Reflections

The process of creating and updating this blog has taught me a number of things. Most importantly would be the experience of running a blog which talks about a specific topic with the purpose of educating and informing the public.

In terms of my blog content, I have come to realize how important the content of a website is in luring/retaining readers while surfing on the internet (Reep 2006). I have strived to provide accurate and concise information regarding my topics discussed in this blog.

I also applied Kress and van Leeuwen's (1998) theory of information value, salience and framing while designing the layout of this blog.

My all-time favourite thing about blogging is self-publishing. Self-publishing also means that I have to be accountable and responsible for what I say on this blog. I constantly remind myself to be culturally sensitive and also to always quote copyright material.

Hopefully, the postings on this blog has been beneficial to you, and that you have learned something after reading my blog. Thank you for reading!

References

Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T., 1998. Chapter 7: Front pages: The Critical Analysis of Newspaper Layout, Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford.

Reep, D.C., 2006. "Chapter 4: Principles of Document Design", Technical Writing, 6th edition, Pearson Education, New York.

Meanings behind Images

We see all sorts of images being published in the media today. Some forms of media impose stricter regulations on these published material compared to others. Nevertheless, I am sure we have come across published images that carry a certain ulterior meaning.

Here are some examples.

 

This image is an advertisement by Dolce & Gabbana, an Italian fashion design label which came under fire after releasing this advertisement in 2007. At first glance, this image seems to take up a more creative/fashionable stance. However, it was reported that Dolce & Gabbana was forced to retract these advertisements after authorities in Spain called imposed a ban, saying that this advertisement degrading, and incited violence towards women. 

This image of Jesus Christ holding a beer can and a cigarette was published in Makkal Osai, a Tamil newspaper in Malaysia (Retna 2007). This image was published on the August 27 2007 issue, under the paper's "Thought of the Day" section. It carried a message, roughly quoting "if someone repents of their mistakes, Heaven awaites them". 

Needless to say, this image sparked the anger and dissapproval of various parties, especially Christians. It was reported that Makkal Osai loss their license to publish due to this incident (TheStar Online 2008). 

I remember Walsh (2006) saying "The way we interpret any new text, whether words or images, will then produce new interpretations, new responses, and new meanings." These responses and interpretations may not necessarily be positive, like the response generated by the two images above. 

It is crucial that document designers understand their target audience, as well as their frame of reference, in order to avoid creating documents which may evoke confusion and in some cases, even anger (Shriver 1997).

Moral of the story is - document designers need to be sensitive to issues which may spark controversy, such as sexism or religion. 

References

ABC News, 2007. Dolce and Gabbana pulls 'humiliating' ads after Spanish objections. Retrieved Nov 11 2008 from 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/03/14/1871208.htm

Retna, S., 2007. MCCBCHS calls for probe and action against Tamil Daily. Retrieved Nov 11 2008 from http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=10636

Schriver, K.A., 1997. Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

TheStar Online, 2008. Makkal Osai loses license. Retrieved Nov 11 from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/17/nation/20977362&sec=nation

Walsh, M, 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australia journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 24-37

Facebook is taking over the world

Facebook has breached the 120 million mark of active users, according to Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, as quoted in an article on ZD Net Asia. 

For those laggards who think Facebook is really a book, Facebook is actually a powerful social networking site which houses small web-based programmes called 'Applications', a trait distinguishing Facebook from other social networking sites (Shankland 2008). 

Founder and current CEO of Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg.

(Source:http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/The-Facebook-Phenomenon/)

These applications, which is the essence and niche of Facebook, allow users to do many things on their Facebook page, from the basic uploading of pictures, sending messages, and commenting on users' profiles to fighting vampires, playing poker, and taking fun quizzes. 

With a user-friendly white and blue layout filled with interesting applications, it is obvious why Facebook is gaining popularity at such a pace. This is definitely the goal of every web designer, to make their site content appealing and interesting to users in order to sustain them, like how Facebook has done (Schriver 2003). 

After all, as Reep (2003, p.5) points out, contents on a website has the ability to lure users to suf. In this case, Facebook's unique content sure is a killer. 

Antal (2007) believes that Facebook will remain among the most popular social networking sites, and will require constant maintenance for Facebook to not lose their position. We can only wait and see what the future holds. Will other more unique and captivating social networking sites emerge? Or will Facebook take over the world? 

In the meantime, lets just continue Superpoking our friends on Facebook. 

