Salam

Consider this logo:

What do you see? For most people my age, we see it as Disney. Our minds associate this image with the brand, and so, undoubtedly, we see Disney.

When I’m younger, like around 5 or 6 years of age, I see that image as DisneP. Well of course it is, that’s not a Y, it’s a P! It’s got a round P-esque loop into it, right? I was convinced up to a level that Disney probably drew their logo wrong haha

So why is it we now, clear as day, see Disney?

Quoting some smart guy called Stephen R. Covey

“We see the world, not as it is,
but as we are —
or, as we are conditioned to see it.

When we open our mouths to describe what we see,
we in effect describe ourselves,
our perceptions,
our paradigms.”

In Malay we’ve got something far concise, it goes

“Jauh perjalanan,
luas pemandangan”

All this while, I always thought of “pemandangan” in its literal meaning, which is “scenery”, which then gives the literal translation of the whole sentence into “the more you travel, the wider scenery you see”. And it probably still is supposed to mean that way. But “pemandangan” has the same root word as “pandangan”, which is a different meaning altogether;

it means “perspective”.

And in that sense, it makes better meaning rather than just scenery. It shows that as we grow older, we begin to see more of the world, collecting data and making connections. We don’t see it as a shape of a letter anymore, we begin to understand the message that logo is conveying, and instead we describe that affiliation.

Seeing the world as we are conditioned to see it.

And this is a peculiar thing, because it reflects more on ourselves, rather than what the image itself is displaying, as it is. It shows that there will always be two sides of a coin, depending on which side you look at.

By design, it’s Disnep. But by meaning, it’s Disney. There’s no arguing that. After all, two wrongs do make a right.

Ws