One of the strange things that I have to live with everyday is the fact that I sneeze every time I ate chocolate. This is true, and I couldn’t even remember when was the first time I had this reaction. And yes, I know that it is strange. Who the hell sneezes over chocolate? Of course that didn’t stop me from eating it, although I always assumed that it was a non-lethal allergy.
I somehow had the urge to Google this up earlier to see if this is in any way, scientifically explainable. Then I came across this article. I was relieved that I’m not the only one.
The condition is called a photic sneeze reflex, which is also the explanation why some people sneeze when looking into the sun (I do, too, except that it is not every time). There is no known cure to this, and it is apparently genetic in nature, not that it’s life-threatening. Then I also realized that this could also be the explanation behind why I sneeze after taking a shower, something that my Dad seemed to exhibit as well. So yeah, it is genetic.
Finally there’s something logical behind the mystery I tried to solve for years! Now I can proudly say that this is scientifically acclaimed! The same situation appeared back then when Arleen and I were debating that contagious yawns are not scientifically explainable. Unfortunately, I lost the debate.
I just don’t know why this seems like a national-wide plague in automotive service centers, but it seems that everyone that is working there doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing. Back when I’m still using the Avanza, when I needed a new synchronizer ring replacement, the Auto 2000 spare parts officer doesn’t seem to know what a synchronizer ring is, and in fact, he asked me, “Itu di bagian mananya ya, Pak?” Awesome.
Today, my friend Taja and I met the same situation in Ford Jaksel with our Fiestas. The story goes like this, Taja’s Fiesta cannot connect to the iPhone and have songs playing in the car without connecting it with this cable:
It has to be connected to the car via USB and the AUX port at the same time, while mine works perfectly with a normal iPod USB cable. Coincidentally, I was there to claim a broken windshield seal rubber, and he was there to make them fix this annoying USB cable problem. On his first attempt, the tech said that every single Fiesta is like that, and people need to purchase this cable from them for 500k. Although it’s a fact that many of the first Fiestas in the country are experiencing this problem, this is just simply bull crap.
We then went comparing our cars side by side, and proved that the normal iPod USB cable connection worked flawlessly in my car. A truly on-your-face moment for the tech, and Mr. Schmuck seems to feel that he’s not the smartest guy anymore, beaten by a couple of customers, and proving that his “cable solution” is in fact, a dumb solution. He then went to ask me on what software did I install in my car. Software? It’s been like that since day one, and it is funny since Taja’s Fiesta is newer than mine, there’s no reason why it has an older firmware. However, even after “diagnosing” my car for “special settings”, the tech can’t seem to answer this.
After a few more minutes without answers from the tech, I decided to leave and told Taja to fix the car himself. I then told the tech to go to this site, download the firmware update, and then he can probably help other customers in the future. Basically a polite version of “You’re an idiot, you should know this. You’re the goddamned tech.” The Ford Mobile Connectivity website has been circulating around in various local and foreign forums and it fixes exactly that problem. The tech even tried applying the settings file he copied from my car to Taja’s. As predicted, it wasn’t really a spectacular result.
The fix is actually easy, and Taja can do this by himself for probably less than an hour (which he did at home and succeeded), but that is not the point. Authorized technicians should know better about the cars they sell, no? This proves that service providers in this country has very little knowledge in the products they sell. This is stupid. Imagine the cost that uninformed customers have to pay just to fix a minuscule problem like this, 500k for a stupid cable that doesn’t fix the actual problem? We can now conclude that if you want to have something fixed, then try fixing it yourself. It actually works better most of the time.
Reviewing cars for reference is one of the hobbies I like to do with Nyonyo, especially in a country where the option on buying cars are rather limited. Yesterday, while waiting for Nyonyo’s bike to complete its assembly, we went to Kia Bintaro to see if we can get a hands-on on the new Kia Sportage. It is a good thing that the only car they have on display was the Sportage, although it’s too bad that they don’t have a test drive unit (which is a problem that almost all car dealers here have), so we can’t exactly know how the car feels on the road. Now on to the pros and cons of the car.
Back in the days, Kia was not actually known for its good build quality. I like to call them crappy, in fact. Now, they’ve come a long way to improve this problem, and the Sportage is not excluded. The body structure is good and was made from first grade materials, I can say that it is better than Protons and in fact, better than some Toyotas. Body linings are well-aligned unlike the Kia Sephia, so you can truly see how far they did to enhance their quality.
