Winning web design

Finally got around to looking at the web design award winners...sorry this is late, too.

1) Singularity Design. What I like about this site is, it balances use of an animated character and fun colors to create a whimsical atmosphere and maintenance of a simple, but appealing design. The site appears to have been created in Flash, but if we were to go for static images instead of animation, we could easily achieve something nearly as attractive as this site.

2) Yard Media. The amount of animation on this site was a little overwhelming to me, but I wanted to point out a design element I really like (circled in red):



This navigation tool allows readers to thumb through projects the company has previously completed. I like it because it deviates from the typical "page 1, next, previous" navigation, but it's still recognizable as a navigation tool and therefore usable. Notice that the current page is a lighter color than the other pages, which gives readers a sense of where they are. Could we use this, or something like it? Maybe--I'm not sure how hard it would be to execute.

3) Faster Tomorrow. I looked at this site because it's not in Flash, and I'm assuming that will be the case for Din. It's obviously meant to be more of an informational site than the other two sites (I say this because it has so much text on it), but it still maintains visual appeal through frequent use of images and repetition of design elements.

I think that as we design Din, we should work hard to create a site in HTML (maybe with some buttons in flash, but that's it) that is easy to maintain in the future. We have to keep in mind that this one issue is not the only issue, and we have to hand off the project to someone else. This contingency has to be accounted for in our design.

Thinking about design (briefly)

Somehow I missed this post last week...I thought I had checked the schedule, but I guess I didn't. Oh well, better late than never:

What, for you, is the most important design element(s) that an online editor must keep in mind?

For the sake of maintaining a site that is cohesive, I think repetition is an especially important design principle in considering how the pages go together. Even if the design of individual pages varies, it's important to have at least one design element that brings them all together, such as a repeated logo which appears in the same spot on each page.

In designing individual pages, however, I think all four of the CRAP principles are important. One thing I like about RW is her insistence upon bold, but simple designs--no clutter or excess, just the bare necessities. This need for simplicity is especially true for our publication since the group of people creating it will not be the same group responsible for maintaining it long-term. The simpler the design, the more sustainable the publication.

Week 7 responses

Since I'm interested in visual design and images, I'm taking on this question for this week's blog post:

How does online art differ from other online content? Consider the digital art spaces we visited in class. Are they all art? Who is the audience for these pieces?

One idea I picked up on in the "Practices of Looking" piece by Turkmen and Cartwright is the notion of value in art. Using the example of Van Gogh's Irises, which sold for $53.8 million in 1991, they discuss reasons why this piece and others like it are worth so much:

• Its being one of relatively few works by the artist
• Its authenticity
• The fame and notoriety of the artist
• Its uniqueness
• Its ability to be reproduced and marketed as a commodity

I see one of the primary differences between online art and regular art (which I realize is not the exact question you asked, but I' m getting there) is its value. A work that lives online can't hold a value like a Van Gogh because the original work and the reproductions are essentially the same thing--authenticity and reproduction are essentially out the window. Furthermore, fame and notoriety are difficult to achieve in a space where so many artists can produce so many works--the best shot at fame in today's Internet culture is having a cute kid that can describe Spartacus in more or less coherent terms, which isn't exactly high art. Here lies the difficulty in creating an art space that gets attention.

Online art also faces challenges because I still think relatively few people use the Internet for anything more than information gathering and social networking. Most online activities can probably be boiled down to Google searches, Facebook, news sites, and possibly Wikipedia and WebMD. Although a lot of that use is recreational--particularly social networking--part of the fun of it is communicating with (or just talking to) other people that the user knows. Online art spaces face the challenge of getting people to enjoy what they are reading simply for what it's worth.

With that thought in mind, I'll turn now to the spaces we're to discuss today.

The Nikki Lee piece is limited because it includes only three images; I would argue that were the whole series of photographs posted in a slideshow online, it would have a much stronger impact, especially if it were accompanied by voiceover or sidebar text describing the author's experience in the community. I don't think this site's purpose is to act as an art space, though--it seems to me more of an announcement or a "trailer" for the show itself.

I've seen the Dakota piece before and I think the interplay between text, motion, music, and the story itself are really interesting. However, I have never watched the whole thing (despite my original thought, it does come to an end eventually) because it is such an assault to my eyes and ears that it becomes overwhelming and I just give up on it. The only reason I know it ends is I let it keep running in another tab while I wrote this, and it stopped. For all their good intentions, pieces like this may lose their audience before they end, and--because the site redirects to the full list of contents at the end of the film--they lose audiences for the rest of the works on the site as well.

Another piece that relies almost too much on the reader's patience is Carl's Head. The purpose of this piece is essentially to show that it's possible to deliver a lot of information in only a few frames of action; as we keep adding frame after frame after frame, the work dissolves into minute, often insignificant details that don't really help us understand the arc of the narrative. I didn't have the patience to add one frame at a time to see what happened (at least not after adding 10 or so frames), but clicking ahead to 52 frames illustrated that nothing else of much importance happened to Carl before his untimely death. Knowing Scott McCloud's work, I assume this piece is targeted toward readers interested in visual narrative.

Beautiful Portrait is a good example of new media as art because it takes advantage of the possibilities new media affords in assigning new meaning to an existing text--in this case, a poem, a text that would usually be written. I dug up Thomas Swiss' website--he's the poem's author and a university professor--and found this statement about his artistic collaborations:

Collaborative work redefines artistic labor in what is for me new and complicated ways: what is the relationship, for example, between my language and the images and sounds others create, even if under my "direction"? How do the images and sound "change" the meaning of the language (and vice versa) and in what ways can the piece be said to still be a "poem"? Collaboration allows writers and artists -- like myself and those I compose with -- to reconsider both our work and our identities, to literally see them anew, as we move from individual to composite subjectivity.

