All Good Things Must Come to an End (Final)

This one's gonna be a long one, so settle in.

Responses to my classmates' blog posts:

Alexa McBride: IW 8: Reflecting on the semester

Design

Alexa's post is simple in its design, and I do not think that is a bad thing. It is plain, black text in a clean font on a white background. It is very easy to read. She uses classic webpage format with her paragraphs - a space between each one and no indents, much like this paragraph you are reading. She has a list in her post, which is clearly defined by a wider margin and numbers. Her title font is slightly more decorative, but still easy to read and not too large. I do like the simple design. It portrays sophistication and professionalism - which boosts ethos. 

Alexa's links are a light blue color. They are easy to differentiate from the rest of the text, although they might be easier to read if they were a darker color. After the links have been clicked on, they become a dark grey color and blend into the rest of the text. I wish I could still easily pick them out. The colors are both gentle colors, though - nothing jarring. This may add to the ethos of the post, similar to the clean text. It may also add to the pathos by being calming. Even the colors of the links can make a person feel a certain way.

I like how Alexa arranged her images within the blog post. I pull most of my images apart from the text and give them their own space, whereas she made her images a part of the text (see below). There is a point where the images get in the way and split a sentence in half, which causes it to be difficult to read. Other than that, the images merge well with the text design-wise and that adds to the professional-look of the post. I do wish she had addressed the images in her post - or added a caption to them - so they weren't just sitting there with no context.

Alexa positions her images so the text wraps around them.
 I, on the other hand, give the images their own space
like I do with this one. I do like how Alexa's images
 blend so smoothly into her post.

The images themselves didn't seem to add to the post that much. The first one (in the screenshot above) seemed to be mostly ornamental. I didn't get anything from it. The second image was a picture of the book Creating Web Pages for Dummies, which was not mentioned at all in the actual post, so it seemed out of place. The last two images were more relevant as they were from her Unit 3 project, which she did discuss in the post. They are powerful, scary images of wrecked cars, and they use pathos. She explains that the project is about texting and driving and that is what those images represent. Those images really support her point - which is that images can be quite powerful.

Content

In her post, Alexa says, "images largely persuade an audience in that they are more entertaining to digest than a large body of text." This is a great way to word what we all seem to believe. As the old adage goes: a picture's worth a thousand words. Not to mention, it takes much less time and is way easier to look at an image than to read a thousand words. The right image can be the key point in an argument and the wrong one can wreck an argument. Images truly are powerful. In an instant, an image can make you feel strong emotions. Or, even better, those emotions slowly surface as you look at the image more and more and find subtle messages within it. Take the image below for example:

Beautiful Colorado

Isn't it pretty? I took it in the Rocky Mountains of Fort Collins, CO. It bet it makes you want to do something... probably visit Colorado since I captioned it the way I did. Maybe if I had captioned it "Our Only Planet, Which is in Jeopardy" you might be eager to start living a greener life. If I had said "Where a Hike Can Get You," you might be on your way to purchasing some new hiking gear. In any case, a good image can convince an audience to do something, and if you so much as give it a title, you have control. Now, as much as I wish this was the raw photo, I definitely edited it. I made the greens greener, the blues bluer, and those famous red rocks a little bit redder.I brightened it and increased the vibrancy. I turned down the contrast in order to make it look less sharp and... rocky. Here's the original image:

Colorado is also beautiful without Photoshop.

Not quite as pretty and, probably, not quite as convincing. One thing I believe is that color is one powerful part of an image and should be carefully considered. Many studies have shown that color has a strong effects on human psychology. Not to mention, color can leave a lasting impression. For example, when I bring up red and green, what do you think of? If you're anything like me, those colors scream CHRISTMAS to you. What about red and yellow? It's probably a little less obvious, but I can't help but think of McDonalds. And purple? Go Frogs! So colors are important, which is why I always think about the colors in my image - even if I want it to be black and white. Colorful images say more, and, like Alexa pointed out, it is a lot easier to see what an image has to say than to read a thousand words. 

Alexa also discussed Adobe - her skills in Dreamweaver and the difficulty she had with Photoshop. I'm the exact opposite. I was able to pick up Photoshop pretty easily, but it's a mystery how I managed to get my unit two and three projects done in Dreamweaver. It was a matter of changing things until it worked. I think Photoshop can be pretty simple once you figure out what each of the tools do. Here is a great blog that goes through most of the tools and what they do, but I think the best way to learn Photoshop is just to play around with it. Open up an image and edit, edit, edit until you're happy. Practice makes perfect! I'm no Photoshop expert, but I can tell you that the quick-select tool is magic and I, personally, have probably used it in every single Photoshop project I have done.