Design-wise, the Sportage is probably one of the best looking cars we can have today. Sure, it shared the same platform with the Hyundai Tucson, but these two cars are good cars in different design spectrums. I really like how Kia made all their new cars in tune with the tiger-inspired grill and fascia, in this area, they excelled far than most of their Japanese competitors, which at most times, couldn’t even make two cars to appear like they come from the same brand. However, I’m not too keen on the amount of chrome-plated elements in this car, and while the 18″ rims do give a good stance for the car, I still think that a single-colored rim would look better. Our version of the Sportage doesn’t come with a panoramic roof as well, not that it is a necessity here.
Interior quality is top notch, it is covered with well-made materials, and it does feel expensive for a car in this price range. I haven’t seen how the Tucson’s interior looks like, but Nyonyo said it is better than the Sportage. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Yes, it’s probably below Volkswagen’s quality and craftsmanship, but it does give most Japanese cars a run for their money. They also managed to put a tilt-steering system that doesn’t rattle when adjusted, and a glove box that opens elegantly. Nice little touch.
Driving position is also good, although you cannot compare this with cars like the Innova, which gives you a much better view to the front end of the car. A gripe I have here is that with its sloping roof line, the size of the rear windshield must be sacrificed and therefore, hindering your view. This gets worse when the headrests of the back seats are set fully up, so buyers would really have to adjust to this.
Kia is also kind enough to provide an electrically-adjustable driver’s seat, but it’s quite disappointing that you would still have to adjust the passenger’s seat manually. Other interior equipments are also satisfactory as it includes most of what modern cars should have, including USB, AUX input, ample storage space, as well as dual airbags as a standard.
Going to the back seats, the space this car provides is also impressive. Leg room is adequate even with the front seats fully set to the back, and head room is surprisingly quite large even for a large person.
Kia is selling only two versions of the car, the automatic transmission or the manual. I can tell you that this simplifies your buying options greatly, which is a good thing. But having said that, it’s too bad that they don’t actually provide you with the option of the 2.4L engine.
To conclude the article, the 2011 Kia Sportage is highly impressive, and it certainly gives a nice alternative to Japanese cars, especially with a price that is not even 300 million. I certainly hope that we could get the chance to try the test drive unit sometime in the future.
Since my PowerShot G10′s optical unit decided to bust itself out back in September, my camera has been in Datascrip Service Center since September 14. A couple days after that, they called me to inform that the parts needed for the job must be ordered directly from Japan. Right now it has been 43 days since the job order was issued and there are no signs of completion whatsoever.
On October 13, I received this text message stating that the parts needed will arrive on October 21:
It’s currently October 27, I called the service center back, and they said there was trouble with the parts expedition and they expect it to arrive on early November.
Seriously, Datascrip? How much longer should I wait for the parts to arrive? A month? A year? A decade? If you’re going to sell Canon products here, don’t you have the slightest idea that you HAVE TO HAVE SPARE PARTS READY FOR CUSTOMERS?! What kind of an idiot that sells common consumer products without the ability to service them accordingly and in a timely manner?
Update #2:
The manager called me yesterday and offered me an upgrade to a G12 for a million less than the listed price. That’s around 1.45 million, and around the same price I have to pay for the G10 spare parts. He said it is a compensation for the disappointment I have with their incompetence, and that he can’t make sure when the parts are coming in himself. However, today, this is what I got:
Now it stated that I have to pay 2.5 millions to trade to a G12. So this is apparently how Datascrip does their business? They promise you one thing, and then they screw you right on your face. What other dumbshit have you done today, Datascrip? I called this in and they said the price was already according to the memo FROM THE SAME MANAGER. I no longer know who’s the dumbass in Datascrip anymore at this point. Could be just the customer service officer (which is not really a surprise), or it could be everyone.
Update #3:
After another complaint, I got another phone call, confirming that I would only have to pay 1.458 million. According to the caller, the reason why nobody have a fucking clue on why I don’t have to pay for a full upgrade price is because they have not been informed yet by the manager. Nice, two different phone calls, two different reasons. If the decision is yet to be made, then why the hell did they texted me with the message above in the first place? This whole process is just purely idiotic.
Seriously, Datascript, you better get this thing right. Either your incompetent employees, or your workflow, whatever. This is seriously embarassing.
