[Repost] Do you find Asian Noses Attractive?

I just came around looking at my Quora profile once in a blue moon, just to see what’s different. And holy moly, one of my pinned answer was actually deleted, and without notice.

Seriously? You guys are truly something aren’t you? How dumb could you possibly be?

I personally don’t think that answer warrant a deletion, frankly. It was more understandable when they deleted the last one because that might conflict with the whole body positivity movement and all that. But this one? Really? What? Because it could be perceived as a racist answer?

Absolutely fabulous.

And you know what, they don’t even make it easy to appeal the moderation this time. It requires you to go to Contact Us page MANUALLY which you have to find yourself, choosing to appeal a moderation decision, and fill up the required fields. This is because, as it turns out, as per time of this writing they already removed that particular feature to appeal moderation of answers directly from the main page of your deleted answer.

However, when I reached the page to submit the appeal request, I couldn’t find the “right” kind of decision for my appeal, which was “Deleted Answer”. All they had here were unverified name, bans/edit-block, moderated questions, flagged credential, shares, deleted space, moderated space post. Where is the option for a deleted answer?

… you are dumb, aren’t you, Quora?

Funny thing this is. Just a couple of months ago I still remember they used to warn you when a content is deleted because of moderation. But here I am, looking for any email I might have missed, and nope! I don’t think I could find any warning about a deleted answer. Did I touch a nerve or something?

Now that this happened, I seriously have zero idea which other answer they deleted without prior warning. I don’t think I’ll spend that much time checking about that this time around, so I’m going to leave it be. Who cares really, at the end of the day.

Okay, enough talking. So I’m just going to re-post that answer here as a personal archive, and just because I can.

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Do you find Asian Noses Attractive?

Originally published on 29 Mar 2017 8:10 PM
Last revised on 02 Mar 2019 12:17 AM
Deleted by Quora around late second half of 2020 (Oct/Nov) without notice nor a clear reason.

Which part of Asia are we talking about?

As an Asian of Chinese descent myself, when you mention the word “Asian” I noticed that most people outside and (even) inside Asia continent would jump into the “East Asian” look. This means people would talk about the oriental kind of Asian, comprised mostly by Mongolians, Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. Although it’s understandable that people tend to define things this way if you look briefly at history, I think it does other kinds of “Asians” injustice this way, as we have very diverse people living here in Asia which I will elaborate to you now before I get to the core answer.

What kind of people can be considered “Asian”?
Apart from East Asians—as the kind of Asian usually pops up in someone’s mind when they hear the word—we also have other parts of Asia with very differently looking people from each other. What’s interesting about Asia is that, since the people are generally very diverse and with the landmass geographically act as a junction to other continents such as the Africa, Europe and Oceania, when you look at the bigger picture you could eerily see a “gradient” of looks of the people on their respective geographical location, which seem to depend highly on their adjacent areas. This is certainly an interesting thing to look at if you’re looking to study some biological background of ancestors of different kinds of people here [1].

Geographically, Central Asia is comprised of people in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and surrounding areas around there. Then you have West Asians which include people from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey and the surrounding areas. While South Asians comprised of Bangladeshi, Indian, Sri Lankan, Pakistani and beyond. Lastly, when it comes to Southeast-Asians, you would have Filipinos, Malaysians, Indonesians, Cambodians and others.

Image 1: Color-coded Asia orthographic projection. Source material.

Generally speaking, it is true that since Asia is a huge continent, the word “Asian” could mean different things depending on where you are and (even) the time/era it is spoken [2]. The way I look at it, it seems to me that this is caused mostly by the social aspect of it, such as the kind of Asian that is more apparent or abundant inside a community or nation, or the general perception showcased on the media, like the kind of Asian show up on TV more often, and how they’re being called. For example, I’ve noticed that in many US English media, Indians are often called by their nationality, not by their land of origin, which is South Asia. While on the other hand, the East Asians would often be lumped together inside the word “Asian” mostly because some of historical backgrounds which you could take research on yourself [3]. So, depending on where you live, things might be different.

It is also good to note another point that “Asia” as a continent is defined rather organically over time by a long-standing geographical/political background [4]. This makes Russians placed in a very awkward position, since while they biologically belongs to the Slavic category with very “western look”, they could technically be included as “Asian” as well if you’re taking into account solely on the fact that they belong to the landmass of the Asia continent. But it is noticeable not many people actually address Russians/Slavs as Asians, so depending on which perspective you’re seeing this from, things are indeed rather confusing. Anyway, getting to the core answer.

Asian Facial Features and Beyond
If you’re talking about noses of Asians, well, the more Northern/Eastern you go, noses become smaller and funnier-looking. They’re not necessarily small, but they can be on the shorter side. Some people have “wide” noses as well. But that’s it; wide in shape, but not so much on the nostrils. East Asians also have the lightest skin colors among other Asians, although there are still those with darker skin colors as well.

Image 2: Faces of Eastern Asia.

Central Asians on the other hand are probably the most interesting bunch among Asians of other regions. The fact that they’re on the crossroad of other regions such as South Asia, West Asia, East Asia, Eastern Europe and Russia seems to have huge influence on the overall look of the population. This makes the people inside the region have very mixed looks, as they’re probably the “hybrids” of people of all the surrounding areas. So I would say that it’s tough to pinpoint exactly how the average people of this region look like.

Image 3: Faces of Central Asia.

Western Asians (or Middle-Eastern) also have quite exotic looks in general, with stronger and sharper nose features compared to other Asians. This is because the area is relatively close to the Middle-East (or inside it, depending on how you look at it) on one side (Afghanistan) and Eastern Europe on the north (Turkey), made most of the people in this region look categorically Middle-Eastern/Persian (the ones closer to Africa) while some of them seem to retain some distinct looks coming from the Southern areas of Asia (India, Pakistan).

Image 4: Faces of Western Asia.

Southern Asians, like their western counterparts, have longer and stronger nose features compared to the rest of the people in Asia as well. Their noses’ shape is comparable to those in western countries. However, their skin colors are generally darker than other people in other region of Asia, although the ones closer to the Middle-East/Central Asia seems to have lighter shades of color compared to the ones on the southern area of the region.

Image 5: Faces of Southern Asia.

Finally, Southeast Asians on the other hand have more diverse look than any other part of Asia. This is arguably caused by the general nature of the region being an archipelago, with the northern part of the region being close to north/east Asia and the other south-eastern end of the region (Papua islands) was practically part of the landmass of the Oceania continent before the land was separated by a stretch of sea after the Ice ages. This is why when you go further southeast, you could find people with looks very close to Australian Aboriginals (right-bottom image).

Image 6: Faces of Southeastern Asia.

Again, while the question’s premise is understandable, it is good to keep in mind that Asia is a big continent with very diverse people. So when it comes down to it, there’s no way you can paint such a big brush with the word “Asian”.

Cheers.

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Updated 20 August 2018: Updated with color-coded continental orthographic projection, more elaborate explanations about the definition of Asia and Asians and added people from region of Central Asia and West Asia that were missing on the original writing. This is also partially done as a celebration of the Asian Games 2018 that currently is running in my city Jakarta and Palembang. I think it would be so much better this way as I don’t want to leave anyone out.

Thank you for your support to the answer so far.

Image 7: One of the promotional poster of Asian Games 2018. The writing says “Let us ensure the success of Asian Games 2018”.

