ Reason/purpose of Project

・ Main topic and its detail + Method + Proposal

・ Research questions/objectives

・ Research Theme

・ Image preferable

・ Previous professional work is much preferable

・ Visual references to expand idea

・ Insert much more links to get deeper undestanding

As the ideas I need to get from other group's presentation I need to fix my PDF slide much better.

4, Improvement

Once I've found the points where I need to fiz about my resentation for my projeect, I need to plan about how to fix my presentation to have a better presentations for audiences and lecturers. The main problem is that the time I type this text on my e portfolio is 23:34 of 2023,Februaly, 5th therefore I don't have much time to fix from researching Malaysian cultural event or unique calendar ideas, however, I need to improve my ideas at least fix 3 different point.

Before moving on to the fixing, I need to summarise the point I need to fix :

・ Project detail refered to cultural features

・ Expand ideas based on the ideas you suggest in the first step

・ Detailed sketch

・ You need to explain ...

・ Cultural background

・ Reason/purpose of Project

・ Main topic and its detail + Method + Proposal

・ Research questions/objectives

・ Research Theme

・ Image preferable

・ Previous professional work is much preferable

・ Visual references to expand idea

・ Insert much more links to get deeper undestanding

These are just some points that other group has and my presentation doesn't have, as I mentioned earlier, I don't have much enogh time to fix everything showing here, however, I'm going to pick up at least three points where I'd like to fix most in my slide.

Additionally, I might transport my slide into canvafor better presentation, when I used canva as group work, I felt it's better than google slide to information expression.

1, Where should I fix?

Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough time to fix everything from in my presentation but I need to pick the most point that I feel required to fix. The main problem of my representation is "Introduction is too simple", "References are not enough" and "Expanding idea is reuired". I guess these ae the points I need to fix most.

For each of them, I need to have time to get a better ideas and reply them onto my presentation I made, however, I need to do my best to improve my work.

1, Introduction is too simple

When I checked the other group's presentation, the quality of introduction is much better than my presentation, this is because the intoduction has image and easy but understandable text to explain about cultural things, therefore I need to add at least 5 different images and short explanation about Malayssian celebration.

Before I move on to the real research and recreation, I need to state several points I have to remember during the production.

To promote Malaysian cultural events, I need to do two things and research 3 things.

1, Adding texts about reason/purpose about my Project.

2, Research about several things shown below. :

・Images of Malaysian celebration

・Most famous Malaysian celebration that most of people know

・Three different types of Malaysian and their cultural impact that forms unique culture in Malaysia

Sadly, I don't have enough time to research all of them tp get enogh information able to be use, therefore I am going going to research all of them briefly (just short sentence and simple information that is going to be almost 2~3 lines of text in this eportfolio draft work.).

1, Researching

I already found the topics I need to research, so I finally going to research about bief point that can be used for my presentation. I need to make sure that I also got some visual references (like result of research) to use as strong identofocation of my proof.

Here is my list that I need to research. :

・Images of Malaysian clebration

・Most famous Malaysian celebration that most of people know

・Three different types of Malaysian and their cultural impact that forms unique culture in Malaysia

I need to research from "Three different types of Malaysian and their cultural impact that forms unique culture in Malaysia" because this is goig to be the research that takes the longest time in my research although I am not going to take so long time.

・Three different types of Malaysian and their cultural impact that forms unique culture in Malaysia

As you may already know, Malaysian community can divided into thee different community, Malaysian, Chinese and Indian. The majority population of Malaysia is Malay, it takes over 50% of Malaysian population, therefore the impact of Islamic culture is quite strong in Malaysian culture, however, Chinese Malaysian () also makes a notable economic force in Malaysia, although the number of Chinese malaysian is smaller than Malay Malaysian, Their economic proportion is taking bigger place than other ethic communities.

The third significant ethnic group in Malaysia is India,They were originally came from Southern India for rubber plantations durin the era of British Emire colony. They are about 7 percent of Malaysian population now, their culture is based on Hindus and Indian Malaysian remains their own culture, but they also merged with Malaysian unique culture, the good example is Mamak community, this mixture of Indian and Malay cuisine sered in Mamak restaurants. Mamak is basically Indian Muslim.

As I mentioned shortly, Malaysian culture is unique because three different ehnic culture is mized, these unique cultural envionment creates a different celebration through a Year.

・Most famous Malaysian celebration

(The text is not going to be long because rather than showing too long text, it's going to be much effective to use short text that only reflects main point relating to my project.) Malaysia is the country that celebrates many different things through a year. This is because Malaysian society is formed by mixture by various different culture and different ethnic communities. The unique point of Malaysian celebration is that most Malaysian events are based on lunar or Islamic calendar, therefore they usually doesn't have any fixed data to celevrate. Here I am going to promote you about 3 main different famous Malaysian event.

