Bad governance can mean bad design, Part 1: THE AWFUL

Before anything else.

Didn't I just prophetically write about The Hurt Locker winning and Bigelow as first female director a few days before the Oscars?

It's a gift, y'know.

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I've visited a lot of government websites to date, and I've noticed something peculiar about most of them, a peculiarity they also seem to share. It's admirable enough that a government as backward as ours has endeavored to be on the 3Ws for the sake of transparency, modernization and the citizens' right to information. But they should at least be able to exert effort towards aesthetics and usability to show genuine concern.

THE AWFUL

The following are screen caps of indexes of some government sites that are exceptionally terrible in terms of web design and everything else. What's with all the nausea-inducing marquees (scrolling text)? Amateurish Flash animation? And layout circa 1991?

Let's go deep blue sea diving into the Energy Regulation Commission's website. Are those double-double scrolls and primary yellow nav links? Now I feel like drowning.

Introducing old school, Notepad-encoded tables and embossed mud-like banner text. With its tan color scheme and garbled sidebar, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau online is too down to earth that only worms and termites are missing.

Every capital city lurker's favorite government agency, the Metro Manila Development Authority is probably too busy manning the streets and building footbridges to notice that their own website looks worse than rush hour traffic along EDSA.

The Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau launches heroically to put "No Crossing" lines around our forests. Their own website, too, should also be protected from visitors with its confusing layout of boxed elements, Powerpoint gradients and rainbow-colored site counter. But they're already probably taking precautions. Notice their title header says "Untitled"?

The grand prize goes to the National Tax Research Center's website, designed by my neighbor's 3-year-old brother who aspires to be a tax attorney someday. While looking at this site, I suddenly wanted to reconsider withdrawing my application for TIN.

Up next: THE AWESOME

The Hurt Locker won't feel hurt

at all.

Isn't that an awesome shot or what?

This is not a fearless forecast. There's nothing to fear or not to fear about knowing for sure that Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq war film The Hurt Locker would land the Oscar. Avatar has been reaping the audiences and the money, right, but history says Oscar voters don't usually go for big box-office epics (with only five exceptions). And as an Oscar offshore observer, I wouldn't want to see an immensely commercial but typical Pocahontas tale such as Avatar in the Academy Award list of best films in history.

Sure, the Academy has had its mistakes in the past of choosing How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane and Annie Hall over Star Wars, but never mind, the Oscars still spells movie fate. And remember when I predicted Crash to win over crowd favorite Brokeback Mountain in '05? Who knew.

Bigelow is a rare director. Her last film was K19 The Widowmaker with Nicholas Cage (?) back in '02. But hers was a smashing comeback project with the Oscar best picture contender, which is just great action filmmaking by a woman director. About time the Academy recognizes a female Best Director awardee. Hello, it's the 21st Century, and we're supposed to feel emancipated. #

photo 1: Summit Entertainment

photo 2: http://www.expressnightout.com

Thunderstanding

Am I missing out on the world? Or at least on the basketball world? Sure I do.

Oklahoma City Thunder has been in the game for two years now and I've been sleeping. The guys are playing with my boys from Sacramento who are trailing by two points so far right this very moment. Can this be true? There's a new NBA team beyond my knowledge? Wikipedia says the Thunder became the new identity of the Seattle Supersonics after a rift back in '08. Lead scorer is Kevin Durant with 29 points per game, the guy's my age playing for $4.8 million a year. If only we could dunk like this, we'd be rich:

#

Uncle Kracker is back

We follow and we drift away, but now let's all smile like the sun, fall out of bed, sing like a bird. #

Nosebleed

A writer's work means writing intensely for 8 to 9 hours a day for almost two weeks. And she still has to finish a take-home exam for Contemporary Philosophy tomorrow.

And The New Republic magazine calls her kind "The New Proles." It can be acknowledged as form of flattery based on realism and a slightly leftist orientation that blames the system for taking away her dignity.

That's writing for 40 hours a week for next to nothing. And if it isn't for love, it's disillusionment. #

Why signed laws don't spell g-e-n-i-u-s or how the number of bills passed can deceive

From now on, maybe I'll start featuring some random politician and put him on the spot. The elections are coming anyway, and it's the best time to rake someone over the coals to help you, wise voters, pick out your kind of apple from a barrel of bad ones.

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Candidate spotlight on:

Senator Ramon "Bong" Revilla, Jr.

Current position: Senator of the Republic of the Philippines

Running for: Senator of the Republic of the Philippines

Revilla was reported yesterday to have recently topped the Senate race in a survey conducted by the Social Weather Station. News like this are still amazingly ridiculous, though not at all surprising in my beloved country. Remember his latest Metro Manila Film Festival vehicle Ang Panday became a local box office hit alongside smashing Hollywood films, and that he led the Senate investigation on that schlocky Hayden Kho controversy. Can sleaze be worthy of national attention? Bet the Senator thinks so.

Though (self-)dubbed a champion of women abused by partners, the dashing solon aka Captain Barbell II afterwards remained mum on news of Chavit Singson beating up his girlfriend. That's what we call consistency.

