Friday, December 08, 2006

Not An Ordinary Designer

A Super Designer defines:

As a creative person that is able to generate ideas and produce few creative visual; such as interactive prototype for 2 hours or a 40 second corporate video in a working 16 hours (with client's changes and requests). Besides that, a super designer is not only to do art or creative direction, but also write project and creative briefs, proposals, site map, architect information (AI), wire frames, paperworks. A super designer surf more than 40 websites per day and communicates with his officemates, supervisor, technicians to potential future clients by read and reply almost 20-30 emails per day with 3 long paragraph of email replies. A super designer also attends creative presentation to clients to sell ideas and to convince clients that he and his team are able to provide solution to their products (clients) and have almost daily meetings, do photography, sketch few illustrations while waiting at the corridor for presentations or in LRT, and at the same time, work out at the gym in late evening, dinner with friends and 3-5 hours of sleep but being hyperactive and happy :) A super designer is able to fight the obstacles and create an extensive of self-help and motivation go become a better, stronger person, day by day.

A Journey of discovering an old friend, Red Kebaya


For more than one hour, I had kept my moderate-mode and become an extreme conservative audience, sitting in front of the silver screen in Cinema 7, TGV cinema on the 1st of December, watching Red Kebaya. There were only just two people inside the cinema, me and an old Malay man. He was busy answering phone call, as it seems like he’s running a big business or so. So, after the pre-screening I had earlier with the cast and crew like notable Ramli Ibrahim and Samantha Schubert. I was able to see them perform in this film. I’m quite glad to meet them. The movie is a good movie to watch. I don’t want to compare with others but I would wish there would be more scenes at the end of the movie. Well, it’s notable and great already. Although having said that, I want to share with all of you an incident I had after watching Red Kebaya. Remember the pakcik few seats from me? We accidentally got in the same lift. He start giving his comments about Red Kebaya, as a great movie. On our way out, he said

Pakcik suka film-film macam ni. Pakcik suka tengok. (Bisik) Pakcik tokei VCD haram. Benda-benda macam ni kena tengok, baru bila kita jual, kita boleh cerita kat orang cerita cam ni best

That time, I was amazed and pissed off at the same time. This is because I was extensively explaining the cinematography and the characters of the actors and actress in the film. Sadly, movies like this are going to be ‘copied’ to the black market for piracy release. But what I learn of the accident is that although these people are pirating our local movies, they themselves go to the cinema to enjoy the real thing. They want to see what they want to sell. So when they reach their consumer, they can convince that the movie is good.

Waulahhualam. I just realized that I was sitting next to the tauke of pirate VCD’s and DVD’s. Something rather look so sad to experience, however the moral are indeed in store in my mind but something that we all need to look upon ourselves.

CINTA, the movie
For those who still like to read my review on our local film, CINTA, kindly click here or scroll to my last post. Thanks to Sultan Muzaffar, and Grand Brilliance for inviting me to write the review and featured in their official, CintaTheMovie website.

Another interesting story of Muid Latif

Two days ago, I met my very dear old friend Nadiah. We had a great dinner at Starbucks, KLCC after I met my friend Teong Hin (Director of PGL) in the evening. Nadiah and I go way back, in UiTM days. We use to hang out, cracking out jokes and enjoy clubbing and do presentations together. Last time, she drove a cool classic red metallic Volkswagen Beetle while playing Portishead and Prodigy after class on our way back. It’s been so long since I hang out with the. The last time, we had a ‘small date’ at Chinoz KLCC. We suppose to go there but it was closed for renovation now. Anyway, meeting her was indeed a great opportunity even though I was dreadfully exhausted due to my multi-tasking work. I haven’t had enough sleep. Me and Perez also stay up until 5 am to finish a great teamwork of a creative video presentation for Pak Lah and the minister for the ICM Meeting that was held yesterday in Kuala Lumpur.

So, back to Nadiah, we chat about our work and relationships, what we both gone through. It’s great to let things out. It eases the pressure on our head. We both came to a solution of our future relationship plans. I rather keep it to myself for time being. Nadiah send me back home to Bandar Tasik Selatan, because I park my car there. On our way back, she was asking me about my life and stuff, and there is this one moment, I got so sleepy and fell a sleep few sec.

