Archive | September 2012

Chapter 2 EMPHASIS Book Work

 

Why use emphasis?

Image found on  http://www.flickr.com/photos/petereed/496392956/sizes/t/       

  • Emphasis simplifies the reader’s task and helps them pick out what is essential in your message faster
  • It also gives your page an interesting look
  • Saves reader more time when reading
  • DON’T EMPHASIS EVERYTHING

Decide what is most important

  • Decide which words, phrases or graphics are important
  • Which portion of message will attract audience

Establishing visual hierarchy

  • What is primary message?
  • Which element best communicates this primary message?
  • Is there a secondary message?
  • Which element best communicates the secondary message?
  • Is there a tertiary message?
  • Which elements best communicate tertiary message?
  • Which visual element is the most interesting?
  • Which visual element is the most likely to attract or spark the reader’s attention?
  • Simpler is better

Establishing visual hierarchy

  • What is primary message?
  • Which element best communicates this primary message?
  • Is there a secondary message?
  • Which element best communicates the secondary message?
  • Is there a tertiary message?
  • Which elements best communicate tertiary message?
  • Which visual element is the most interesting?
  • Which visual element is the most likely to attract or spark the reader’s attention?
  • Simpler is better

Developing Sensitivity to Visual Hierarchy

  • Look at other people’s work
  • Ask questions about your page and others
  • Overtime you will become more sensitive to design

Emphasis Technique

  • Professional designers use a number of visual hierarchy
  • Like making things brighter, bigger, bolder things like that

Emphasis Example 1

  • Few changes can alter an appearance

FLOWERS                         FLOWERS

BY MARY                             by Mary

Emphasis Example 2

  • Providing emphasis on resumes, flyers or newsletters create stronger impressions
  • Easy to scan
  • Stick to single alignment

Education                                                   Education

Nandua High School                                 Nandua High School……….

Skills                                                             Skills

Can type 34 wpm                                       Can type 34 wpm…………

 

Emphasis Example 3

  • ALL CAPS SEEMS TO SHOUT AT READER
  • Difficult to read
  • Slows down the readers speed

COME OUT TO SEE THE GREAT LOWSTER AT THE TED CONSTANT CENTER ADMISSON IS 15 DOLLARS FOR STUDENTS AND 25 DOLLARS FOR OTHERS!!!!

Come out to see THE GREAT LOWSTER at the Ted Constant Center admission is 15 dollars for students and 25 dollars for other!!!!!

Key Terms

Emphasis- Most important thing should be most prominent

Visusal hiearachy- Arrangement of visual elements

Focal Point- Where you want readers eyes to focus more on

Accents- Accent other important parts of page

Content- Words, phrases and graphics

Body Copy- Small type

ALL CAPS- CAPITAL LETTERS

 

Works Cited

Graham, Lisa. Basis of Design. Canada.2005. Print

 

Blog Post about Wiki

I for one love the images in most of the Wiki pages. I also liked the is digital writing definitions page one reason is because it explains that digital writing has different definitions and how different people define digital writing. One thing I learned for one Wiki page entitled Collective Intelligence is that everyone does know something but everyone doesn’t know everything and what one person knows definitely can be trapped by the whole group. (Levy) This is a true statement because everyone learns from each other when a group activity is done. I also like that fact that someone put the CRAP design something that we just learned in class.

A Bunch of CRAP

Principles of layout design

Contrast- Use separation for unlike elements. Like bold, whiting, line thickness, sizes or shapes

Repetition- Repeating aspects of design. Titles, underlining, hyperlinks (blue spaces)

Alignment- Justifying to emphasize key points. Left, right, center, top or bottom.

Proximity- Limit and separate unlike elements. Separate elements with white space.

This is the most common way to teach what CRAP design means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_mWi6r-9I

 

Crap Principles of Document Design

CRAP is from the Non-Designer’s web book by Robin William and John Toll

Contrast……..you have to control where the readers eyes goes, select primary and secondary focal points use bold, size, italics and color. Also the page must be attractive not jarring. If items are the same it is the contrast that makes it different.