Seems like my almost-a-week-old tweets created quite a disturbance in a fraction of the local design world. Understandable, I’m not exactly the guy who opted for a more diplomatic language in my tweets, that’s just me. And also understandable that while many are called designers, not everyone was privileged (nor have the will to) study history of the field they’re working in. Hence this post as my explanation.
The tweet started as a response of the new Kereta Api Indonesia logo, a result of a logo contest (I am against these types of contests, but this is open for discussion in some other time). A friend asked me how would I responded in the new logo. I was outside, with only my phone, I Googled it, and this article came up as the top result that day:
The logo was set in Arial. I loathe Arial, not because of its looks, but because of its history and conception (I will get in to this later on). In response to a question my friend asked, I tweeted this:
Logo KAI baru menurut gue: Lumayan, itu juga kalo ngga pake Arial. Desainer tolol mana ini yang milih Arial as a first choice?
This tweet resulted in my other two tweets, which I will also explain later in this article. Note that the following two tweets doesn’t exactly relate. After a while, another friend of mine told me that the real one wasn’t set in Arial, as he explained in his tweet:
This is definitely Arial, like pointed out by @bellamy. But, I think it could be the vendor’s mistake. You know.
And yes, it was apparently set in Gill Sans as it is now available on their website, which in turn affected my first tweet. I wanted to set the record straight and found out many hours afterwards that the tweet in question is posted in draft. I cynically thanked my mobile provider. The tweet was this:
Apparently the KAI logo was actually set in Gill Sans. The trophy messed it. My apologies. But this doesn’t change the other two tweets.
It seemed that reposting this wasn’t relevant that day, and yes, that was my mistake, and I should’ve posted it to correct my observation despite the irrelevant time gap. Some people criticized me for not researching it thoroughly before tweeting. Fine, that’s your opinion, I respect that.
There we have it, about my first tweet. Now on to the second and third tweets.
The Typeface Called Arial
As a response to my first tweet, and as a reminder to fellow designers (that hopefully understands what I’m tweeting about), my second and third tweets were these:
Kalo pilihan type pertama desainer itu Arial, berarti: Dia seleranya rendah, serendah PC yang dipakenya & pengetahuan tipografinya cetek.
Gue ngerti sih kalo orang awam milih Arial. Tapi kalo loe ngaku desainer, ya mungkin baiknya loe sekolah lagi, atau ganti profesi.
Harsh? Hey, I never said that I wasn’t, again, that’s just me, and I don’t think people that know me are surprised either. But do I hate Arial? Yes, I do. But I don’t hate things without a reason. For example, I hate that current local Japanese cars are getting lower in terms of build quality. I don’t hate the actual Japanese brand, but I’m disappointed when they could do better, they opted for a lazy “solution for the masses”. Being a designer, I’m educationally trained to be critical, to be precise, to be thorough, and to provide the BEST solutions for my clients. I didn’t say that I can do all of those 100% every single time, but that is what I aimed for. And personally as a designer, I believe that a good typeface is the key to good communication. This is exactly why, I read the history behind the world’s most ubiquitous typefaces. This includes Helvetica, Futura, Garamond, and of course, Arial, among others. And they didn’t have this book around for nothing.
Some regarded me as a Helvetica fanboy. While everybody’s entitled to their opinion, that is an assumption. I never said that. If I were a Helvetica fanboy, I wouldn’t be using DIN for this website’s wordmark, or a custom typeface for Neuro-Designs‘ logo. In fact, I rarely use Helvetica nowadays because there are always a thousand other different typefaces to pick from. So, I’m a Helvetica fanboy? Besides, being a fanboy for a single typeface is ridiculous. A typeface has its own character, and you can’t simply replace Garamond with Frutiger and get away with the same result.
In the case of Arial, I thoroughly understand that Arial is now more ubiquitous than Helvetica itself. Add the fact that piracy thrives in Indonesia, and you probably doubled that chance. Everybody uses Windows (pirated or not), everybody doesn’t know Helvetica, everybody knows Arial instead, and it became everyone’s favorite sans-serif typeface.
But have you read the actual history behind the conception of Arial?
Here is an article I found that explains the history about Arial in an easily and digestable way. It is 10 years old, but still relevant to this day. And here is another one that is newer, and it is as relevant as the first one, although it is written from a different angle and I don’t agree all the way with his opinion that Helvetica is a rip-off of Akzidenz Grotesk. Go ahead, spend some time reading those articles, and process it.