Play around in Photoshop enough and, one day, you too will be able
to turn a simple duck photo into an image celebrating your favorite
student organization.

I definitely agree that knowledge of the Adobe suite will be helpful in our future careers and I also plan to learn more about not only Dreamweaver and Photoshop, but about the other programs in the suite. After all, I bought a year's worth of the Adobe suite for this class, so I better not waste it.

Nia Brookins: Informal Writing 8

Design

I really like the appearance of Nia's blog. It's dark - with a black background and purple text. It's different, but not distracting. If I had to choose an appeal that is being used by her color scheme, I might say pathos. It's sort of dramatic and that alone makes me want to read more. Her text is clean and her paragraphs are typical web format - once again, that makes the blog look more professional and adds to ethos. One of her images came from The New York Times, which also adds more credibility to her argument. 

Nia's blog has light purple text on a black background, 

I do have a few questions about some of her choices. First of all, her links are the exact same color as her text. I had to scroll over every word in order to find the two links in her post. Second of all, her text is pretty small. Actually, it's not any smaller than normal text, but it seems smaller... probably because of the color? I really couldn't tell you. I don't have trouble reading it, but I have pretty great vision. Most of the world wears glasses or contacts and they may struggle more than me to read the small words. In any case, Nia's blog has personality, which I like.

Content
In her blog, Nia says that she now looks at the images accompanying an article before she reads the text. She does this in order to figure out what the point of the article is and get some background before she begins reading. I've never thought about this. Sure, I glance at images before I read articles - they're more eye-catching than text. However, I've never really contemplated an image before reading the text. I guess I should. In unit three, we learned how much information an image can hold. Those images put on an article aren't just there to be pretty - the writer carefully selected them and put them there for a reason.

Images can convey a ton of information in seconds.
Billboards demonstrate this quite well.

Images are powerful. They define our culture. Art reflects life. Life imitates art. It is because of images that many people have issues being body-positive or believe so strongly in their religious figures. What can you do when paintings from centuries ago depict your god or when the most liked photo on Instagram depicts a certain standard of beauty.

Another thing Nia touches on is the idea of finding a balance between images, text, and hyperlinks. Yeah, images can convey a lot of information. However, you can convey even more information when you have text. Not to mention, if your audience wants more, links can be a great way to for them to get it. However, as Nia pointed out, to much of a single thing can look not-so-great. I mean, what if every word was a hyperlink? That'd be overwhelming and confusing. What if it was only text? That'd look like an essay. How boring. All pictures? Well what on Earth do they mean. Balance is great. Don't take it from me, take it from some actual graphic designers.

Um.. yawn. Do you want to read that giant block
of text, because I sure don't.

These are important things to think about. You don't want your webpage to end up on a list of the worst webpages. You don' want poor design to distract you from your point. Check out some inspiration here, and one day your webpage might be on a list of the best webpages!

I agree with Nia 100% that balance is important and I'm with her in her learning process as well. I hope we all are able to take the skills we learned in Multimedia Authoring and take them to our future careers!

Until we meet again,

What I Learned (IW8)

A Reflection

1. Images have a lot of power. They are able to convey an argument in a very visual, emotional way. Images are the epitome of "show, don't tell." Carefully thought out and edited pictures have the ability to say something that would require many words. They allow the viewer to immediately connect with the argument, but they discover depth to it if they continue to look. A good image can tell a whole story, as evidenced by some of the most iconic photos ever.

In my very first blog post, I discussed the merits of an abstract image.
Here's another. There is nothing realistic about this image. It is no
photo. Yet, the colors and shapes convey so much energy. That's the
power behind an image.

2. Hypertext has the ability to take piece of writing and allow the reader to discover a whole lot more about the subject. If anything, it adds credibility to the argument by providing external sources to back it up. Web pages can open up a whole world where ink and paper cannot. However, hypertext can be tricky to work with. It is not enough to rely on the reader to click the text. There must be a full explanation or a compelling reason for them to look further into the argument. This webpage goes further into the benefits of using hypertext. See what I did there? Hypertext. More information for you.

Wikipedia, if anything, is known for its use of hypertext. There are entire games
dedicated to the art of clicking on links on Wikipedia pages.

