Blogging: Part 2

Every blogging community is subtly different, although most cynics would not see the difference between one cliquey set of people from the next. The design of each is catered towards the content being circulated by its users.

Let's  have a look at livejournal. It's personally been years since I've even touched my livejournal account, but it doesn't seem to have changed much. I still believe that it has the cleanest interface with the best community linking.

Livejournal (affectionately called LJ) is made of people who like to write. It was intentioned as a literal online diary for the everyday man. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a big thing at Livejournal, with much publicity months before the event itself. While the main page follows a style of the author's choosing, the reader can choose a much cleaner black and white viewing style for individual entries. The comments section is arranged by time stamp and is given generous space for readers to contribute.

Tumblr on the other hand is very image intensive. The whole community passes around pictures. It's very well integrated with Twitter. Each posted can be tweeted/retweeted and spreading like a pyromancer's wildfire. While not meaning offense to the whole Tumblr/Twitter bunch, the easy digestion/distribution of the media all breed a shorter attention span. This in turn encourages bigger fonts and larger graphics that can be absorbed in less than 10 seconds.

I guess you can't really blame people for shoving others into stereotypes. It's easy to get lost in a micro universe of niche interests and forget other people exist. Or worse, use it as their private palace where they can feel better than the rest without being challenged.

You know what I'm talking about. via agbeat

There's nothing wrong with liking antique furniture or writing long space opera version of Much Ado About Nothing. People sometimes fail to understand that blogging is a public platform-- and they're going to be open to whatever criticisms come their way.

Blogging: Part 1

Insert your preferred choice of terminology here: blogsphere, blogosphere, blognation. Everyone has their own term for it. I find the term 'blogosphere' too close to 'Vogsphere' and its subsequent allusion to terrible poetry.

Though really, you can find the worst poetry on blogs too. via urantiansojourn

So there's all this talk about newspapers and how they're quickly being overhwlemed by their online counterparts. Often times, the community can break the news faster than most 'reliable' news sources can.

Blogs have developed from diaries to almost anything under the sun. It's replaced the homepages of the 90's (remember Geocities? Angelfire? Dreamhost!?). Where once you needed a fairly in depth idea of how to work either a WYSIWYG webpage maker or hand coding, today's world offers much easier outlets of expression.

Rather than diaries, although those still exist, they have become powerful sources of information, entertainmental awareness or even political movement. I don't want to be so serious and point to Middle Eastern protestors and their Arab Spring, or Chinese bloggers braving their state censorship. Instead, I'll show you Never Seconds.

Is. This. Food? via Never Seconds

This blog managed to change the direction of school lunches for children far more than Jamie Oliver. It's gotten more people involved in what their kids are eating. Today, its hit counter is just shy of eight million views.

All because a nine year old decided her school lunch was less than spectacular. Blogging is now easy access to anyone and it's an open, exciting world out there.

Ah, newspapers

Newspapers. Ah newspapers.

Although it might soon be a dying art, newsprint layout, I found is quite similar to the structure of news articles. All the most important bits come before all the smaller pieces of tangential information.

This comes across not just in placement, but in font size as well. The juiciest stories (depending on the paper) will dominate the front page in big bold snappy print and wit. The less interesting stuff is broken up torwards the end.

Not only that, newpapers have a frankly commercial interest. So not only does the editor have to prioritize the news and arrange it in a fairly aesthetic way, he/she has to fit in advertising as well. The advertising has to match the article in terms of appropriateness and cost. In a digital newspaper that has this automated by 'intelligent' search engines, this can lead to hilarious results, like placing a child adoption advert next to a story about child kidnapping.

On top of all that, it's a daily business. All that frantic boxing in of ever changing data, taking place everyday.

 These things can be said of foreign papers as well, in languages that don't even read left to right.

Al-Hayat newspaper. via Woolly Days

Yomiuri Shimbun via jetwit.com

via (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout

Dynamics of Document Design

Creating texts for readers, The process of interpretation

Words simply mean different things to you or I depending on age, sex, culture and upbringing. We can be privy to the various associations and indeed, hold cognitively dissonant ideas about different words, but it’s the primary meanings in relation to us, the individual that matters.

via engrish.com

There’s a number of brilliant Engrish-isms embedded in the article body. Certainly, while they are grammatically and even fundamentally incorrect, I find these charming not because I’m deriding the people who made them, but because I can gain an insight into how their language is structured and what symbolic meanings and emphases their culture has. Take for example:

“Please leave your values at the front desk.” (Paris hotel elevator)

Considering both French and English are Latin based languages, what is the implied meaning of ‘values’ in place of ‘valuables’? An honest mistake via Google translate? Or perhaps the word for valuables and values are the same in French, implying a high regard for principles?

The Japanese one is a little easier for me to break down.

“It is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not person to do such thing please not read notis.”

