New comic series #1 — Content and Medium

Conveying a message to the public is tough.

That’s why media company are making tons of money. Commercial entity pays lots of money to advertisers so they can sell their products and services.

If I wanted to deliver a message to you, I need to make sure it conforms to at least 2 criteria. The content needs to be the right content, and the medium needs to be strong.

Media company sells medium. The integrity of the content is very-very questionable though.

If I want to educate people on history, it’s going to be very tough. The content is complicated. I need a huge medium to overcome the friction of lazy people. If I want to reach as many people as possible, the medium needs to be very strong. Or else I will only attract the typical audience.

The mass are generally lazy. They only consume light, simple stuff. so what we need to do is divide the message into different stages or levels.

For advance audiences, they will receive the whole message. Plain text is usually enough for these people. You can cram as many stuff as you want in plain text. They will chew it.

For intermediate audiences, they will receive some part of the message. Not too detail. You need to accompany with some pictures, and maybe a video in some cases. Plain text only will not work.

For beginner audiences, they will only receive a bare minimum of the message. For example, say I want to tell people that Islam is the religion of the federation as written in our constitution. What I need to do is just draw a one panel comic/caricature. That’s it. One simple message. (Crafting a one panel comic is very hard though).

So how do you convey all message in one medium?

The answer is, you can’t. It’s very difficult to achieve that very objective.

What you can do however is split the medium into 3.

1. Either create a comic,
2. a short article or,
3. a journal/long form article.

No 2 and 3 already are quite plenty. So I will cover no 1.

My drawings are not top class. But I guess it’s enough to deliver the message.

Stay tuned for episode #2.