This statement does a good job of summing up the possibilities of new media, but it also raises questions about our responsibilities as editors. If juxtaposing one text with another changes the meaning of both texts, then how can we juxtapose works submitted to us without altering the author's intentions?

Idea for final project

I spoke with Jen (the professor one, not the me one) the other day about the final project for this class, and we decided that I'll be trying to make a publication out of a short paper I wrote for another class a couple of years ago. I wanted to take some notes on that project here so I can start thinking about it more seriously.

I've already identified the target publication for the piece, which is the Journal of Business and Technical Communication's section on Approaches and Practices, "short pieces—5 to 15 typewritten, double-spaced pages—published in a section of the journal devoted to pedagogical tips and industrial how-to's."

The paper I'll be revising for this project is a 5-page essay on using wikis in technical communication classes. I teach technical and scientific communication, and each semester I have my students collaborate to produce an informative website. To avoid the complications and time commitment of teaching them Dreamweaver or another web design program I have them create their site in a wiki. The paper talks about benefits of using wikis, what students and instructors can do with them, and multiple ways instructors can incorporate the technology into the class.

I'll keep brainstorming ideas about how to proceed from here. Would love to hear any thoughts you have.

Wrathful Grapes

I reckon it's my turn to weigh in on the Grapes of Wrath piece by McGeal.

I don't think this piece is reinventing Steinbeck or creating something entirely new. Rather, I think it does exactly what the author says it does--it revisits Steinbeck's original narrative at a moment when many parallels were being drawn between the Depression and the current economic state.

The digital nature of this story gives readers an opportunity to experience the narrative in a much different fashion than a traditional text, perhaps mostly because it allows us to choose from three different ways of experiencing it. Whereas a traditional text relies on the reaction between the author's description and the reader's imagination, in this piece, the author's experience is visualized for us.

The story is limited (as are all texts, regardless of medium) in giving us the viewpoint of just one author, which means we have a kind of tunnel vision in experiencing the journey. And, of course, this digital story can't accurately represent the experience of Steinbeck's characters, though as I said above, I don't think that's the purpose of the piece.

Ultimately, digital/new media change the game for nonfiction writers because they can now present their work as more documentary than nonfiction. What I mean by that is, it provides readers with a different sense of the space or the story the author strings together because it increases the range of documents (and you can't spell "documentary" without "document") the author can give as evidence of the non-fictional nature of his or her writing. (Did that make sense? Probably not).

Week 5

Since we don't have a specific prompt for this week's blog post, I'm going to take the week off...


...of blogging, that is. I'll be spending my time developing my virtual facilitation, which will introduce the class to our wiki site. See you next week!

Week 4 business

I looked over some random magazines from NewPages; these are the ones I found most appealing:

1. Juked. Dedicated to nothing in particular, but a gorgeous design.
2. Weave. Also dedicated to nothing in particular, but leans toward feminism and dark humor.
3. Tiferet. A spiritual journal.
4. Alimentum. "The only literary review all about food."
5. The Dirty Goat. No particular angle here, just "a glimpse into the cutting edge of the international arts scene." But what a cool name, right?
6. Pank. Published at Michigan Tech in upper peninsula, this journal takes its position on the "edge of things" and turns it into a focus for the magazine.
7. PHOEBE. Dedicated to publishing work by new writers.
8. Carve. An online-only, open access magazine. I think we could learn a lot from looking at how they structure each issue--it seems very doable for us, but also very user-friendly and attractive.
9. Gargoyle. "a bit too academic for the underground and way too underground for the academics." Another layout for us to look at; I'm not a fan of the typeface they chose, but the overall look works well, I think.
10. Iron Horse Literary Review. Another university mag; unfortunately, no issues available online, but the submission guidelines are well explained and might give us some ideas.

----------

Now, the official blog question:

Is it possible for “great poetry” to find a hearing in “great [i.e., mass] audiences” (as Poetry claimed under Harriet Monroe’s editorship)? Making reference to two or more magazines, discuss how such questions about the cultural status of the arts (or of a single art form, e.g., poetry, drama, the novel) are addressed.

I think the notion of "mass audiences" is almost contradictory to most poets' notions of what they are doing. Consider the most widely read contemporary authors: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, V.C. Andrews, and--dear God--Stephanie Moore. Do most people in literature consider these authors to be doing "great" work? I'd say no, though I might be wrong about that.

Robinson's argument in "Academia and the Little Magazine" suggests that little magazines may not actually think much about public appeal; in fact, his critique of university mags suggests that literary magazines with such appeal are killing the business. Anania, too, mentions that literary mags often have a narrow audience which mostly includes writers.

The magazines I examined for the first part of this post reflect this small-scale vision of readership. Weave's mission, for example, involves getting artists and writers together, not bringing art and writing to a public audience. Other magazines, like Alimentum or Tiferet, seem to target readers with very specific interests (food and spirituality, respectively), though it's unclear whether this is the readership they actually get. Still others pride themselves on having a highly limited audience; see Gargoyle's claim above.

So...what's the status of the arts? Here's my broad, sweeping claim that I can't support very well: If the literary magazines I looked at are any indication, it seems that the arts are somewhat disconnected from the mainstream, but that's where they want to be. The prevailing attitudes suggest that good work can only happen at the fringe, and when it does happen, only others at the fringe will be able to appreciate it.

Wellsir/ma'am, that's it for now. S-s-see ya.