The implication of ‘please’ is grammatically at the end of sentences. While it is disingenuous to ask a person not to read a precedent sentence, the literal meaning of ‘please not read notis’ is to ‘disregard the notice’. As in, completely disavow its existence.

The Roman one is genius though, unintentional or otherwise:

“Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.”

via Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers

Media Futures

Like the article, I do believe that the future of the low quality printed material is going to be dismal. It just won’t be profitable to operate small local newspapers for a shrinking audience of people who still read them. It’s probably true that the bigger names like The Wall street journal, the New York Times and all the other big name national level newspapers will survive on clout and amassed wealth alone. They have the wiggle room to figure out what works in this new landscape.

"Meh, so what." via JMR Higgs

Still, this isn’t supposed to be about the industry, but about design. So what really is the impact here?

In my opinion, next to none. Ok, so those guys laying out newsprint are going to have to find something else to do, because printed news is radically different from a digital newspaper. Unless you’re so hung up on the aesthetics of the printed word, there’s no reason to fear being unable to adapt to this change.

Actually, for publications like magazines and books, the layout for most e readers stay the same, mostly because people are used to it. It will change eventually, as younger readers begin to forget what a ‘real’ printed page look like, but it probably won’t happen within the next 5 years.

There’s really only one solution to this, if you feel it’s a problem.

Keep calm and assimilate.

Via ABC's "Media Futures"

Web users aren’t about to forsake the printed page

This is something I can sympathise with. Although I am less likely to read a physical newspaper now as compared to perhaps, 12 years ago, it has more to do with the nature of the content, rather than it being a preferred medium. News is ever changing, and using digital medium makes sense, although there are sinister 1984-esque implications to this as well. But hey, think of the paper we'll save.

"WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA." via AspergersPoet

As I was doing a previous assignment for Reporting For Media module, I did notice that even BBC would change the article over time for purposes of accuracy. The URL remained the same, but the pictures and written content were significantly different from day 1 of the Miami zombie incident to the days after.

Things like novels, textbooks and magazines should be inert. Firstly, it’s psychologically comforting to the borderline tinfoil hat crowd (like myself!) and secondly because reading on a page of reflected light is much more comfortable than reading off projected light. The length of the content also comes into play for the exact same reason—these materials are far longer in length than newspaper articles.

 via Web users aren’t about to forsake the printed page

Writing to communicate

The trouble with most documents is the language used in them. Legal documents especially are a hassle, though they have a reason to be. Some are naturally convoluted because legal matters depend greatly on accuracies (and pedantry...). They protect the people they are drawn for by defining every single thing that might be of concern, thus the term ‘air tight contract’.

Unfortunately, lawyers aren’t the most trusted profession in the world. Overly wordy texts tire people and make them doubtful of the document’s intent. Maybe that’s just my own paranoia speaking, but I wouldn’t sign a jargon filled 50 page document without consulting one of my brainier legalese savvy friends either.

Still, most of these documents are intended for people who already understand the inherent terminology. The problems arise when people on the street are faced with the situation of agreeing to this or that document—although the aim is to inform and obtain consent, the document has already failed the first objective and cannot expect the everyman to agree to its terms.

A better example would the End User License Agreement or EULA which you are confronted with every time you install a new program or video game on your PC. Let’s be real here; no one reads that stuff. No one is going to sit down and read the lengthy description of the company is and isn’t responsible for, everyone just wants to play World of Warcraft or Counterstrike: Global Offensive. It’s a whole bunch of tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) to them.

This is why people aren’t generally held accountable for violations of the EULA, or when they are, it’s met with positive outrage.

I leave you with this clip from the movie version of “V for Vendetta” in which V introduces himself to Evey Hammond.

Not only because it demonstrates witty hyperbole, but because he’s really, really cool.

via  Writing to Communicate

Document design

Document design is one of my favourite topics since I help my friend out with her prints and publicity materials. After a while, it all blurs together though. There are only so many ways you can arrange words on a page so that it fulfils the requirements of being succinct, neat and interesting.

Given the presented rules, the first two requisites aren’t hard; it’s working around them or indeed breaking the rules to create something that is visually eye catching—that’s hard. A disregard for the rules is only effective if it’s obvious that the designer is aware of exactly what he’s doing ‘wrong’. It’s just not impressive when someone turns up with a lousy piece of work and declare themselves refreshing rebels.

via coolinfographics

Basically, there’s eclectic and then there’s garbage.

So, how do you really avoid that pitfall? Obviously, there are going to be people who like one thing over another (which makes us a varied, multi-textured world).

1. Know the rule. If you’re breaking the ‘rule of thirds’ by placing objects in extreme areas, please know what this is.
2. Know your audience. As with the above, some people can appreciate it more than others—people who are more concerned about content are unlikely to care where you put everything.
3. Is it appropriate to use such aesthetics? It could be a medical or legal document, and no one needs those things looking like they fell off tumblr.

Well, that would be interesting, actually...

See what I mean about audience?

via Document design