Last recorded stats:
23K views ∙ 46 Upvotes ∙ 10 Comments

Footnotes:

1. Indians and Europeans share ‘light-skin’ genetic coding
2. Asian people – Wikipedia
3. Asian Americans – Wikipedia
4. Boundaries between the continents of Earth – Wikipedia

About the Obsession with the Unseen

Introductory Notes

This is a translated piece from an archive of personal posts written on Tuesday, November 1, 2016. This post was originally uploaded to my Facebook page. Later on, it was uploaded to a site called Quora @ 17 Sep 2018 10:49 and later on here on my personal WordPress blog. The article was written in Indonesian, but since I thought it might be good to get it translated to English, I’m going to do that right now. I also just had an input from an online overseas friend, when I gave him the translated version that it’s a good read, and if it was written over there I might have a different result. So I thought, I guess why not.

Structurally, this article might not be particularly robust, because at the time of writing, it was written as a bit of a late night thoughts came to light. But somehow this is one of my personal favorite short paragraphs I’ve ever written so far. So without further due, I’m going to place it here, who knows if anyone else could enjoy it.

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About the Obsession with the Unseen
First uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Later uploaded to Quora on September 1, 2018 10:49

I know a fair amount of people who are obsessed with the unseen. As in, things that are invisible to the naked eyes. I used to be confused with all these whole affair back in the day, but in retrospect, I thought, I was actually like that myself without knowing it. Just not in the way people usually think it is.

I am obsessed with the thoughts of advancing our way of thinking, with our ability in putting words into their proper context. Obsessed with advancement of our knowledge and insight. Advancement in methods of educating new generations to see the world in a better way. Advancement in addressing the things that hold back people’s minds. Mental advancement in respecting other people’s opinions, even if that person doesn’t have to agree with us. There are in fact so many other things quite ‘invisible’ in nature that if nurtured, I believe, could improve and advance ourselves up to be a better person and human being in the process.

Not the kind of ‘invisible thing’ that you wished I would reveal? There is no need to be disappointed.

Just like you perhaps, I also fantasized a lot about various things you could imagine. Imagining about mystical creatures such as dragons and flying horses, the guardian gods of the universe, or how huge the outer-space is after we are able to venture beyond the skies. Such is the power of imagination; something which I still believe to be one of the most important components that humans have besides the basic natural sciences. But such powerful imagination combined with our natural, almost-instinctual tendency to imagine, I believe, should not deviate from our main goal here on Earth: to improve the quality of life for the world’s population through the process of ever-advancement of thought, science, and engineering.

To me, an investment worth risking for is an investment that we know very well could build minds and open up new insights and vistas for people who are still alive right now, and will live after I died later. Certainly not the kind of investment in people or things that were already gone, simply do not exist or have never existed.

Humans are arguably the only living species that have the ability to pass on its library of knowledge and technology to the next generation in various forms, particularly through communication and language. That arguably, such a huge responsibility that requires tremendous amount of work and insurmountable amount of considerations. With that in mind, we then have to be of the utmost wisdom with this ability we have by inheriting our best values ​​and knowledge that are concrete and based on our observable reality, and not based on some assorted illusions and unsubstantiated traditions that were simply passed on just because they have been around for a long time.

But with that being said, looking at how things revealed itself recently, I would say that we’re starting to lose our vision for the future. It seems like the majority of mankind’s obsession with the ‘invisible’ mostly only revolves around promises of heaven and fear of hell, that appears to be too strong and thick to be abandoned and archived to be a mere valuable lesson in the development phase of our civilization. It’s safe to say that for thousands of years, humans have very well been shackled by a sort of mental bondage that forced them to be stuck in the mystical and supernatural. Our tremendous advancement of technology and sciences, apparently, turns out to be powerless in unshackling ourselves from paralyzing superstitions, absurdities sprouted from the lack of rational reasoning and the blinding fear when faced with threats and temptations coming from mystical beliefs of occult nature.

I argue that the greatest gift in the journey of human evolution is the our monumental and instinctual curiosity about how the universe works. Indeed, we were once naive and innocent as a species; frightened of the cracking sound of a thunder and the mysterious rumbling from beneath our soil. We did not know what is going on around us. We fear about our eventual death, but trapped in a perpetual dream to be free from the shackles of life. I do think by now, we ought to realize that we have wasted enough time playing around, living our lives in the modern world, yet pondering about the universe like the way our ancestors did who lived at the beginning of our civilization.

My message is: Be advanced in our thinking! Leave behind the shackles of thoughts that have been plaguing our species for thousands of years. Hold the utmost wisdom in passing our knowledge to our future generations. Be bold in the face of the fact that all of us, will eventually die in the end. We should stop harboring hate and grudges against our fellow humans just because they worshiped different supernatural beings. Hold tight to your loved ones in this short life we have.

If people ask me, what is the meaning of ‘heaven‘ for me, it is seeing everyone alive in this world, being happy. Realized that I had been given the opportunity to live, even if only briefly, on this little planet called Earth. And most importantly, to have the knowledge I’d be leaving this world with the full awareness that our children can live in a world much better than the life we had. ‘Hell‘, on the other hand, is simply the opposite of all of those things. Seeing people miserable, neglected, severely depressed, living in poverty, dying in tragic circumstances. Fighting, murdering, and not caring about each other. To die in futility, and passing through life leaving no traces to enlightenment. Or, leaving this world when I learned that our children are under an imminent threat that endangers their lives, both physically and mentally.

I think we should look not much further, friend, about places called heaven and hell. We only have one life, one place to live; we are staring at the same sky and are standing on the same ground. We all recognize the unique aroma of the falling rain or of the burning matches; we felt the warmth of bonfire and the freshness of drinking a glass of water on a sunny day; all in the same way.

Why should then, we quarrel for days on end and act dishonorably to fellow humans just because of our obsession with things that are not based on reality and delusions of holy mandates from the creator of the universe?

That’s all for now, and thank you for taking the time to read.

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Epilogue Notes

Well, what do you think? I do hope it gave you a good time reading it.

Truth to be told, I didn’t exactly remember what came through my mind when I put this down at that point of time, but nevertheless, I can’t say I didn’t quite like how it turned out. 😁

As another side note, to those people who actually took the time to read both the English version and Indonesian version (which I don’t think will be that many, frankly), you might find slight differences in meaning here and there, but that’s just because I’d prefer to have some parts changed to fit each languages better while keeping the core message pretty much the same. I do think it works out pretty good this way, rather than translating it wholesale from one language to another, something which you could totally do with the help of Google Translate (and it surprisingly did a pretty good job at it, from where I stand).

Now, not that I need to mention the following, but after giving it some thoughts for quite sometime, I find it’s so ironic that the positive inputs I had for this piece (which is so meager, it’s almost sad) mostly came from people I barely know or even meet in-person and also from outside the country, rather than anyone closest to me. But that’s another topic on its own and I’d rather not to go into it, otherwise it’d be just another sodium-fest rant people seemed to recognize me better for.

Cheers!
—Teguh Li
Tue, 20 October 2020

Thanks Quora

I’d just like to say my deepest and sincere thank you to Quora for removing one of my answer in accordance to the site’s “rules” in order to maintain the quality of the content being presented to the general public in Quora.

Gasp! Oopsie doopsie me! God forbid we have a bad actor here violating the policies!

Here is the screenshot of the deleted answer:

Last recorded stats were 13.2K views, 23 upvotes.

I wonder if I shall appeal this moderation decision?

Hmm.

Probably I won’t have to, because I don’t want to be not-nice by maintaining that answer up anyway, in accordance to the utmost important rule of BNBR Quora holds so high, I can barely see the top of the tower.

11:54 AM GMT+7, 10 August 2020

Interesting old drawing I found

Upon opening up some old archives, I stumbled upon a particular illustration I made back in August 2011.

What do you think? I think anyone on my Facebook back then would probably have seen this before.