References

Antal, B. T., 2007. The Facebook Phenomenon. Retrieved Nov 11 2008 from

http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/The-Facebook-Phenomenon/

Shankland, S., 2008. Facebook surges to 120 million users. Retrieved Nov 11 2008 from 

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62047943,00.htm

Shriver, K. A., 2003. "Chapter six: creating texts for readers," The Dynamics of Document Design, Wile Computer Publications, New York. 

Individuals' Web Profiles - An Advertiser's Playground?

The outbreak of blogs, the staggering number of Facebook users, and the millions of videos uploaded on YouTube are among the things that advertisers on the web are taking advantage of. Personally, advertisements on the web annoy me, especially when I am watching a video on YouTube, and an advertisement pops up at the bottom of my screen. 

Recently, Facebook came under fire after revealing that they utilize personal information about people's online viewing patterns to attract advertisers, according to a Media Report on ABC. 

I am sure that many of us, as heavy users of the Internet, have experienced somewhat eerie encounters with online advertisements that are surprisingly relevant to us. This is because a large part of the industry is trying to "tailor things to your needs", but also trying to work out the needs for advertisers, as quoted by Antony Funnell on ABC's Media Report. 

A more local example would be Nuffnang, who call themselves a "blog advertising community". Nuffnang bloggers carry Nuffnang advertisements on their blogs and get paid for doing so. The content of these advertisements depend on the blogger's personal information, which is disclosed upon registration. For example, a female blogger would be more likely to feature a fashion advertisement on her blog, instead of a male blogger. 

Example of a Nuffnang ad. 

(Source: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1133/963344147_1053c04a2b.jpg?v=0)

These new trends of online advertising still adhere to certain conventional publishing rules when it comes to getting their advertisements noticed, as practiced by many online advertisers (Google Ads, Nuffnang, Adsense, etc), .  

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) stress the importance of considering the element of salience when it comes to positioning the components within a document. For example, in a blog layout, the position of the header, font size, formatting, etc. can influence a readers attention and retention to a certain extent. Therefore, advertisers would choose prominent locations to position their advertisements to maximize the salience of the advertised brand. 

 Notice the positions of Google Ads - right beneath the blog banner, and in the middle of the blog content, both extremely prominent and hard-to-miss positions. 

(Source: http://www.chadbarr.com/uploads_chadbarr/CB-GoogleAds-1b.jpg)

Example of an advertisement on YouTube. Notice how the advertisement takes up the bottom space of the featured video.

(Source: http://www.google-phone.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/youtube_google_video_advert.jpg)

Evidently, individuals' web profiles, blogs, uploaded videos, etc. are becoming a playground for advertisers. But do users really "understand" the justification behind the placing of these ads, as quoted by Rex Wong on ABC's Media Report? Are advertisers able to make that distinction or discernment on what content is tolerable by viewers, and what is not? You be the judge. 

References

ABC, 2007. Social networks and online advertising. Retrieved Nov 10 2008 from 

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2124221.htm

Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T., 1998. Chapter 7: Front pages: The Critical Analysis of Newspaper Layout, Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford.

Biggest movies of 2009 - Book adaptations

Adapting movies from books has been a trend in film publishing and production for a long long time. However, recent technological advancements such as cutting-edge CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) have allowed film-makers to bring book/comic adaptations to a whole new level. 

An article from The Australian looked at the most promising movies of 2009, and surprisingly, four out of the top ten movies are novel/comic book adaptations. These movies include Dan Brown's bestselling novel Angels and Demons, Marvel Comics' X-men, and the top spot taken by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. 

Apart from stunning CGI and special effects, what could be the reason why this genre of films are gaining such popularity? 

Die-hard fans who have read the novels and comic books would have already known their storylines. The notorious reputation of book adaptations for cutting out many scenes from the original plot in the novel doesn't help either. 

But several things comic books and novels do not possess are vivid, real-life images and suspenseful action/fighting scenes. When combined with special effects enabled by modern technology, a book adaptation film guarantees even the most knowledgeable of fans a bunch of surprises and a new experience with the characters in the original books. 

These films show us how the characters and settings actually look like. It captures the moving details of Wolverine's claws, the landscape of Hogwarts school, and other details which were helplessly left out in the books. 

This is because images have other effects that are different from text, effectively assisting a viewer's perception at aesthetic and imaginative levels (Walsh 2003). Schriver (2003) supports this statement by saying that images should be used to assist words in providing a clearer picture.

I can't agree more. 

Who would've thought the geeky Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series would be such a hottie? 

