100 participants join risk communication, visual design confab

One hundred participants composed of development communication and agricultural extension students, faculty, staff, and practitioners joined the seminar workshop on risk communication and visual design held at the PRIO conference room on October 5.

This seminar-workshop is a collaborative effort between CMU and PhilRice-Central Experiment Station (CES) in Nueva Ecija which aims to discuss risk communication and enhance their skills in visual design.

According to Dr. Ronan G. Zagado, head, PhilRice-CES, “communicating science is equivalent to communicating risk [because] there is more risk in science.”

So he challenged the development communication practitioners to be multi-talented in communicating with people.

“Be flexible in dealing with different issues in the community…,” Dr. Zagado said.

He reminded the communicators to be sensitive enough in dealing with various people and to always follow the cardinal rule of Dev Com “to know your audience.”

John Paul B. Abonitalla, a fourth year DevCom student, said that this seminar-workshop is helpful to him. “I know now how to handle community situations by applying some of the theories discussed in risk communication,” he added.

Dr. Zagado, who is also an adjunct faculty in the DevCom Department, is expected to conduct a relevant and timely seminar-workshop for the department once every semester.

“He is very generous to his time and talent, and he is willing to impart his knowledge as an expert [to us],” said Dr. Ele E. Dinampo-Lunzaga, chair, department of Development Communication.

Dr. Lunzaga added that they usually discuss topics or current interests needed by the department.

“As much as we lived in a perilous time aside from breakthroughs in science controversies and also natural calamities, we feel that risk communication is relevant to be discussed but although there are other issues but next time will do,” she added.

Aside from risk communication, visual design was also discussed by another invited speaker from PhilRice, Ms. Perry Irish H. Duran who is also a science research specialist.

“Wala namang good or bad na design dahil beauty is on the eye of the beholder,” she said. “Pero [whether] we like it or not we have a standard in design na para din sa lahat,” she added.

Ms. Duran discussed about basic principles of design as well as basic tools of Photoshop.

To encourage full participation from the participants, an Adobe Photoshop CS5 was installed to their respective laptops. They were expected to make a meme as their workshop outputs.

Dr. Zagado added, “it is important to remember always the basics of visual design everytime they do lay-out.”

Reonie Pasco, a fourth year Dev Com student said that “this [seminar-workshop] is very helpful to learn and explore visual design [including] its principles since it has been a part of the communication course especially in IEC materials production.” (JCCandole)