I thought it’s a pretty funny take on how I feel about the situation at hand back in the day, and now – roughly 9 years later – I could see how little things have changed. In fact, certain things on the social/religious sphere is getting more out of hand by the looks of it.

However, personally, I think I’ve had much less pressure and expectations being put on me regarding this matter. Which is a good thing to know.

Signed,
Teguh Li
Friday, 17 Jan 2020

[Archive] Is Talk Cheap?

Just last night, I stumbled upon an article that I wrote quite some time ago–roughly 8 years ago, to be precise. It was originally posted in a now-hidden blog that I made back in October 2012, and my goodness, have I not changed all that much after all these years when I read some of the things I wrote in the past.

I could say, it was amusing to read from the perspective of the slightly older eyes of mine, now that I have gone through past a lot of good and bad experiences. But I would say that no matter how I felt like I’ve changed throughout these years, it seems like… that’s not entirely the case, especially when this sort of thing just pops up. Well, at least not in every aspect–I’m pretty sure I’ve grown more cynical for the past couple of years, although I can’t be sure how much exactly.

The piece was just a pretty random take on the notion of “talk is cheap” that I quite frequently see in my timeline back in the days. It wasn’t all that comprehensive nor citing any studies, but for some reason, it made me wonder what was I thinking when I put down these words.

As for its context, I vaguely remember a lot of people on Facebook were posting those picture quotes about this, but I don’t remember exactly what happened during those days. Still, I find it has an interesting relatability, even through this date. So I guess, why not just post it, just for the record.

Without further due, I’m just going to paste them here for your enjoyment. Cheers!

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Originally posted on Oct 5, 2012 9:11 AM

Is Talk Cheap?

 

Is it? If so, how so?

Many times I have encountered people expressing this notion, until eventually, it finally gets me thinking: is talking really as cheap as they say?

I suspect that what most people have in mind when they get this, has something to do with the word action. That is, a person who just talk does not seem to go along well with most people. I guess we cannot blame us (yes, us);  is sure exasperating to encounter individuals with your-regular-politician quality. That is, to hear all sort of talk about this and that without noticing anything real comes out of him. Sometimes you might think things are better if these people just shut up.

But at this time of age where social media has so gracefully allowed us to communicate our thoughts and ideas so easily like never before, it is just a matter of time until it takes the toll on everyone to hear everyone talking – almost literally – all the time.

Back then, only politicians, people on the news and those who managed to get an air-time on TV or radio would be the scapegoat of the ‘just talk no action’ accusations. You know, people who actually had the opportunity to embarrass themselves in public by saying something then acting otherwise. But now, everybody is a politician! From the Facebook race of fame to YouTube arguments, talking and more talking seems to be the recent obsession of the human race. Everybody has something to say! And quite a lot of them probably think how they talk does not matter. From ppl hu dun cares abt how they sepll to PEOPLE WHO TALK LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME.

That being said, it doesn’t take much to realize how ‘talking’ have such a bad name nowadays. But for the sake of all fairness, I have to propose that talking is not necessarily be degraded into ‘just’ talking. To start off, let us discuss about the gift exclusive to the human race: the gift of speech.

Gift of Speech

The ability to actually ‘talk’; i.e. being able to speak in one particular language that other individuals are able to understand is actually the gift of our species. Don’t you agree? The gift of speech is what separates us from other life-form on the planet. So much of a gift, it had enabled us tremendously to be the species that we are today. You can say that, we started out as cavemen uttering random nonsensical voices until we developed hundreds of different languages over time, but serving only for one thing: to communicate.

We as human beings are unique, in which things about the world we are living in can be inherited into very complex form of communication called history. This, as a result, allows upcoming generations to be able to learn more than its previous generations, as the more knowledge there are, the richer life would be for the following generations. From scribbles on the cave, drawings, symbols and finally letters. Speech and language also serve as the verbal media to communicate ideas from one person to another. However, compared to any other form of communication, I would suppose that the gift of speech and language are one of the latter invention; for one thing, that is – I speculate – why we are yet to be effective in its usage.

Psychology sometimes suggests that language affects the way we perceive things around us. Taking that statement with a grain of salt, the evidence for it is still nevertheless obvious in our everyday life. For example: in my native language (Indonesian), there is no gender-differentiation for pronouns. I swear, after I get used to English and its gender-based pronouns, it sometimes gets to me when I have to listen to someone and keep wondering if it is a she or he, the speaker is talking about. Something that, I realized, lacking in my native language. Not that it really matters, but I find knowing about few details help me to understand a particular situation better.

Being a design student myself, I find it hard to deny that as well. Talking is what defines a chunk of visual communication as a media, especially in advertising. Sometimes, we as visual communicators had to deal with semantics as well, especially in typewriting. It is very evident that language alone can be used to induce certain desired psychological effect. Play of words, the way it is arranged, the way it is put together, the typeface we use, the way it is presented etc. all do affect the way we as audience perceive information.

Another thing about language is the way how certain language have advantage over the other by the use of idioms, phrases, words etc. It is like, some language had it easier to say certain things. ‘No pain, no gain’ is one example of the clever use of English language. We don’t have similar phrases in Indonesia. We Indonesians have something that sounds like this, “bersakit-sakit dahulu bersenang-senang kemudian” which literally means ‘suffer first, then be joyous afterwards’. It sounded much better in my language. But on the other hand, English seem to be – by much – more complex than my native language. With its variety of tenses, student of English as a second language often have a hard time dealing with tenses, especially if it is oral.

A spectacular example of the success of language as a unifying means of communication is the Latin language in biology. I.e. the way every species on the planet have their own universal, exclusive sort-of codename that people all over the world wouldn’t argue about. English as a unifying language might also be another example, as it is one of the major means of communication all over the world. From everyday communication to business, everyone all over the world are using English and expected to be able to speak at least a little of it just for the sake of. This is true as more parents nowadays prepare their children with English language from early on so that they wouldn’t have to catch up that much at the end of the day. This, combined with the fact that United States still monopolize the major media all over the world with Hollywood, will enable English as one of the greatest invention of unifying communication medium. China is rising, but we are yet to see Chinese language replacing English as an international language.

That being said, we human beings are social species; meaning, communication aka talking is and will still be the major unification communication solution of the world.

The Solution

Talk responsibly. Sure the notion is easier said than done, but the fact is, what, when and how we talk matters. Talk only the necessary. Talk only when you needed to. Talk well. As we train ourselves to be more and more adapt to talk responsibly, I find that talking is not that cheap at all. As I mentioned earlier, some people couldn’t be bothered in the way they talk. Don’t be that irresponsible talker. Be that responsible talker whose voice is worth hearing for. At the end of the day, talking is what makes us human. It is a wonderful gift that we have to use wisely. It is a gift we have to manage responsibly. It is a gift we all share in common as human beings and it is the greatest gift evolution had given us so that we can be the species that we are right now.

Cheers.

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And that pretty much sums it up!

I hope you find it at least tiny bit interesting.

Signed,
Teguh Li
Saturday, 11 January 2020

Sadis, Quora

Sebagaimana beberapa dari anda mungkin tahu, saya memiliki akun di situs daring bernama Quora. Sebagai latar belakang singkat, Quora dideskripsikan sebagai:

Quora adalah situs pertukaran pengetahuan yang didirikan pada Juni 2009 dan diluncurkan pada tahap beta privat di bulan Desember 2009. Situs ini mulai dibuka untuk umum pada 21 Juni 2010. Quora mengumpulkan pertanyaan-pertanyaan dan jawabannya pada topik-topik tertentu dan memperbolehkan pengguna untuk ikut berkolaborasi dengan memberikan suara atau mengusulkan perbaikan jawaban.