・Chinese New Year : This is basically Chinese celebration which celebrates arrival of spring and the beginning of new year on the lunisolar calendar. Chinese people decolates their house, serves traditional food and watches lion dance which is event that costume of two red and yellow lions dance for bringing prosperity and good luck.

This celebration starts from 15 days long from family reunion dinner and ends with the spring lantern festival of "Chap Gph Mei".

・Thaipusam : Hindu religious celebration to Lord Murugan's victory over the evil spilit Soorapadam. This celebration performed with "grand street professions, and smashing of coconuts" and "Profound pomp, mesmerising chants and rhythmic drumbeats accompany thousands of bare-footed devotees and penitents with their bodies pierced with spikes and hooks from ornate ‘kavadis’ that they carry towards the hill-top temples".

・Hari Raya : This is an Islamic celebrations for Muslims to celebrate the end of fasting for a month. (This event is for Muslims to commit their religion to Islam by fasting to teach self behavior and remind them of suffering of the poor.) During Hari Raya, people goes to Mosque to pray and children ask their parents for forgiveness from their parents.

They dress up with special clothes and have a excellent cuisine offered up at "open houses" with friends and family. The traditional meal they eat are like rice dumpling caled "ketupat", stewed meat with spices called "rendang", sticky and soft toffee-like sweet called "dodol" and skewed meat called "satay".

This event is celebrating for harmony and love.

2, Additional text

Here is the section where I am going to insert for my presentation, the design of presentation is still going to use google slide one because I have no enough time to transport all my work I've done to canva.

・Reason/purpose about my Project.

Reason : I've spent time to live in Malaysia for over 8 years long, I've joined unique Malaysian celebration sometimes, Chinese Ney Year, Thaipusam,Dipavali and so on.

The problem is that even the people who spend so long time in Malaysian don't know every Malaysian culture (or celebrations through a year) made by different culture, there can be much more event or celebration happening in Malaysia.

Purpose : I aim to promote Malaysian events for foreigners who don't know so much about Malaysian culture so much. I want to try this by using calendar or making booklet to promote Malaysian celebration.

The method itself is simple as foreign people easily understand it.

2, Result I've got

As far I've got for my proposal presentation, I fixed the point I've mentioned above to look better as shown below.

The problem occurs during this production is that the idea for my project and quality isn't still enough for presentation, my next step is going to be improve my idea about calendar for this project.

3, The additional point I need to improve so far

As the presentation shown above, my presentation become much better than before (even though the visual impact is still same because I use same cloud service.), the image can explain much more about my project and separating reason and purpose is explaining my thoughts for my project much better, however, there are still more things I should fix brfore my presentation, which is visual image for my project and idea expansion.

1, Visual image

When I look through every other group's work, I found that every group's work contains lot of image (or draft work) for their own project.

Each of them easily explains about the project (or cultural solutions) much more fun and easily understandable.

My main issue about here is that when I check my work, the quality of visual reference for my project isn't reached to the requirement of final proposal in my opinion and I need to fix by adding more images.

To avoid misunderstanding, I state that this doesn't mean that I am going to create additional images for references of my project.

I just going to find out any visual references for references of different project as sample.

This improvement is directly relating to my next point for my presentation improvement.

2, Idea expansion

This is going to be hardest and longest part for my project, when I checked other group's work, the number of idea each group promotes more than one. I agree this fact because more project can proof that they have very interests for particular project and skill to promote one thing from different views which can state that having wider view. In my opinion, I should have 2~3 ideas to promote my project target. I need to insert at least 1~2 images into my ideas for each.

Make sure that I need to add link for image reference.

In my project, I need to expand my idea from the suggestion I made before which is about "Image & calender combination" which is all about "idea that represent Malaysia itself by whole calendar", therefore the point I need to focus is calendar ideas that expand the plan I made.

Ideas I've got

1, Symbolized Malaysian celebration object as characters for each Month

When I loooked through the book about unique carendar design, I found the unique idea that uses symbolized unique object used as symbol for capital letter for each month name such as January or October. Other calendar also used similar things that makes the capital letters for each month names as some sorf of symbol to identify them.

I loved this idea and want to use as symbolise each Malaysian celebration rather than use bigger size of image to form calendar, this is because If I tried to represent each month by complex image, the impression of calendar is going to be difficult and calendar itself is going to be distort. I like the idea to symbolise things and I may use it to represent in my project.

2, Placing one big image of object that can be representive each Malaysian celebration

This may be opposition to my idea I made before for my project, but when I read through the book about designing unique calendar, I found good idea.