Revilla's official website proudly published that the aforementioned has "76 bills passed into law" and "more to come." The winding statement then went on enumerating these bills as if the actor-senator penned them himself or every one of those bills is astoundingly consequential. Some knowledge would tell readers that legislators can sign as "co-authors" or "sponsors" of bills that can sound nice on a resumé.

Twelve of the 76 are actually just engineering districts bills, 7 are franchise bills and 20 are of local application. 15 are of bandwagons -- hello, Magna Carta of Women.

The press release also mentioned those he authored that reached third reading such as the Mandatory Helmet Bill that "seeks to oblige all motorcycle riders, including backriders, to wear standard quality helmets" as if there wasn't any such rule in the first place. Some quick search would reveal that the senator, an avid biker, is an endorser of Suzuki motorcycles and spokesperson of the brand's S.A.F.E campaign. Thou shalt easily recognize conflict of interest.

For more of Sen. Revilla's accomplishments, visit http://www.ramonbongrevillajr.com/s.php

And there's nothing there. For now? Heh. #

Milk and tea

Some people are avoiding coffee. I'm avoiding that dreaded 3-in-1. Asian digestive systems are often lactose intolerant. Some taste buds also aren't accustomed to just tea. Where's the taste, they wonder.

So milk tea. We want.

Photo: CC BY-NC 2.0

Vector art in propaganda

While I was reading week-old International Herald Tribune issues the other day, I chanced upon an article by Alice Rawsthorn on the problems of today's typographers when dealing with pixels. While typography is such a fascinating field that combines technique, technicality and artistic touch, it finds fast-paced advancement in technology threatening. Pardon the alliterations yet again.

With the prominent but unacknowledged digital movement in 21st century art, professional and starter designers must keep up and learn new skills to apply trends. But I've always hesitated liking primarily vector-based art. They all look alike, heck. Argue that they have had 3D and shadows lately, and Web 2.0 has changed interface upon interface on the Internet, and almost everything can be turned into vector. Thing is, today's scattered communities of designers haven't really come up with real art out of vector graphics.

And what is real art anyway, you question? I think I'm talking of standards here. And I realize that although graphic design has always been distant from the highbrow appeal of painting, it at least had personality. Think art deco days of Lautrec, or even a more contemporary Leonardo Sonnoli. There's discipline and texture and character -- all of which I think vector-based posters today are short of. There's no identity and no signature, and no one is steering it towards a more disciplined direction.

Or maybe I just haven't heard of anyone doing so.

Posters, the integral medium of visual communication, have inherently had political motives. So I don't know why the Times still had to entitle one of its slideshow presentations on this article "The Poster as Propaganda," as if it's anything novel. Too much stating the obvious.

Some propagandistic vectors in abundance. You judge:

This next one is way better, don't you think? It has the appeal and directness of early propaganda art, even though it's vector.

More vector! And cartoons!

But then, who am I to make appraisals? I can only comment on form. Function-wise, these posters lived up to their purpose as as effectively as a well-oiled machine:

A poster was widely cited as having galvanized votes for the Swiss measure but was also blamed for exacerbating hostility toward immigrants and instigating a media and legal circus. #

Covert campaigns

Many are pulling off Obama-like strategies, tapping online channels to reach desired markets. Billboards worth more than Php50,000.00 each are lined up along EDSA, breaking the series of commercial advertisements and causing more eyesore and traffic strain poor drivers endure every single day.

As if these blokes own the colors of the rainbow, branding themselves with one or two. I mean, MMDA's pink and blue are tacky enough, and even if orange and blue are complementary, it's now marked and labeled as equivalent to Sipag and Tiyaga. I feel bad for designers who have to choose another scheme for an otherwise perfect poster, just so it won't be associated with a presidential candidate. And yellow? Owned by the Aquino, like there's some kind of a patent.

The covert campaigns are here again, the overture to a noble practice of democracy. But here it's ironically loud and it's dirty. And it's not cheap.

But let's be optimistic. Let's spell hope and change and put them out there as Pepsi does with their new campaign. It uses the whole spectrum of the color wheel, besides making use of that new trend that's advocacy advertising. Selling the product by selling an idea, an ideal. As if we can all be fooled. #

Back to work

Sure, let's use a generic blog post title from time to time. It's easier for me. Plus it's postmodern practice to have a title totally unrelated to the content.

Now that everything's going back to the weekday-work norm, I should be blogging regularly again. But we'll miss the holiday food. And no regrets. Some can afford weight gain after all.

Food photos from mimimayhem's holidays, to give Mr. Scrooge an idea of what he's missing.

We don't have Thanksgiving, but with chicken like this, who cares?

A snowman made of oranges perched in salad. Genius.

Burgers with grilled patties with Worcestershire sauce with love. A bite is full lunch enough.

Yours truly, wearing some ugly watch, carving out stars from potatoes ...

One for Obama country!

Bacon in vegetable = a kid's dream.

Happy and back to work. #