Now, is Arial actually a rip-off of Helvetica? In the essence of all things design, no. But why do I call it a second-grade Helvetica copy? Because in the essence of its historical past, you can say that it is. This is the reason not many know about.
Arial was born under the condition that Microsoft needed a typeface that is as ubiquitous as Helvetica (which was used by the Macintosh at that time), but without the licensing fee. To get around that, they turned to Monotype to have a similar typeface designed. It is true that parts of Arial was based on Monotype Grotesque, but instead of Monotype Grotesque, the glyph widths are nearly identical to Helvetica. Why? Why not just make an entirely new typeface? Well if so then you can’t simply replace all Helvetica-based documents with Arial and get away with it. To be a perfect type replacement, it needs to be in a similar glyph width with the one it replaces.
If Arial is bad for being a clone of Helvetica, shouldn’t Helvetica be bad for being developed to compete with Akzidenz Grotesk? No. The key difference here is that Helvetica was developed as a competitor to Akzidenz Grotesk, but Arial was born just to avoid licensing fees. This issue has been long discussed, and you can find references on this in Wikipedia, in various articles (like the ones above), in the Helvetica documentary movie (which you can see the clip below), and in Erik Spiekermann’s blog (he is one of the greatest type designers, in case you don’t know).
Clip of Erik Spiekermann’s interview on Arial, in the Helvetica documentary. Jump to around 3:56 to specifically see that part.
This is why I think that Arial is such a low-esteemed typeface with low taste. Not entirely from a design standpoint, but more from of a historical standpoint. I’m sure you designers don’t like the feeling when someone plagiarizes your work without credit.
But why do I have to call the (so-called) “designers” to have such a low taste when using Arial? Because designers should know better. If you use typography to reflect your work, then study it, know the history, appreciate the type designers, and appreciate what they intended those typefaces to be. If we are designers, the entities who are supposed to be the solution-giver to people’s problems, the ones who are supposed to upscale the design of their clients, then why do we settle for a typeface that has a long shady history? Is this how we supposed to give solutions to clients that trusted you to give them a bang for every single penny they pay you with? If so, then apparently all designers are assholes, because with that logic, there are no difference between designers and fake Tag Heuer manufacturers. We simply brought our clients along as victims in a cloud of mediocre design decisions. As a good friend of mine said:
Understanding typography is not about always having the ‘superior’ face, but understanding of not opting for the ‘inferior’ one.
And I think he nailed that description better than I do. Besides, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. You can mock me behind my back, hey, whatever makes you happy, as I can also mock you behind your back. Then we can call it even.
PS: You might imagine why my site is rendered in Arial in your PC. I set the default body type to just “sans-serif”. Too bad then, apparently that’s your PC’s default sans serif typeface, not mine. I could use @font-face for that, but then you’ll probably complain it’s slower to load. Accessibility rules suck, don’t they? Maybe.
PPS: And no, this is not why my Twitter account is now protected. You simply assume too much and thought that all of my actions are related to the things you said. And no, I don’t have to share the reason to you.
Image credit: Inilah.com and Wikipedia
Update
As promised before, I wanted to post the update on this matter. For the past few days, I’ve been discussing with Dwi Sasongko (and Farid Stevy as well, indirectly), Dimas, and Singgih about this matter. And I want to clear them up. Sorry that the update couldn’t be any sooner than this.
First of all, regarding Farid’s logo. Dwi stated in his email that the reason everyone’s outraged is because of my poor choice of words. “TOLOL”, to be exact. I must admit, that is not the best word I have, and Dwi said it hits him because Farid is a close friend, he designed the logo, and well, you know the rest. So here’s his email, and my reply to him, which he wanted me to put in public domain:
Hi Bellamy,
Let me clarify this.
I have no issue with that when I tweeted that the main reason of the “war” is the word “TOLOL”. I just simply tweet and you freely interpret the way you want, and assume that you were right. Well, that’s up to you. I don’t have to explain further.
I have read your blog post and have followed your conversation with Dimas. I do respect you as professional designer who have idealism and you do respect history and value it so very much. I also do respect your opinion on whatever subject.
Those are not my issue at all. Seems your blog post “just” to clarify that you are not font or typeface fanboy. Sure you aren’t.
People around me still think that you ran away after saying “TOLOL” to the designer who use Arial. That’s what people understand.