The page shows a calendar which is formed by normal calendar parts formed by week and number of days, but the unique point is that each page of month shows the leaves that represents each months. (The similar idea is also shown in the same book, the idea was about representing each month as polygon increasing side one by one.)

I fouud the idea to represents month interesting and I suggest the idea to use a simple image to represent each Malaysian celebration (such as lantern for Chinese New Year).

The idea itself may be seemed too simple and against the idea I made reviously, but I want to mention this idea as one of my new ideas.

3, Making a layer that makes one big image at the end

The final work I want to show is the idea to making layers for each month.

To explain more about this, calendar I found is fomed as different sized papers that becomes bigger and bigger as the month goes, on, the edge of each pages opposite to the binded part has random shape like a mountain.

I loved the idea about this desktop calendar and I want to use this idea to my calendar as top of each calendar pages are designed as silhoette of each Malaysian celebration and when the every page of calendar is flipped, there should be one image such as Malaysian flag.

These are all my plan for my intercultural design project. Each of works look nice to me and I hope you like my ideas. Unfortunatelly, I have to choose one of these ideas and I choose idea 1 which is "uses symbolized unique object used as symbol for capital letter for each month name", the reason for this is because the idea 3 may be seemed fun but I guess it takes time and idea 2 is not following my goal and project target I decided earlier. Additionally, simplified visial image can provide better impression for viewers.

These are all my point I am going to fix in my slide. All inormation must help improvement of my work. The point I mainly fixed is about idea expantion for my work, reason/purpose of project and detailed Malaysian celebration.

Here is my final proposal presentation.

My proposal presentation updates end here and I am finally move to the presentation, I hope this one is going to be enough to impress audience.

5, Presentation

Finally I fized my presentastion ehough for present in the audesnce, unfortunatelly, I can't present in the Lecture theatre, but I record my presentation in Zoom and I can finally present my slide. The presentation itself id just explaining what the slide shows but I hope it is surely enough for proposal presentation.

The point I mainly forcused is fluency, I tried my best not to stop speaking during presentation. I also try to add additional information to provide better understanding to the audience.

Final Proposal presentation video on YouTube

N, References

https://www.pinterest.jp/aratamabuchi/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC/

https://asia.si.edu/lunar-new-year-celebration/#:~:text=Lunar%20New%20Year%20is%20a,a%20significant%20overseas%20Chinese%20population.

https://asianinspirations.com.au/experiences/all-about-malaysian-indian-culture/

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/09/11/income-inequality-among-different-ethnic-groups-the-case-of-malaysia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaipusam

https://internationalliving.com/countries/malaysia/traditions-culture-in-malaysia/

https://theculturetrip.com/asia/malaysia/articles/how-to-celebrate-hari-raya-aidilfitri-in-malaysia/

https://www.allied.com/my/news-and-articles/how-to-celebrate-the-lunar-new-year-in-malaysia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpdtsbk/articles/zjc2bdm

https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/special-report/chinese-new-year/new-year-lion-dance.htm#meaning

https://www.commisceo-global.com/resources/country-guides/malaysia-guide

https://www.myceb.com.my/about-us/media-centre/publication/top-five-colourful-celebrations-in-malaysia

https://www.myweekendplan.asia/top-best-chinese-new-year-activities-to-do-in-malaysia/#no4

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5124039/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5124039/#:~:text=Malaysia%20has%20three%20main%20ethnic%20communities%3A%20Chinese%2C%20Indians%20and%20Malays.

https://www.officeholidays.com/holidays/malaysia/hari-raya-puasa

https://www.wonderfulmalaysia.com/attractions/chinese-new-year-in-malaysia.htm

https://www.wonderfulmalaysia.com/faq/hari-raya-puasa-hari-raya-aidilfitri.htm

http://www.kualalumpurhospitality.com/blog/how-malaysians-celebrate-hari-raya

https://asia.si.edu/lunar-new-year-celebration/#:~:text=Lunar%20New%20Year%20is%20a,a%20significant%20overseas%20Chinese%20population.

https://asianinspirations.com.au/experiences/all-about-malaysian-indian-culture/

https://blog.malaysiacalendar.com/malaysia-calendar-year-2023/

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/09/11/income-inequality-among-different-ethnic-groups-the-case-of-malaysia/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-docs-offline/ghbmnnjooekpmoecnnnilnnbdlolhkhi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali#/media/File:The_Rangoli_of_Lights.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakans#/media/File:Wedding_portrait_of_a_Peranakan_couple.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petaling_Street#/media/File:Petaling_Street_Green_Dragon.jpg