3. In the Unit 3 project, not being allowed to use words meant I had to think creatively. The hardest part for me was showing the defining variable between my two contrasting pictures: the bee. It would have been easier to write "With Bees" and "Without Bees" on the bottom of the images, but I couldn't do that. As a result, I think I came up with a method that has a lot more impact than text. It shows loss, barriers, and ill-fated creatures. See an example of this below. For more, look at my final product here.

A living bee on one side of the bold, dividing line.
The mirrored shape of the bee on the other,
representing a world where the bees are dead.
 Two sides of the same coin.

4. At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea how to use any Adobe products and boy has that changed! I believe my skills in Photoshop have improved tremendously, and, although I am not expert, I have a much better understanding of Dreamweaver as well. I certainly hope to get even better with these tools because they can be so helpful to me as a writing major. Skills in design and technology are important. They can help me get a job later in life. Not to mention, the Adobe products are really fun to use!

One of my first Photoshop projects, created for an assignment in
a course called Digital Creative Writing, which complemented
Multimedia Authoring quite a bit. I hate to say it, but this project
isn't very good. I like to think I've come a long way since
these humble beginnings.

What's Done is Done

Check out my unit three project!

I really tried to unify all of the pictures concerning my argument. I made the background simple so as not to distract from the argument. I added a call to action at the bottom of the page. I'm pretty pleased with it.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I have seen images of "a world without bees" before. That's where I got the inspiration. I'd like to think I took them a step further though. I mean look at this:

The Daily Blog

VS this:

Yours Truly

I mean, for starters, my image doesn't have text. That's pretty cool. Its creative. The top image has two photographs left as they were when they were taken. My image is edited. It has colors and brightness that create certain feelings. Every part of my image was intentional.

So, yeah. I'm feeling pretty good about it. It's no masterpiece, but it's alright for a girl who starting learning Photoshop in February.

Messages without Text

To create a message using an image without a single letter from the alphabet on it requires a good deal of creativity. In my Unit Three project, I have had to come up with a way to convey something that could be said so simply with words, however, I believe the images I ended up using are much more powerful.

Here's an example of one of my images:

You get the picture, right? (Right!?) On one side of the yellow line, you see the world as it is - with bees. On the other side, you see that without bees, the rose would not be there. It would have been so easy for me to write "With Bees" on one side and "Without Bees" on the other, but I couldn't. So I got creative. I took a picture of a living bee and stuck it on one side. Easy enough. That world has a bee so they cannot be extinct. On the other side, I replaced it with a white space, put an X through it, and flipped it around. I think it's pretty obvious that the bees are diseased in this world.

So I got the initial idea across, but I was able to add more dimension to my message as well. The bees convey so much more than the idea of a world with bees vs. a world without. They are facing each other, mirror images (in shape, anyway). It is almost as if the living bee is staring at its fate. They are separated by a line - a boundary. A line I am arguing we should not cross. Finally, you get the contrast between the body of one and the emptiness of another. It adds to the whole image.

Challenges of Photography

Photography is such a cool, amazing craft and I wish I were able to take amazing, beautiful pictures. I can't. Maybe I will someday. Practice makes perfect, after all.

One of the main challenges I face is planning photos. Wouldn't it be so great if we could just start taking pictures and find a masterpiece with just a little bit of searching? Unfortunately, the reality is that we must carefully plan what our photos will look like, especially when we are trying to convey a specific message. Then, when we plan our photos out, we often find that our product wasn't what we envisioned in our heads.

Take this picture of a duck I snapped back in January:

It's alright, but it looked a lot better in my head and through my eyes. Let me break down the issue I see with this picture.

First of all, it's too far zoomed out. My eyes view the world very differently than a camera lens. Although I can see something and it looks very close, it looks very far away in my phone's camera and I have to get a lot closer to capture an image as detailed as the one I can see.

Second of all, the duck isn't very well defined. Its reflection blends into its body. It is blurry and confusing and not all that appealing to look at. In real life, this is not the case. It would take some photo-editing to make it look like it did to me at the time and how I pictured it when I was planning to take the photo.

Finally, it's a duck. And it is swimming on water. It was windy that day. The environment was constantly moving and changing. I couldn't take the time to carefully frame the photo and find the perfect zoom and perspective before taking it. A moment before this picture, the environment looked different. Maybe not drastically different, but different enough to prevent careful planning.

So, photography is an art. It has been surprisingly difficult for me during unit 3.