References

Moran, M. 2008. What will be the 50 biggest films of 2009? Retrieved Nov 11 2008 from 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24646267-15803,00.html

Schriver, K. A., 2003, "Chapter six: creating texts for readers," in The Dynamics of Document Design, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

Walsh, M., 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australia journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 24-37

The YouTube Epidemic

Perhaps one of the most rapidly growing trends on the World Wide Web today is video-sharing, made possible by YouTube.com. 

YouTube is a video-sharing site which is free of charge, boasting more than 70 million videos, and 60,000 uploads a day in 2006 (Smith 2006). YouTube allows users to upload just about any type of video material, representing a crossbreed between file sharing, video blogging and social networking websites (Caragea 2006).

YouTube sparked off a whole new genre of media publishing that is vaguely similar to broadcasting, but done in a more unconventional way. The trend is people shoot videos with camcorders or mobile devices, and upload them on YouTube where it is shared and viewed by the rest of the world.  

This proved to be an extremely useful platform for media publishing. An interesting example is the way talents are being discovered online. Budding singer/songwriters utilize YouTube as a platform to showcase their work to the rest of the world. Singers upload videos of creative covers of hit songs played over the radio, as well as their own original songs for the public's viewing and criticism. 

Few of these musicians were lucky enough to have their talent "discovered" and offered record labels by major recording companies, namely Marie Digby. 

An original song by davidchoimusic which racked in more than 1 million views - one of the most popular musicians on YouTube. 

davidchoimusic's acoustic cover of One Republic's hit single - Apologize

Needless to say, YouTube, and the rise of similar video blogs cum social networking sites are definitely one of the more popular and unconventional media publishing methods, and it will probably grow tremendously in the near future. 

References

Caragea, S., 2006. The YouTube Phenonmenon. Retrieved Nov 10 2008 from

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-YouTube-Phenomenon-23600.shtml

Smith, T., 2006. YouTube Phenomenon Keeps Growing. Retrieved Nov 10 2008 from

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/04/earlyshow/contributors/tracysmith/main1864812.shtml

Web vs. Print in terms of Design

Web and print are two completely different platforms of publishing. Technically, the most profound difference between web and print is one reads web publications off a computer monitor/the LCD screen of a mobile device whilst print publications primarily remain on paper.

This difference has a significant implication on design principles used on both platforms. The bottom line is, print design principles are not suitable for web design, and vice versa.

Now why exactly are they not suitable? Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) stress that print design is based on information value, salience and framing. These three signifying system function to arrange a document into a coherent structure. The positioning of each multimodal text of different importance and salience affects the entire design (Kress and van Leeuwen 1998).

In addition, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p.178) also state that reading off print is a linear movement. In print, people generally read from left to right in a one-dimensional line.

(Source: Ashleigh Hong 2o08)

An example of print design, where elements within the page are arranged according to importance,
while the framing of the page leads the readers eyes through the content.

On the web, it is a whole different story. A study by Nielsen, (cited in Rowse 2006) found that only 16% of people read word for word off the web, and another found that the average person only comprehends about 60% of what they read.

This means web design needs to be a whole lot more interesting in order to retain readers.

Nielsen (2006) states that readers go through web content extremely quickly, in an F pattern. Readers also tend to scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences (Nielsen 1997).
The following image illustrates a reader's eye movement on web content.

Image from Nielson's eyetracking study illustrates a reader's eye movement to resemble an "F" shape.
(Source: Nielsen 2006)

Hence, we can come up with a few useful guidelines for web design. Firstly, keep the content short as people prefer to read short articles (Nielsen 2007). It will also be a good idea not to flood a web page with paragraphs after paragraphs of text as it will only repel your readers. Secondly, use formatting such as bold and italic to guide your scanning readers (Rowse 2006). Lastly, use pictures to draw attention and emphasize points.

An example of an easy-to-read weblog, kennysia.com. Notice that the main content is kept to the left, paragraphs are short, sufficient formatting is used and pictures are added to keep the interest.

The bottom line is we should not confuse the distinctive natures of web and print design. Instead, we should fully utilize them in order to convey a message effectively.

References

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. 1998, Chapter 7: Front pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout, Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Rowse, D. 2008, Scannable Content. Retrieved on Nov 10 2008 from
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/20/scannable-content/

Nielsen, J. 2006, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. Retrieved on Nov 10 2008 from
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Nielsen, J. 2007, Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy. Retrieved on Nov 10 2008 from
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/content-strategy.html

Nielsen, J. 1997, How Users Read on the Web. Retrieved on
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html