Nah, walau dulu sempat aktif di sana, setelah saya pikirkan, saya putuskan lebih baik berhenti membuat konten beberapa waktu lalu, tepatnya sekitar 1 tahun lalu karena lingkungan nya yang mulai tidak kondusif untuk saya pribadi. Tentunya karena hal ini sifatnya sangat pribadi (berdasarkan persepsi) saya tidak akan berargumen tentang seberapa kondusif lingkungan di situs itu jika dinilai dari pendapat masing-masing pribadi. Satu alasan, percuma; alasan kedua, saya juga tidak mau pusing. Tapi saya hari ini mau bagi sedikit cerita saja di mana saya merasa Quora itu terkadang semena-mena dalam hal moderasi konten. Singkat cerita, saya sudah perhatikan berkali-kali bahwa konten-konten lama saya banyak yang view counts atau jumlah tayangnya di-reset tanpa sepengetahuan saya sama sekali.

Untuk paralel, bayangkan saja kalau ini terjadi di YouTube, di mana views video yang anda unggah yang sudah capai puluhan atau ratusan ribu entah dari mana asalnya di-reset, atau video anda dihapus selamanya karena dinilai “melanggar aturan” dari YouTube. Apa yang akan anda rasakan jika itu terjadi pada anda? Tentunya akan sedih, dan kecewa… wah saya sudah lelah dan bersusah payah dsb, karya saya malah dihapus.

Hal ini sebetulnya sudah saya perhatikan beberapa waktu lalu, di mana beberapa konten saya di Bahasa Inggris itu ada yang secara sepihak dihapus jumlah view/tayang nya, dan walau saya awalnya kaget plus kecewa, saya pikir yah, ini hanya sekedar konten online saja, toh saya tidak perlu terlalu dibuat pusing hanya karena ada “bug” atau “glitch” dalam sistem Quora. Namun yang saya heran, kenapa ini bisa terjadi, ya? Apakah database dari jumlah tayang itu sesuatu yang sangat rumit, sampai-sampai bisa hilang atau berubah sewaktu-waktu oleh kesalahan kode atau hal semacamnya?

Hal ini sedikit mengingatkan saya kepada kasus yang dialami pihak Bank Mand*ri tempo hari:

• Nasabah Ramai-ramai Mengeluh Saldo Bank Mand*ri Berubah Drastis

Namun di mana kasus di bank tersebut perubahan angka saldo itu konsekuensinya sangat besar, seperti kerugian finansial dan sebagainya, sekadar kehilangan views memang sepertinya terdengar remeh, dan mungkin receh sekali, “begitu saja kok protes”, beberapa orang mungkin akan bilang. Atau mungkin, tidak juga sih, secara sudah terbukti bahwa kehidupan virtual itu untuk beberapa orang, sepertinya lebih dari sekedar angka di atas layar:

• This Instagram star filmed herself sobbing over the prospect of a 9-5 job: Jessy Taylor was distraught after her account was deleted

Dikutip dari Cosmopolitan, kasus Jessy Taylor itu adalah satu dari banyak kasus di mana anak-anak muda yang beraspirasi menjadi seorang Instagram Star atau celebgram, dikandaskan mimpinya karena dugaan keterlibatan Jessy di beberapa kontroversi di ranah daring, sehingga akun dari Nn. Jessy di sini itu dihapus oleh tim Instagram karena laporan beruntun. Si nona ini menangis terisak-isak di satu video YouTube, meminta semua orang untuk mengembalikan akunnya karena menurut nona Jessy, akun Instagramnya itu adalah “segalanya”. Melihat hal seperti ini, saya pikir sih, tidaklah berlebihan kalau saya hanya dan sekedar “sedikit kecewa” saja dengan apa yang terjadi dengan konten saya. Toh juga pada dasarnya tidak ada yang peduli juga sih, secara saya pembuat konten independen tanpa sokongan orang terdekat sama sekali.

Nah kembali ke soal hilangnya jumlah tayang konten saya; sebagai permulaan: kemarin ini (sekitaran November 2018) saya sempat perhatikan beberapa kasus terjadi di konten saya, yang jumlah tayangnya seperti di-reset:

— Do you think that the teaching of scientific method/thinking at schools in Indonesia is (in)adequate?

Kasus I

— How does neuroscience and psychology view the following statement, “All humans are inherently evil”? Is it a confirmation bias, genetics, or something else?

Kasus II

— Which Indonesian province do you find least interesting to visit?

Kasus III

Pertama-tama yang terbesit di kepala saya, “wah, gila betul, ini views nya ke mana semua?” Namun setelah menghela nafas, ok, baik, saya relakan saja lah, bukan lah hal yang besar, saya pikir. Lagipula juga saya tidak mau terlalu pusing amat soal hal-hal seperti ini.

Namun siang ini, saya menemukan satu kasus baru, yang mendorong saya untuk mendokumentasikannya secara lebih jelas.

Seperti biasa, walau tidak aktif menulis lagi, sesekali saya iseng mengecek beberapa konten pribadi saya di Quora, untuk editorial saja. Lalu saya ngeh satu hal baru yang saya temukan: hilangnya tautan fungsi blog pribadi di laman muka profil jika anda tidak login ke dalam situs:

Wah, jadi sekarang fitur nya ciut lagi? Dulu masih bisa tuh, lihat-lihat blog tanpa login.

Ternyata setelah saya cari tahu, fitur Blogging memang sudah dihapus. Sekarang, sudah diperkenalkan fitur baru bernama “Space” atau “Ruang” di versi Bahasa Indonesia:

Oh, okay lah, pindah ke sana sekarang. Walau sekarang harus login untuk melihat.

Namun apa yang saya lihat setelah itu, mengejutkan saya (lagi). Ternyata kasus yang sama sekitar views yang di-reset, secara spesifik, soal artikel saya “Obsesi Tentang Hal Yang Tak Terlihat” yang saya unggah di tanggal 17 September 2018. Cobalah tengok statistik artikel itu terakhir di Blog Quora yang saya abadikan di tanggal 24 April 2019:

1.426 tayang, 7 dukungan naik. Pada pelit amat sama upvote.

Dan lihat lagi apa yang saya temukan per hari ini 28 Agustus 2019, yang saya duga berhubungan dengan perubahan fungsi “Blog” ke “Ruang” dan migrasi konten saya dari fitur lama ke fitur baru:

Astagadragon… di-reset viewnya jadi 0 kemarin ini?! Teganya…

Tragis amat, saya pikir. Tega nian juga, padahal saya rasa kalau konten hanya dimigrasikan, seharusnya sekedar database views itu apa susahnya sih, di-transfer secara paralel saja dari fitur lama ke fitur yang baru? Apa begitu susah yah melakukan hal sesederhana itu? Apakah… sebuah kesengajaan? Tuh kan saya jadi suudzon, maklum lah selama ini tidak pernah jelas akar dan batang dari moderasi situs ini, jadi harus sesekali berspekulasi.

Melihat ini, dalam hati, saya hanya bisa berkata, “sudah dukungan naik disunat karena kontroversi, bisa andalkan views saja, malah disunat juga views saya! Gila, gila…”

Sebetulnya sih masih banyak lagi perihal aneh-aneh yang saya alami di situs ini dulu saat saya aktif; hal yang saya sampaikan di sini hanya satu dari yang lumayan besar saja masalahnya, karena berhubungan langsung dengan sistem di Quora itu sendiri, yang seharusnya sederhana, kalau menurut saya. Mengapa hal semudah migrasi konten saja kok jadi dibuat hal yang kesannya merugikan creator? Bahkan di kasus yang sebelumnya, tidak ada angin tidak ada hujan, views saya di-reset sendiri! Wow, saya pikir, mungkin karena terlalu canggih situsnya!

