VC | Dictionary: Mindmap

IMG_1683I have two different directions which I am interested in.

  1. Relationship

I very care about my relationship with family, friends and my partner. From there, I think it is important how to maintain a relationship and get well along with them. It is impossible to be done without any affords, like tolerance, understanding and considerating. The way to keep maintaining a relationship is sharing, interacting and advising. In my mindmap, I took an initiative to ask my friends around me about their impression on me, especially friends who know me up to 10 years or friends who get together every day. They told me more about my strengths and virtues in which I didn’t really realize them.

In the process of chatting with my friends, there are definitely some discussions and exchanging opinion with them. One of the chatting experiences is a group chatting in 4 people, so they started to discuss on me ( I am the discussion topic.). They gave their own definition and made some examples (what I have done in the previous) and made comparisons (themselves). To be honest, I like the process and the moment of taking an initiative to start a topic in order to evoke people to think, build up their mindset, and also bring oudiscussion.

2. Food

I like to eat. (a typical foodie :D). However, I will have certain cravings when I was stress or having negative emotion. This is explained by a term called “comfort food”.

Comfort food is food which provides a nostalgic or sentimental feeling to the consumer, and is often characterized by a high carbohydrate level and simple preparation. The nostalgia may be specific to either the individual or a specific culture.

The term comfort food has been traced back at least to 1966, when the Palm Beach Post used it in a story: “Adults, when under severe emotional stress, turn to what could be called ‘comfort food’—food associated with the security of childhood, like mother’s poached egg or famous chicken soup.”

  • – extract from Wikipedia

So I started to categorize my comfort food.
(a) high carbohydrate and high calories food. For example, ice-cream, chocolate, cake, pizza etc. These foods are unhealthy and also the foods that banned by my mother when I was a kid. To be honest, pizza is definitely my comfort food because it is a rewarding for encouraging me to study hard when I was a kid. Also, it has the comforting as psychological effect now when I was feeling bad even though I agree that it is very unhealthy.

(b) As I am away from home now, I have no choice to eat food that having MSG. ( I am very sick of those foods frown ). I started missing my mother’s home cooked dishes which is definitely healthier even though they are just simple dishes but it is the most delicious food. So I have tried to cook some simple dishes and eat healthy recently.

From there, I think that I am greatly influenced by my parents on my dietary habit. I recalled the food I liked and the food I disliked. To be honest, when I was a child, I really hate to eat for some reasons, I think this is affected by my parents in the way of encouraging me to eat. What does it mean? As I was chatting with my friend, she is a mother with 2 kids, she mentioned that she will never force her kids to eat when they decided not to eat anymore. Even when her kids are fussy in eating, she will keep changing the form or cooking style of the vegetables, trying many times to get kids to accept it.

From there, I researched more on parental influences on children’s preference. In the fact, infants have innate preferences towards certain taste. Infants prefer sweet-tasting foods and reject bitter foods such as certain vegetables. This reflects an evolutionary response that was historically useful because the sweet taste signalled sources of energy (calories) while bitter tastes signalled foods that might be toxic.

As children grow up, they may refuse foods and become picky about certain foods. A reluctance to try new foods is called neophobia. When parents meet this problem, some of them will restriction on their children’s diets or even pressure them to eat vegetable or fruits. Undeniably, these two methods often have the opposite effect. Also, rewarding with a highly palatable food can defeat the purpose of rewarding and does not allow children to develop intrinsic motivation for healthy eating. A more suitable method is to set a good example to offer a model of healthy eating behaviours. Most importantly, parents should expose their children to a wide variety of foods starting at an early age.

If I decide to do this topic, maybe I can do an interactive book for parents to educate children in an indirect way by showing foods visually and attractively. The aim of the project is to expose their children to the foods through  5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch – if possible, in order to etch in their minds. The overall graphic language will be looked at the perspective of children (colour, form, texture).

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References: Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake

These are what I have in my mind so far. To be honest, I still haven’t had any idea of how to make my dictionary project to be more fun and “wow”.

VC | Inspiration-1000-Piece CMYK Color Gamut Jigsaw Puzzle

Artist and designer Clemens Habicht has reimagined jigsaw puzzles by getting people to reassemble colors rather than shapes – 1,000 colors, to be exact.

His 1000 COLOURS puzzle follows a CMYK color gamut, which is one method by which printers achieve their colors. Though some of the colors are nearly imperceptibly different from each other, Habicht says the puzzle is actually easier than assembling a specific image; “Unlike ordinary puzzles where you are in effect redrawing a specific picture from a reference, you have a sense of where ever piece belongs compared to ever other piece. There is a real logic in the doing that is weirdly soothing, therapeutic.

“The idea came from enjoying the subtle differences in the blue of a sky in a particularly brutal jigsaw puzzle, I found that without the presence of image detail to help locate a piece I was relying only on an intuitive sense of colour, and this was much more satisfying to do than the areas with image details.”

The puzzle is 1,000 individual solid block colour tiles rather than a smooth gradient. In theory, inside the CMYK gamut there is an infinite number of colours, but its inside that printable range,” Clemens Habicht said.

This is 100 Colours – For people with smaller hands!

I think this is a very interesting activities for children to learn about colour amd stimulate their inborn colour sense.

 

References:

1000-Piece CMYK Color Gamut Jigsaw Puzzle By Designer Clemens Habicht
http://puzzle.lamingtondrive.com/

VC | Dear Data: Trash we throw everyday

IMG_1681IMG_1682I visualized the trash I throw away by classifying into three categories: the amount of trash I threw, the material of trash and the alternative way to handle the trash instead of throwing away.

I used sanitary pads as my hygiene product. As I did menstruation project in my previous project, so I have done some research to find out the most sustainable and hygiene product. Menstrual cups are more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly than sanitary pads and tampons because they can be washed and reused up to 15 years. Unlike disposable pads and tampons, they create massive amounts of garbage every month. Also, there is a female organization which is Femme International used menstrual cups as a solution to provide sanitary education for girls in East Asia. Their aims are to introduce this affordable health management method helps reduce the risk of reproductive health infections, disease and poor menstruation-related school attendance and performance.

News about How Menstrual Cups Are Changing Lives in East Asia.

Another trash that I used and throw it away everyday are tissue and toilet roll. Some people have encouraged to use a handkerchief instead of tissue as it is more sustainable, eco-friendly and reusable. However, tissues are more hygienic than handkerchief when you are having flu or sensitive nose if throw it away after use.

 

VC | Dictionary References

Hyperlink Book

Reflection: The threads can be seen as our thoughts when we are reading or analysing matter.

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Dictionary of Visual Element

Even though cannot see clearly from the website, but I found that these are very interesting for expressing visual element.

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Listen to Love

Signed language is a kind of visual language. It’s express a speaker’s thought by the optic nerves conduction. Simultaneously combining hand shapes, movement of the fingers and vivid facial expressions. Use the body language to convey endless messages.

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Pattern | W5 – Brushes and strokes

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Using grungy line instead of clean line in order to express the feeling of confusing, disturbing. To be honest, dreamscape is a journey that makes me escape from the reality and feel happy at that moment. However, is that trouble or problem that need me to solve have been escaped from my reality life? So I will want to show the contrast between the feeling of happiness while having dreamscape also show that the confusing and disturbing when you back to reality.

Also, experimenting with different thickness of stroke and the complexity of the distortion line.

The grungy line is downloaded here.