She asks me about “What is the direction I will be heading towards my life?” and guess what I replied: 70% of vector illustration”.

After a few second, Nadiah went silence and I just realized that I actually given the inappropriate erroneous reply. Was I really that bad that I think of work all the time?!? Then I start laughing and told Nadiah and apologize to her. God, I just need to get some time off. Even to do so, I don’t find any chance to do that because all I kept on thinking is producing, hardworking; generate creativity, until I lost my essence of life. Surprisingly, work makes me happy. It’s the only thing I can hold on to, besides family. Not to say that I only live for my work, but getting myself busy makes me more productive and become more experience in terms of my skillets and experience. I never regretted for choosing to be a creative person because it’s fulfilling and contenting my life.

Work Updates: iworkforthemdotkom

LMAF Website
Visit LMAF website which I had recently created!

I had recently design and develop a website for Labuan Mini Arts Festival. This website is presented in Flash with decorative illustration based on the studies of Malay wood carving. Last week on the 1st of December, me and my workmate, Kamal Baharin (MDeC) gave our creative talk on Animation & Interactivity for Creative Multimedia Initiative for the Malaysia 9th Plan (Organized by the Minister of Youth and Sports Malaysia). The talk was presented to the students of Kolej Kementrian Belia dan Sukan Malaysia at Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi in Sepang. The topics includes Work In Progress of Saladin Animated Series and Generating Creativity in Interactivity. Thanks to all the students who had been keen enough to wait for us and listen to our talk.


Here is some of my photography from last month’s Dubai trip.

Discovery of Muid’s Design Process:

View the WIP of Dhu-bi-niti, upcoming illustration series by Muid Latif

Dhu-bi-niti is two set of illustrations inspired from my Trip to Dubai (in the plane on my way back to Kuala Lumpur) . I had created this illustration based on my findings and research when I was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates last month. I was able to learn and gather great exposure and knowledge on Islamic Heritage, plus to get to know the culture and people in Dubai. This work will be a vector base illustration that I will be doing for an interactive installation for early 2007. I’m setting up more focus on gaining more illustration skill sets and want to see more of my work in illustration. Now that I’m a part of Saladin team, I want to learn more experience with my teammates and also want them to be participate in future MekarMara magazine release. I will be revamping my portfolio, the moedlatif to volume five point five (5.5). I will engage an ActionScript consultant to help me with the portfolio presentation, plus to create more edgy and perspective feel into my site.

I am currently working on a new blog at Word Press, dedicated for any post of my design process, so I can help myself, and others to get them to understand about the process of my work, and to inspire them to keep on moving forward as a creative person. Anyway, I'm teaming up with RadioActive to create a series of oriental fascination in street wear. I'm pretty excited!


Don't forget about my great Flash guru appearance in Massive Territory happening this 13th of January.


I never met any baby as cute, creative and adorable as Aida's son, Aiman.

15-17 December is indeed one of my most historical date of my life and my old buddies. That weekend, we had our first ever reunion! Organized by Ismail and Haryany Mohammad, As. Director of the Museum of Arts, Penang, we had our fun weekend-out and get to know the life after the 'U'. I get to discovered almost all of my old friends are in the humble industry of education, and few more in creative industry. Suprisingly, my friend Ijan is now the head of youth of UMNO for Banting. How bizzare is that! from a fine arts graduate. Nahyycee!

More photos can be found here: http://www.moedlatif.com/misc/reunion1/

p/s: Seems the will be no Angkor Watt for me... since I so many things to finish on my plate. More and more work. But then again, I'm glad. It's healthy, in my point of view.
_
new emotions overflow…it’s called carefree.

3 opinions :

muchomocca said...

hi muid! i really enjoy this post, very infromative. ur LMAF design is kewl!!

Izham Miyake said...

i think.. memang kalau kerja2 design ni.. memang take a lot of time..

no wonder 70%!

Unknown said...

Izham, I start laughing every time i think of it. I even have nightmares just about work! it's so insane.

Muchomocca, Thanks ;) though it's a charity work, I will put more creative and interactivity in the site in future to come.