Sampai sini kamu mungkin berandai, kenapa saya tidak laporkan saja ke moderasi? Siapa tahu bisa bantu kan? Yah, siapa tahu bisa, siapa tahu tidak. Yang jelas, karena saya prediksi bahwa proses itu akan memakan waktu lama tanpa adanya solusi yang saya pikir bisa dilakukan oleh moderasi, saya tidak mau menghabiskan waktu saya.

Pengalaman saya mengajukan laporan ke situs daring seperti ini, jika sifatnya kasusnya sudah abu-abu seperti “perubahan sewaktu-waktu” di database dan hal-hal seperti itu (di kasus saya, views dari artikel saya mendadak berubah), kebanyakan waktu tim moderasi atau CS tidak bisa apa-apa. Karena hal seperti ini memang tidak terlalu jelas letak permasalahannya; kalau hanya dengan dokumentasi pengguna saja seperti ini, toh banyak yang bisa palsukan juga, kan? Saya juga memiliki bukti-bukti ini karena saya iseng saja membuat salinan offline konten saya dari waktu ke waktu. Kalau tidak begitu kebetulan, saya rasa tidak akan bisa saya buat artikel seperti ini.

Dan ini lah menurut saya, satu dari banyak hal yang membuat saya merasa kalau situasi di situs ini itu… kurang kondusif. Sepertinya tidak sepenuhnya rugi juga lah, saya keluar secara setengah resmi dari situs itu kalau hal-hal seperti ini terjadi sekarang.

Akhir kata, hanya meme berikut ini yang bisa menggambarkan perasaan saya tentang kasus ini secara sempurna:

My turn to get bizarrely reported on Quora

I’m not sure if I should be surprised, but just few moments ago I received an email from Quora moderation telling me that I have a “recent content” that violated Quora’s policy on “Spam”:

Oh … alright?

Without even clicking, upon looking at that answer I knew right away which answer it is. Ironically, though, that is probably one of the last answers worthy of being flagged as “spam”. I’m not even sure if you could call that answer “recent” since the answer was made way back in 2016 and only was edited the following years for some extra content.

Here is the copy of the answer in WordPress:

• How has technology changed our lives?

To tell you something, I still have plenty of answers live on the platform whom I thought would be flagged as inappropriate or violated some BNBR rules from the moment I put them up … but out of those answers, they just had to pick this one. Not sure if that was intentional but that was one of my better answer, if you ask me. I mean they could just pick the most annoying one, right? If they’re so eager to give me a hard time about this.

Appealed.

Now since Quora does not provide much detail about whether the answer is flagged by a bot or flagged manually, I have no way of finding out whether this was an act of a bot, or an angry user blowing off some steam at me. Nevertheless, I sent an appeal briefly and let’s see if they’re going to do anything about it.

Maybe they don’t like this photo? I don’t know, you tell me.

I figured that since we’re on the topic, I might want to discuss certain other issues I have with the site beside the ones I mentioned about half a year ago. I don’t know why, but my whole experience on Quora really left me some unsettling things to think about. I’m never quite sure why that is, but I’ve always sensed some things are definitely not right with the site and some of the people there. But mainly I’ll just talk about the site in general, since I thought, if only Quora actually manage their site differently, none of the problems we have right now would exist. But that is not the reality we have.

Regarding Flagging Posts and Banning Users

To tell you something (and believe it or not), I’ve been waiting for some reports being thrown at me. I really am. I was even expecting to get banned or at least got edit blocked, or something close to that when I was still very active the other day (I wrote around 2-3 answers per day). But none of these had ever happened to me. Strange.

It’s quite funny to see this, mainly because there are plenty other writers who got their answers collapsed or edit blocked while they’re doing practically nothing close to what I did the other day—you know, being mischievous and all—which I expected to trigger quite a number of people there, especially some veteran writers on the local topics.

The fact that I only received a handful of “violations” in the past when I was active actually left a really huge question mark in my mind. I mean, I just don’t get it. There are plenty other milder content writers (controversy-wise) that got banned on many occasions over the years, and the more I look into it the less sense it makes to me. I’ve been checking list of users on Quora that got banned on few occasions over the years, and the reason of their banning isn’t always clear. From smaller users to bigger ones, to some of the frequent contributors and the mostly-reader users, it seems like there is no clear answer to why some users got banned in the first place. Of course they could give us any assorted, automated or made-up reasons about why some users got banned (which what they have been doing), but any keen observer would eventually see there is something else happening with the way they moderate the site. It made me really question what kind of direction that the site’s mods are leading the site into, and what kind of standards do they use to ban any user.

Again, there are way too many times that I thought my answer will be at least flagged for some BNBR violations—sometimes to the point that I thought I really am pushing things too far even by my own standards. But well, here I am, having the profile still up and running, without any flattering view counts but still catching up rather well.

As per time of writing, out of several topics I was very active on last time, “Jakarta” topic is the only one that still have me on the Top 10 chart. Not too shabby, if you ask me. I didn’t actually think I’ll last that long after the long hiatus.

I’d even say that some people who followed my content closely would probably thought that I’m really pushing my luck by posting quite a few questionable things up the other day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they really did—I probably did push my luck too far on occasion.

However, this whole issue about flagging, blocking, banning … are evidently nothing new to Quora—unclear BNBR rules and its enforcement have been one of the recurring themes on the criticism Quora received as a company. Many reviews you could find online about the site would reveal to you that this isn’t exactly a new thing for the site. I could probably give you some links about this, but I think I’ll just leave you to research on it yourself out of some goodwill. I did this while keeping in mind that my review of the site might leave some people with a bad aftertaste, and knowing that Quora in Indonesia is currently managed by a local writer as a part of her portfolio. So as much as I wanted to bring up certain other things about the site, I’ll just close the case here so nobody would personally be dragged along with this. Either way, I’m not exactly clear on why they (i.e. Quora as a company) allowed this to perpetuate for so long by now, unless they’re pretty deliberate about it.

Okay, I’m starting to repeat myself right now.

All in all, I just wanted to post this up as a kind of personal note for future references. It’s a bit of a dilemma for me when I think of the site. On one hand, I always felt that I “owed” the platform for some minor (and rather unexpected) spotlight the other day, but then on the other hand, I have always felt that my overall experience on the site was simply something I’d rather not have, especially the last few months I was active on the platform (around end of 2017).

Don’t get me wrong—the site definitely had a great concept. Gathering real experts to contribute in a kind-of-social-media platform, I think, has its own merit, if only it was done properly. But looking at the way Quora executed such idea and how they manage it so far I can see it, it is definitely not a site I would recommend to another person as a whole package.

On the plus side, there are definitely a lot of great answers in Quora that could give you many useful insights to just about anything. But then again, obtaining such information could have been easily done by yourself and with your own research skills, if one is so eager to learn new things. I’ve definitely researched a lot of things myself before I even figured there is such a platform like this, so in a way I was actually surprised to see that I was once, came to Quora as a knee-jerk reaction when I wanted to know about something important. Such the effect when you’re addicted about something, I suppose.

Anyway … no matter how I think about it, as of now, I think I’ll be keeping my distance from that site for the time being. I’m not quite sure why, but the magic of the site that once charmed me into spending long hours into it just isn’t there anymore.

In the meantime, I’ll be seeing if my appeal would go through for that answer. It doesn’t really matter still, but well, I lose nothing either way.

Teguh Li
Friday, 05 April 2019

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Update on Saturday, 06 April 2019 – 01:44 PM

The answer in question had been restored:

Thanks for that.