Image found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/helgabj/1074000287/sizes/s/

Repetition is things like front images within page and from page to page, the combination of repetition and variation creates sophistication. Also, use consistent labeling style.

Alignment…….choose one alignment and stick to it, avoid centering move element away from edge

Proximity…….consider relationship of elements, don’t spread around fill the page blank space is okay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF83-gHPMoA

 

Is Your Web Design CRAP?

Contrast – the difference in visual properties that makes an object distinguishable from other objects and the background. – Source: Wiki

Repetition – repeat styles down the page for a cohesive feel. Vitamin Features

Alignment – Everything on the page needs to be visually connected to something else, nothing should be out of place or distinct from all other design elements. Source: Vitamin Features

Proximity – Proximity creates related meaning: elements that are related should be grouped together, whereas separate design elements should have enough space in between to communicate they are different. Source: Vitamin Features

http://www.pingable.org/is-your-web-design-crap/

 

Is Your Web Design CRAP?

Contrast – the difference in visual properties that makes an object distinguishable from other objects and the background. – Source: Wiki

Repetition – repeat styles down the page for a cohesive feel. Vitamin Features

Alignment – Everything on the page needs to be visually connected to something else, nothing should be out of place or distinct from all other design elements. Source: Vitamin Features

Proximity – Proximity creates related meaning: elements that are related should be grouped together, whereas separate design elements should have enough space in between to communicate they are different. Source: Vitamin Features

http://www.pingable.org/is-your-web-design-crap/

 

Four Principles of Design

This is a good example of contrast.  Picture found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rolandinsh/3226225388/sizes/s/

Good example of repetition………Picture found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gigijin/123629609/sizes/s/

This is a good example of alignment in a webpage. Photo found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/1182587251/sizes/s/

This is a good example of proximity……….Photo found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adewale_oshineye/6186061320/sizes/s/

Working Time on Wiki

Tuesday September 11th work on Wiki for like 25-35 minutes in class with partner.

Saturday September 15th worked on Wiki for 45 minutes at home. (Parents and Digital Writing Post)

Saturday September 15th worked on Wiki again 1 hour. (Participatory gap post)

Monday September 17th worked on Wiki for 30 minutes (Collaborative post) and worked on (Performance post) for one minute.

Wednesday September 19th worked on Wiki for 25 mins (Definitions post) and (Digital Writing post) for two minutes.

Thursday September 27th worked on wiki for about an hour and two minutes (Bolter post) added images and few content.

Jenkins Note Taking

Note taking

Affiliations— memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message board metagaming, game clans, or MySpace

There are benefits of participatory culture like one can learn from one another and also people can share his or her opinions.

Access to websites like Facebook can determine if a child will be left or succeed when they enter school

http://compfight.com

A child has to be familiar with computers because almost everything has to do with computers in this time of day. For example online job applications, online school course and even things like money transactions online.

Video Games

http://compfight.com

watch?v=UfBiMmv4qt4

Most people may feel video games are stupid but video games actually constructive. One reason is because if a gamer sees that a certain tactic they used isn’t working they automatically say to themselves, “What am I doing wrong and how can I beat this level”. The gamer has to think about ways to reach the next level. I am a gamer and I love fighting and shooting games because it keeps me thinking. And when I play on Xbox live I enjoy asking people how I can improve my gamer skills. (Blake Ross 14,  A game called Sim City made him interested in computing) I also read that Beck and Wade said that gamers were more open to taking

risks and were most likely very willing to work with a group.

Pew Study

57 of teens who use internet could be media creators (person who make a blog, website, uploads pictures on internet into their own creation). This is interesting to me because people log into say for instance Facebook or Twitter every day and they don’t realize that they are media creators.

Enabling Participation

Many people apart of affiliations, circulation, problem solving with groups and expressions. I feel that parents and teachers should inform children about skills needed to make it in this new media culture world.