Are people too stupid? No. Do people ignore your explanation? Mostly yes. They do not care for further explanation. In this point, you are the joke.
For me personally, I felt insulted when you said that designer who choose Arial as a first choice is TOLOL. People will think “who do you think you are, Bellamy, to judge people like that?”
Farid and Dimas are my closest friend, at that time Aulia bashing about the process of creation of the logo to Farid, everyone felt insulted. Still the same, Who do you think you are?
FYI, Farid got the information that he won the contest back in the middle of August after very pertinent selection by judges from DKV ITB and professional designers. When it was announced, the logo has passed many steps to make it public legally. It has patent, it has certificate of originality, etcetera.
So, this information is known in our circle (farid,dimas,ckncp,me) and when you said that word, we laughed our asses off.
Dwi,
I think your response is fair enough, I respect that thoroughly. But there are some bits that I chose not to write in my blog:
First, I did say the designer was an idiot when I looked at that trophy photo I found in inilah.com. The logo itself were great, it is professionally made, I can see that, and by far it’s probably one of the best logos our government could have, thanks to Farid. The reason I bashed the “designer” because I thought that was it, I did not see the actual logo until Sigit pointed me that it was actually Gill Sans. Before that, I thought it could be just some guy in a printshop that coincidentally made a logo that good, called himself a designer, went away with Arial, and have it put on a trophy, and I certainly did not think it was Farid. That was my mistake, hence the apology tweet that did not get sent, whatever the reason.
Second, I do believe that Farid would take that logo to his professionalism level. So I have no doubt that it was his best intentions to make the logo as good as it is, with all the necessary steps and patenting process. But I do regret that the trophy maker destroyed his work with a wrong typeface. I find that unacceptable. But I do understand that happens all the time. Even some of the logos I made was butchered when it is passed to different “designers” by our clients. It seems that I am just a bit too pedantic on this matter.
In any case, I hold no grudge on when people are tweeting to support Arial and so forth. Of course I’ll take that as a joke :) But I felt I needed to clear up things with you, especially after seeing your tweet. If you’re insulted because I judge people, then I apologize, I certainly cannot expect everyone to feel the same way as I do. You have every right to do so.
So we both understand about the matter, as well as Farid. I certainly cannot expect everyone to take my tweets the way I think they do, so if anyone was offended by it, I apologize.
As for my discussion with Singgih, here’s the rundown. I initially took Singgih’s posts in Facebook and Twitter as a hostile act, but I decided to contact him personally and talk. Despite my initial judgement, to my surprise, Singgih is a very reasonable person. Too bad we have to get to know each other in bad circumstances, and not back then while we’re still in the same forum. Singgih, I think I owe you this one.
Singgih is upset because of practically the same reason with Dwi. But not because of Farid, but because of the entirety of designers that I called as “TOLOL”. Even if I say it’s not, that is what my tweets implied. Since we’re in the same industry, that’s the exact reason why he cannot accept my statement, because I called the others idiots. I can’t blame him for that. In fact, he is right. Long story short, I know why he’s upset and why he posted all those screenshots in Twitter and Facebook. And if anyone is offended because of my tweets with the same reason as Singgih, or even because of any reason, I apologize as well. I believe Singgih can clarify our previous late night conversation.
My tweets (or should I say, screenshots at this point) will always be there, I cannot take those back, because then I would be unfair to write all this without proof. It’s up to Singgih if he wants to take it down or not, he has every right to do so. If he decided not to take it down, then let that be a reminder for me. I hope this clears up everything.
This blog contains my personal views about many things which you may or may not get offended. Unless otherwise noted, they do not interfere with my professional work whatsoever.
Harsh? Hey, I never said that I wasn’t, again, that’s just me, and I don’t think people that know me are surprised either. But do I hate Arial? Yes, I do. But I don’t hate things without a reason. For example, I hate that current local Japanese cars are getting lower in terms of build quality. I don’t hate the actual Japanese brand, but I’m disappointed when they could do better, they opted for a lazy “solution for the masses”. Being a designer, I’m educationally trained to be critical, to be precise, to be thorough, and to provide the BEST solutions for my clients. I didn’t say that I can do all of those 100% every single time, but that is what I aimed for. And personally as a designer, I believe that a good typeface is the key to good communication. This is exactly why, I read the history behind the world’s most ubiquitous typefaces. This includes Helvetica, Futura, Garamond, and of course, Arial, among others. And they didn’t have 