Appealing for answers had taken much less time today it seems. I remembered the first 3-4 appeals I sent before literally took Quora around 2 weeks to finally get back to me. But this one and one of my other appeal took around 24 hours. Still bit annoying that this happened but well, at least they got it sorted out. For now.

Bagaimana caranya untuk menjadi desainer grafis yang kaya akan ide-ide kreatif?

Pertanyaannya sangat menarik, namun sejauh pengalaman saya mengajarkan saya, sepertinya agak sulit untuk mendefinisikan cara-cara yang tepat dan surekill atau super effective dalam menjawab pertanyaan ini. Ini dikarenakan bidang kreatif seperti seni dan desain secara umum, adalah … yah, sebuah bentuk seni.

Sebelum saya ke jawaban aslinya, perbolehkan saya menjelaskan beberapa hal tentang seni dan desain terlebih dahulu untuk memberikan sedikit konteks.

Sejatinya, yang namanya seni, seringkali itu adalah satu hal yang sangat bersifat subjektif. Satu hal yang kreatif atau memukau di mata 1 orang belum tentu dianggap demikian untuk orang yang lain. Tidak jarang juga, sebuah karya seni atau desain yang pada zaman tertentu dibuat, belum tentu juga dimengerti atau diapresiasi sebagaimana seharusnya. Beberapa contohnya, seperti karya pelukis Vincent Van Gogh yang baru diapresiasi setelah beliau sudah wafat, atau sketsa-sketsa karya penemuan Leonardo da Vinci yang dinilai terlalu aneh dan tidak masuk akal pada saat beliau masih aktif berkarya. Padahal, jika dilihat kembali ke belakang, walau banyak desain dari Da Vinci itu memang tidak praktis, faktanya dia tetap bisa membayangkan hal-hal ini di abad ke-15 saat ilmu sains dan teknologi modern itu baru sekali mulai populer di abad ke-19.

Gambar 1: Kolase sketsa-sketsa yang dibuat oleh Leonardo Da Vinci. Kebanyakan dari gambar ini dibuat di era-era keemasan renaissance di abad ke-15. Gambar dari berbagai sumber.

Atau sebagai contoh lain, terkadang ada juga kasus-kasus di mana suatu karya seni atau desain tidak diapresiasi di lingkungan seniman/desainer itu, namun ternyata bisa diterima dengan sangat baik di negara lain yang mungkin lebih sepaham dengan si seniman/desainer dan karya seni atau desain mereka.

• Liputan 6: https://www.liputan6.com/bisnis/read/3899610/8-orang-indonesia-yang-berhasil-harumkan-nama-bangsa-di-luar-negeri

Jadi selain sifat dari seni itu sendiri dan subjektivitas akan suatu nilai estetika, terkadang sepertinya memiliki suatu “ide kreatif” pun adalah satu hal yang bisa dibilang sangat subjektif. Betapapun kreatifnya ide yang kamu miliki (atau kamu rasa kamu miliki), kalau saja tidak bisa diterima atau tidak dimengerti orang-orang yang ada di sekeliling kamu, atau mungkin tidak ada yang mau mengerti (walau bisa saja idenya sebetulnya bagus), rasanya juga percuma memiliki banyak “ide kreatif” kalau saja kekreatifan kamu itu tidak dinilai demikian.

Memang sedih ya jika melihat fakta di lapangan ini itu seperti ini, tapi yah, namanya juga kita berada di bidang seperti ini, sulit namanya luput dari penilaian publik dan orang-orang di lingkungan kita, karena memang dari zaman dulu, seni itu adalah satu bidang yang sering dipandang sebelah mata. Fakta bahwa “desain” itupun adalah seni komersial sepertinya tidak terlalu membantu dalam mengangkat derajat dari desain secara keseluruhan, walau sekarang saya mulai melihat banyak anak-anak muda yang mulai mengembangkan ide-ide desain baru nan kreatif di mana-mana.

Gambar 2: Kolase berbagai contoh kafe-kafe dan tempat nongkrong yang bertema desain unik yang ada di Jakarta. Gambar dari berbagai sumber.

Nah, sekarang menuju pertanyaannya:

Bagaimana caranya untuk menjadi desainer grafis yang kaya akan ide-ide kreatif?

Terlepas dari semua yang saya bilang tadi, tentunya masih ada langkah-langkah yang dapat diikuti untuk mendapatkan banyak ide-ide desain yang kreatif yang bisa kamu gunakan sebagai desainer grafis. Antara lain:

1. Brainstorming / Mind Mapping.

Gambar 3: Ilustrasi dari brainstorming. Kadang hal ini juga disebut sebagai mind map atau peta ide.

Permulaan yang sangat baik dari mencari satu ide itu, adalah mencoba menuliskannya di atas kertas. Ambilah secarik kertas kosong A4 dan pensil atau pena. Lalu mulailah dari tengah. Cobalah pikirkan satu atau beberapa tema atau ide dasar dari desain yang ingin kamu buat.

• Apakah itu sebuah selera? Contoh: desain elegan, seru, unik, lucu;
• Apakah itu sebuah gaya atau style? Contoh: vintage, retro, classical, modern, traditional;
• Apakah itu sebuah tujuan? Contoh: desain mengejutkan, menenangkan, menghibur, memberikan inspirasi;
• Apakah itu sebuah nama? Contoh: Nirvana, Dystopia, Ishtar, Krakatoa; dsb.
• Apakah itu sebuah target audience? Contoh: anak-anak SD, mahasiswa laki-laki/perempuan, orang tua yang memiliki hobi tertentu, dsb.

Setelah itu, cobalah cari hal-hal sebanyak-banyaknya yang berhubungan dengan tema atau tujuan tersebut, lalu tuliskan satu per satu. Jika bisa, boleh juga kelompokkan hal-hal tersebut berdasarkan kriteria tertentu, seperti relevansi kepada ide inti itu sendiri, atau tingkat menarik tidaknya hal ini, apakah umum atau tidak di lingkungan sekitar, dsb. Dari situ perlahan-lahan kamu bisa memulai melihat hal apa saja yang bisa dilakukan dari apa yang kamu sudah tuliskan di kertas tersebut.

Gambar 4: Kolase contoh-contoh brainstorming untuk berbagai proses desain. Teknik brainstorming bisa digunakan untuk berbagai macam proyek, dari merancang logo, membuat satu karakter ilustrasi original, poster untuk sebuah film, atau menentukan typeface yang tepat untuk satu desain. Gambar dari berbagai sumber.

Jika setelah melakukan hal ini kamu masih tidak ada ide, tidak perlu panik—tujuan dari brainstorming ini adalah memikirkan sebanyak-banyaknya hal-hal yang bisa dipikirkan atau dihubungkan dengan tema atau ide yang kamu sedang coba hasilkan, lalu lihat secara seksama apakah ada ide-ide baru menarik yang bisa kamu coba keluarkan setelah kamu memiliki peta ide tersebut. Jika ternyata di kali pertama kamu tidak ada ide menarik, kamu tinggal coba lagi membuat brainstorming ini dari awal, sampai kamu menemukan ide yang lumayan sreg dengan keinginan kamu. Setelah itu, kamu bisa coba mencoba tahap selanjutnya.

2. Moodboard.

Moodboard itu adalah sebutan untuk satu kumpulan visual-visual yang berkaitan atau memiliki taste dan feel yang serupa dengan desain yang kamu ingin ciptakan. Pada intinya, bentuknya kebanyakan waktu itu akan seperti kolase, di mana satu bidang papan ini akan diisi hal-hal seperti warna-warna yang sesuai dengan tema, visual yang menggambarkan hal-hal yang cocok dengan tema atau tujuan dari desain, palet warna yang digunakan dalam desain itu, dan lain sebagainya.