New and Old Media

One of my classmates explains what is old and new media so clearly:

Old media includes newspapers, magazines, direct mail advertising, radio and television. Old media have limited number of old media producers, it is also limited geographically. Has one way communication. Producer if media has total control. http://vsimo001.students.digitalodu.com/?p=14#comment-2

New media includes World Wide Web which has unlimited number of producers. It is not limited geographically – consumer only needs computer and internet access. Provides two-way communication. Producers have no control over what consumers say.New media includes World Wide Web which has unlimited number of producers. It is not limited geographically – consumer only needs computer and internet access. Provides two-way communication. Producers have no control over what consumers say. http://vsimo001.students.digitalodu.com/?p=14#comment-2

Why Should We Teach Media Literacy

Laissez faire approach is basically saying that we should not push things like media literacy on a child and let him or her make own decisions on their own about things like medial literacy.

Some states charge to access the internet (No free Wi-Fi)

(PBS 2005) Philadelphia allows low income families to be connected. Good because I feel that the internet should be free to all users because it is something that is important especially in this day of time. And I also do believe that if a child doesn’t have access to the internet that they will definitely fall behind in school or the work field.

Legislation to block access of social network in the schools and libraries will widen participation gap

Wartella, O’Keefe, and Scantlin (2000)…….Said kids with access to computer have positive attitudes.

By writing daily blogs, the creativity level and productivity level of the students increased. They also learned skills such as how to use the Internet to conduct research. http://jcher021.students.digitalodu.com/?p=4#comment-3. This was interesting to me because me not being aware of blogging thought it was just a place where people create pages just to gossip.

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and

respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms (If a child is familiar with social media networks like Facebook or Twitter then they become more aware. For example like different cultures.

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information. (Facebook, Twitter or Myspace)

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities (This is good because adults as well as children need to be informed about everything that’s going)

Work Cited:

Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. Print.

 

 

 

 

 

(Bolter) Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Remediation

The Logic of Transparent Immediacy

“Caves” goal was to make the viewer forget that he or she is wearing a computer

Must come close to real life as possible

Virtual reality is one of the most extreme attempts of immediacy

We are in an era where  patience has been forgotten and immediately has been adopted. http://kfall008.students.digitalodu.com/?p=16#comment-6

Howard Rheingold says, “That at the heart of virtual reality is an experience which is the experience of being in a virtual world or remote location.”

         

Pictures found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcwathieu/3275065085/sizes/s/in/photostream/

These two pictures are perfect examples of virtual reality.

Things like images, video chatting and editing photos on a computer are more exciting than just text on a computer screen. (New media vs. Old media)

Immediacy is supposed to make computer interface “natural” rather than random.

 

The Logic of Hypermediacy  

Hypermediacy can be found in different things like for instance a newspaper.

Picture found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/82540/sizes/s/

Hypermedia CD-ROMS and windowed applications replace one medium with another.

When we click on different things on a computer the new window wins the users attention and in doing so we are replacing the visual space each time. Examples seem to be open tabs on your computer, the words across the screen during a news broadcast informing you what the most breaking event may be, or even notifications on your video game system. http://mblac018.students.digitalodu.com/?p=29#comment-3

Reminded of the media unlike immediacy.

“Many websites are riots of diverse media forms — graphics, digitized photographs, animation and video”. http://www.lglos001.students.digitalodu.com/?p=49 /. Websites are always trying to catch and keep the atention of its users.

 

Remediation and Mediation

Media needs each other to function as media at all

Goal of remediation is to refashion other media

The word remediation comes for a Latin word remederi meaning to heal or restore health

Medium- Is that which remediates. It is that which appropriates the technique, forms and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of real.

 

Discussion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE167KUiM5E

This video helped me out a lot because after reading the Bolter and Grusin paper I was kind of confused. Immediacy in my own words is when a person’s full attention is on say for instance a cartoon or movie. For example, when I watched Titanic in and IMAX theatre my full attention was on the screen and I actually thought I was in the movie. One example of hypermediacy is like if I were to open different taps on my computer screen. Hypermediacy is used everywhere like on news channels, games like Xbox and even television. Finally remediation is the gathering of the new and old media and making a whole brand new type of media.