Gambar 5: Kolase contoh berbagai macam moodboard. Moodboard juga bisa digunakan dalam berbagai jenis proyek desain selain desain grafis. Gambar dari berbagai sumber.

Jadi di mana dalam tahap brainstorming tadi kamu hanya dituntut untuk membuat peta ide-ide yang berkaitan dengan desain yang ingin kamu buat, di moodboard, ini gilirannya kamu mem-visualisasikan ide atau tema tersebut dengan mengumpulkan contoh-contoh gambar, warna, atau contoh desain dari sumber lain yang bisa kamu gunakan sebagai acuan untuk mengembangkan desain kamu sendiri.

Tentunya dengan ini bukan berarti kamu mau meniru atau plagiat desain orang lain loh yah—yang terpenting dalam membuat moodboard di sini itu kamu hanya ingin mendapatkan contoh atau referensi visual yang cocok, supaya kamu sendiri akan lebih mudah membayangkan dan mengembangkan desain yang asalnya dari ide kamu sendiri.

Memang, mungkin di balik semua ini, ada sebagian dari kamu yang ingin sekali, istilahnya, menciptakan desain yang 101% itu original dari kepala dan tangan kamu. Walaupun itu adalah suatu misi yang keren dan terpuji, tetaplah tidak ada salahnya jika kamu bisa mengumpulkan beberapa referensi visual penting untuk membantu kamu dalam bekerja. Percaya deh, sejatinya originalitas satu desain tidak akan terkompromikan kalau kamu hanya mengacu pada visual atau membuat desain dari inspirasi yang ada. Lain hal memang kalau kamu itu plagiat atau jiplak habis desain orang … kalau tindakan seperti itu memang sudah seharusnya sangat dihindari dalam bidang ini. Lalu, menuju tahap selanjutnya.

3. Sketsa.

Setelah kamu puas mencari ide dasar dan juga mengkompilasi referensi visual yang kamu butuhkan, sekarang waktunya kamu mencoba mengeluarkan desain dan sketsa yang kamu bisa buat dengan mengacu pada 2 hal tersebut.

Gambar 6: Kolase berbagai contoh sketsa untuk proyek desain, mulai dari desain logo, desain poster, dan juga desain untuk konsep karakter. Gambar dari berbagai sumber.

Dalam tahap ini, apa yang kamu coba lakukan adalah mengkombinasikan ide-ide yang sudah kamu kumpulkan di tahap 1 dan referensi visual yang sudah kamu kumpulkan di tahap 2. Tidak usah takut salah atau takut jelek, cobalah saja mengguratkan pensil atau pena kamu untuk mengeluarkan gambar kasar untuk memberi kamu ide dan sejumlah visual yang bisa dikembangkan lagi nantinya. Pada intinya di sini kamu hanya ingin melihat seperti apa ide yang sedang kamu miliki di kepala itu, jika kamu sudah meletakkannya di atas kertas. Setelah ini, suka tidaknya kamu dengan apa yang kamu lihat, kamu minimal sudah memiliki beberapa portfolio yang bisa kamu gunakan untuk berbagai keperluan lain. Jika kamu suka dengan hasil sketsanya, berarti kamu bisa kembangkan lagi ke tahap yang lebih jauh. Jika tidak, tenang saja, dan coba lagi sampai kamu cukup puas dengan apa yang kamu lihat.

Sampai sini beberapa dari kamu mungkin berpikir, kenapa tidak langsung sketsa dulu saja, baru mencari ide dan membuat moodboard? Hal ini dikarenakan, walau tahap sketsa sebetulnya bisa dilakukan juga sebelum melakukan hal-hal lain, dengan melakukan brainstorming dan merancang moodboard terlebih dahulu biasanya akan memudahkan kamu mendapatkan ide-ide dan sketsa yang lebih baik dan terpoles, daripada kamu langsung terjun ke tahap sketsa sebelum kamu tahu betul desain seperti apa yang kamu mau kerjakan.

Tentunya dengan mengikuti tahapan-tahapan ini, ide-ide kreatif itu bukanlah sesuatu yang terjamin atau pasti ditemukan. Daftar ini bukanlah “cara terbaik” atau “satu-satunya jalan” dalam menemukan ide desain kreatif. Semua tahapan yang saya tuliskan di sini hanyalah beberapa cara-cara umum yang bisa dicoba, supaya kamu bisa mengerjakan proyek desain dengan lebih terarah, yang diharapkan bisa membantu kamu mengeluarkan ide kreatif. Bukanlah hal yang terpenting bahwa dengan melakukan semua ini, kamu dijamin mengeluarkan ide-ide kreatif yang bisa direalisasikan menjadi produk desain akhir. Yang terpenting adalah, kamu memiliki proses yang terarah dalam membuat satu desain atau mencoba mengeluarkan ide dan gagasan yang baru.

Proses mencari ide baru dan kreatif itu adalah proses yang sebetulnya cukup kompleks, walau sekilas mungkin terlihat mudah. Tidaklah jarang dalam proses mencari ide kreatif dan satu gagasan desain yang baru itu, kamu bisa gagal atau tidak menemukan ide yang menarik sama sekali setelah melakukan banyak usaha untuk mengeluarkan ide-ide kreatif itu, lalu dipaksa untuk mulai semua lagi dari awal.

Dan jika saja setelah melakukan langkah ini kamu ternyata masih stuck, kamu tidak perlu risau atau panik. Itu hanya berarti kamu harus mencari dan menggali lebih dalam untuk ide-ide kreatif yang kamu mau temukan tersebut. Tidak usah berkecil hati jika setelah kamu sudah capek-capek mengerjakan ini itu, akhirnya semua terasa mubadzir karena hasil yang kamu miliki tidak sesuai harapan kamu. Itu adalah suatu hal yang sangat umum dan normal dalam bidang kreatif seperti desain grafis.

Apapun itu yang bisa saya jamin, tentunya dengan mengikuti langkah-langkah yang lebih konkrit dan terarah, ide yang kamu keluarkan pastinya akan jauh lebih baik dan kreatif, dibandingkan jika saja kamu hanya mendesain dan mencoba membuat gagasan tanpa arah dan mempertimbangkan hal-hal penting dalam pembuatan ide dan gagasan itu.

Catatan Kaki

1. Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh – Wikipedia
2. Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci – Wikipedia
3. Warunk Upnormal Sukses, Pemiliknya Tetap Sederhana
4. 8 Cafe Keren Untuk Ngopi Gaul Di Jakarta
5. Guten Morgen Tomang
6. Futopia Alam Sutera

Terima kasih untuk permintaan jawabannya:

Why do many Indonesian people believe in superstitious things?

Superstition is actually a very common thing throughout many societies—it’s not exactly something exclusive just to Indonesia. However, it is true that Indonesia in particular is one of the more superstitious country among a lot others—that would include many other countries like China, Japan, or even western ones such as The United States, if you’ve taken time to look at things related to this.

As a side note, many people often confuse religious beliefs to be always in-line with superstitions, but this isn’t necessarily the case—in many secular/non-religious nations like Japan or China, superstitions can actually stand on their own as assorted beliefs in supernatural without any religious nuance to it. However, since religious ideas often have numerous supernatural and superstitious elements about them, Indonesians might be more superstitious as a result of a more religious society. I’ll illustrate this later on.

Related readings:

• What is the most preposterous nonreligious idea people have ever come up with?
• What are things that a lot of people are afraid of that have a very low statistical probability of happening?

To narrow down the discussion, I’ll put up the definition first:

The basic idea of superstition is a belief in supernatural causation and consequences. This means that superstition, in its basic form, usually manifested as a belief that something X is the cause of something Y, or that doing something A would get you result B, in which both something X and Y, or action A and result B might not have any tangible or true logical correlation to each other.

This leads superstitions need not be logical, but they are believed and often being done anyway, because of various possible reasons, including tradition, long-standing social perception, urban legends and series of bizarre coincidences that led people to think in a certain way. Not rarely, superstitions could also be used to manipulate someone to do something or act in a certain way (more on this later).

For instance, many societies around the globe actually have many forms of superstitions quite exclusive to their societies, such as—the most common ones—luck-related charms and superstitions:

Image 1: Compilations of more well-known superstitions. From various sources.

With each superstitions believed as:

• Crossing fingers to bring good luck.
• Finding four-leaf clover brings good luck.
• Horse shoe as a good luck charm.
• Omamori a famous good luck charm in East Asia.
• Knocking on wood to shoo away bad luck.
• Lucky cat figurines to bring good luck to the owners.
• Sight of black cats brings bad luck.
• Breaking mirrors is a sign of forthcoming bad luck.
• Number 13 is a bad luck number.

Most people are probably familiar with one or more things mentioned above. These things can be categorized as superstitious things and actions, since—as illustrated earlier—by owning, doing, or avoiding things mentioned above, it is believed that it would bring some results (good luck / bad luck).

Another form of superstitions is the kind of superstitions to manipulate others to act in a certain way.

Image 2: Compilation of other kinds of superstitions. From various sources.

With those things believed as:

• Being in Santa’s naughty list won’t get you the present you want for Christmas.
• Playing too late after evening would get you kidnapped by some demons. For example, Indonesia has Wewe Gombel, while in other places like in Slavic legend, they have the Baba Yaga.
• Not finishing your food would get you ugly partner later on.
• Not sweeping the house properly would get you ugly partner later on.

Or a series of other ones from across the world:

Image 3: Various superstitions from around the world. Source.

So with all that being laid out, it is not exactly an exclusively Indonesian thing to be superstitious. However, to answer the spesific question here:

Why do many Indonesian people believe in superstitious things?

Many people all around the world can be as superstitious as others, however I would say that Indonesia as a collective could be considered to be more on the superstitious side, with one of the reason it is one of the more religious nation. Although not all superstition is religious in nature, religion and superstition often go hand-in-hand, which might have apparent result on the overall mindset of the people here.

Other reasons might include lack of general literacy level, socioeconomic development as well as general scientific literacy—all of the things that would lead people to be less superstitious by effect.

Footnotes

1. 10 Most Famous Known superstitions
2. 10 Common Superstitions
3. Good Question: Why Does Santa Give Bad Kids Coal, Of All Things?
4. Top 10 Witches – #3 Baba Yaga
5. Mitos & takhayul di Indonesia dan penjelasan logisnya

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Why should a business consider paying premium for a good graphic designer to design their logo?

Short answer — As far as my knowledge goes, only bigger businesses and/or businesses that deal with high-end clients or luxury services (like 5-stars hotels) would benefit the most from paying premium for a graphic design service. If you’re, say, a start-up on a limited budget, it is a better idea to spend your money elsewhere.

Now this does not mean you should then resort to the cheapest design service you come across—it only means that paying premium for a logo design isn’t the most viable option if you’re just starting out. It’d be a different matter however, if you have the budget and want to ensure everything is done correctly.

Long answer — First of all, it is important to note that company logo design is actually a part of brand identity design. Designing the logo itself is just the very first step in approaching any brand identity design project, since most businesses won’t be able to use a logo on its own without a whole package of branding collaterals to go with the logo, which is the next important aspect of the brand identity as a whole.

Premium brand identity design has its merits, but usually the perks you’ll be having would only be very useful if your business is growing into medium-to-large scale where your branding collaterals becoming more and more important as a part of your overall business presentation. Either that, or you seek sophistication on your branding identity and willing to spend more money, regardless of the size and the type of your business.

Image 1: An example of branding collateral for Honolulu Museum of Art. Source.

Another reason why you’d want to go premium is when you’re about to afford business branding for premium services, such as luxury hotels or any other businesses along this line.

Image 2: An example of branding collateral for The Sultan Hotel. Source.

In regards to why premium logo design is priced premium—it’s also a matter of the quality of the overall design process.

Although logo design process seemingly isn’t complicated, as any sort of other professional services, the amount of work designers could do will depend highly on 1) how much you want to spend on a logo (budget), 2) the number and/or quality of designer(s) working on the project (human resource) as well as the 3) art director(s) in charge of the project (art direction).

1. Your budget will determine how much effort being extracted for your project by an agency. It is like how Interior Designers—for example—would propose to you different interior design services and options depending on how much you want to spend on the project. This directly correlates to the factor number (2), which is how big the design agency in question to be able to handle a project of more sophisticated level.
2. The scale of the graphic design agency you chose would also determine how many people are being allocated to do your project. The more people there are, the more energy and time being put collectively on the project which will improve the quality of the end result as well.Think of it like the way high-budget Hollywood movies have endless list of casts of people working on the movie being scrolled at the end of any movie screening. It’s the same thing as well when it comes to any other media projects, including graphic design.
3. Last but not least, the art directing of the whole project would also determine the direction of the art-style and overall quality and feel of your logo design and branding.Again, it’s the same thing in parallel to Hollywood movies—it’s like when you have famous movie directors like Guy Ritchie, M. Night Shyamalan or Michael Bay directing a film. These three filmmakers all have different ways of doing their stuff, and each of their movies will show you this. They have very different way of creating their films, all with their own respective end results and which one you like the most, is pretty much for you to decide.In the case of graphic design, the direction in which your branding project is shaping up would also depend on the one(s) in charge of handling your project. You would have to take a look at respective agency’s available portfolio to be able to figure this out, the same way you judge each aforementioned filmmakers’ directing capabilities by watching their movies. Of course, when you have the best people in the field handling your project like that, the price wouldn’t be the same compared to when you let smaller agencies to work on the same project.

Another reason for why you would want to go premium is also in the number of collaterals you could propose being made for your business. Following all the things mentioned earlier—when you have more budget, more people handling the project and a better art direction, you could have more things to be made and handled correctly as a result.

Image 3: Examples of more comprehensive branding collateral, which could include all sort of unconventional things such as mugs, shades, T-shirt, matchsticks and others, alongside the standard set of name cards and printed leaflets.Source.

Then, if your business is on the bigger side, you’d probably want to have branding guidelines as well.

Which would give you the necessary resources for you and your business to standardize the entirety of your branding collateral, giving it the necessary consistency to strengthen your brand identity as a whole.

Branding guidelines (or brand style guides) act as a “How-To” guidebook for any aspect of your business to be able to design things the way it was intended to be according to your brand identity. Not rarely, it could also be used as a reference point for any other agencies (the ones not working on your branding) handling more upcoming projects in the future. And in this regard, a good comprehensive brand style guide can only be done when an agency have enough resources to do it right.

Image 4: Few example pages of brand style guide which serves as a reference point on how to do your branding. This includes the allowed color palettes of your brand, positioning of your logos, allowed typefaces to be used in your branding collateral and so on. Images from various sources.

In summary, as mentioned earlier, premium design services definitely have its merits, but the amount of benefit you could take from paying for the premium prices will highly depend on your respective needs and budget as business owners.

In other words, when you afford premium design service, you definitely get more bang for the buck, but whether premium suits your needs or whether you could make use of the more available resources to make the best out of the service, is still something that depends on your aim and requirements as clients.

Footnotes

1. Brand Collateral | Graphic Design | Persona Design
2. 21 Brand Style Guide Examples for Visual Inspiration

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