 

 

Works Cited

Bolter, Jay and Grusin, Richard. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

The Language of New Media

The Language of New Media

Manovich also asks what is new media like Flew did in What Is New Media

Picture found http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristiand/3223044657/sizes/s/

He also asks are things like CD-ROMs, virtual reality and DVDs are there all to new media.

Said is that fact that website and electronic books are considered to be new media whereas texts distributed on paper are not.

Photos that are not put on CD are new media but photos printed in the book are not?

Said we are in the middle of new media revolution-Shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production distribution and communication.

Printing press= Distribution of media

Computer revolution affects all communication like storage and all types of media like text and images.

Translation of all existing media into
numerical data accessible to computer……result new media like graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces and texts.

How Media Became New

August 1839-New reproduction process

1833-Babbage Analytical Engine could do mathematical operations

1800- Jacquard invented loom (Flowers and leaves)

Photography, film, printing press, television, radio made former possible but computer top them all

1890’s- Photos in motion

1893- Movie studio Edison’s Black Maria

1892- 1st scientific audience and paying public

 

Principal of New Media

Summarizes different between new and old media

  1. Numerical Representation- One example is to remove “noise” it would require numeric manipulation

Modern media has discrete levels because it emerged during Industrial Revolution.

Mentions how Henry Ford’s assembly line relied on two principles simple repetitive and sequential activity for workers who could be easily replaced.

2. Modularity

This is an example of modularity something that was edited by a user. Photo found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/52707468@N02/4860871545/sizes/s/

“Fractural structure of new media” Example is like when and object inserted into a document like media clip it continues to maintain independence and can always be edited with the program originally used to create it. Another example is the World Wide Web and it consists of separate media elements and every element can be accessed at its own time.

3. Automation

One example of “low automation” is how it is created from scratch and a media’s object using templates or simple algorithms example Photoshop

Researchers are working on high level automation so computers can understand embedded objects being generated

Talks about 1990’s and how chat room become familiar with “bots” computers program to stimulate human conversation.

MIT Media Lab developed devoted to “high level automation” which was the “smart camera” which automatically follows the action and frames the shot.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) Ex: computer game person can’t speak to opponent only thing user can do is attack

Computers can only pretend to be intelligent and trick us by using very small parts of who we are when we communicate.

Said things like photo camera, film camera and tape recorder led to new stage of media revolution. Thus automation becomes the next logical stage when 1st picture was taken.

4.   Variability

New media is not something fixed one and for all but something that can exist in different versions

Principal of variability is closely connected to automation

Author also mentions immediacy and reality

Variability Principals

  1. 1.     Media Database (How we conceive data)
  2. 2.     Number of different interfaces can be created at same time
  3. 3.     Information about user can be used (What user will see)
  4. 4.     Branch tree interactivity (Products user can visit to form branching tree)
  5. 5.     Hypermedia (Elements making document are connected)
  6. 6.     Periodic Updates (Updates can be found online and downloaded automatically)
  7. 7.     Scalability (Full size image and icon generated by Photoshop)

 5.     Transcoding

New media consists of two things cultural layer (Encyclopedia) and Computer layer (Data packets transmitted through networks

Both cultural layer and computer layer influence each other.

 

Works Cited:

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2001. Print

What Do I Want To Learn About Digital Writing?

I want to learn how other people’s opinion about digital writing and how they feel about the new media age. I would also want to learn the different functions of digital writing like how to make a business webpage. I want to become more aware of what’s going on in the world and get into social media networks like Twitter. I also to answer the question what is digital writing if someone should ask me.

Thoughts of Copyright, Fair Use and Creative Commons

I have heard about copyrighting but I never really thought about how copyrighting something has laws to it. I was surprised to find out in order to use someone’s work the minimum time you have to wait is 14 years. The reason is because it gives the author time enough to make money. The fact that there is fair use empowered me. One thing I learned about Creative commons is that it is very useful in higher education because a student can share things like pictures or videos without going against copyright law. What frustrates me about both copyright and creative commons is that sometimes you have to pay for certain things. I have used fair use for many reports that I have done in high school and college. Also, I now use Creative Commons for my English 307T course and I love using it because it is fun and easy.