Professor John Logie teaches us that comics have a place in academia. He teaches it in Visual Rhetoric. Why not? Comics are visual and they are graphic and they are certainly full of rhetoric. Comics teach us to engage ourselves with the comic we are viewing, on our own time, in our own space. Professor Logie teaches that Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" is an essential book to do just that, understand comics. Logie and McCloud teach us of time and motion and reader participation between panels. I always took the reader participation for granted, knowing that each of us as a reader might have a slightly different interpretation of what just took place from panel to panel and in the time space between a panel. But it is important when understanding audience and rhetoric. In comics it is not so vitally important that everyone in the audience realm gets the exact same message as it is in other messages like speed limit signs, directions for filling a gas can with gasoline, or how to use a stove.

Reader participation in the interpretations of comics can be further explained under the Gestalt Principles of Design that Kostelnick and Roberts speak to us about in their textbook, "Designing Visual Language" chapter 2 on Perception and Design. Kostelnick and Roberts says, "Gestalt principles of perception can help us understand how readers see images in context--in relation to a whole visual field, the whole form plays an essential role in understanding it parts."(page 52 Kostelnick and Roberts)  Great!!! I have arrived at Understanding Comics in Gestalt Principles of Design. I think the problem with Kostelnick and Roberts figure 2.7 and 2.8 on page 53 is that they use dots and various shades in the background (boring) instead of using an example like comics. The use of comics would be an excellent way to teach gestalt principles.


Hey. What about that gutter between the panels? I'm happy to know what a "gutter" is. Before taking Visual Rhetoric, the word itself makes one think of the bowling alley or a situation where one might be down in life. It has also been said, "Get your mind out of the gutter." But now when I think of it in terms of comics that are juxtaposed in their layout, I learned that it is the space between each set of panels where the drawings and the action takes place in the comics.   I read comic books as a child and teenager. I read the comics in the Sunday newspaper as a young adult. Lately I haven't read any. As a result of the class this week, I have a renewed interest.  Is this important to my learning as a technical writer? I  believe it is, since technical writing is full of vast opportunities, including the use of comics in something we might publish.

Finally, this lesson on comics, panels and gutters, made me think of my favorite comics. One was Felix the Cat. I loved cartoons, so the comics were just as important to me as the cartoons on the television or at the movies. I hope you enjoy the little story that is told in the eight panels below. It's kind of sad, but it is very Felix just the same. He tries hard to do good work and often comes up a little short.


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In class, we discussed Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," which is really the seminal work in well, understanding comics.  McCloud discusses just about every, and any aspect of comics that can be conceived, and our discussion on 'gutters' was interesting, as I hadn't read "Understanding Comics" in some ten years.

As an avid comics fan (buff?), I had always been told that Neal Adams was one of the genre-defining comics-book artists of his day (which happened to precede me by some 15 years).  As you can see in the examples to the right, his use of panel arrangement was completely "outside-the-box," to coin a phrase that came up in class.  That is not the interesting part, however.

Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music. But what interests me out of these is the artwork and how the artwork mimics the mixing of themes between rap and techno much in the same way the music does.

Arguably one of the most recognizable symbols in the Western cultural lexicon, or even that of Eastern cultures, is the silhouette of Mickey Mouse. Popularized in the late 1920s by a series of short films, America’s favorite rodent has come to represent the Walt Disney Studios and the Disney corporation at large.

The above comic by Robert Berry appears in his Ulysses “Seen” adaptation of the James Joyce novel Ulysses.

We watched "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and had an interesting class discussion on whether it was a scholarly work or not. It was not, perhaps, “scholarly”; but it was an argument, and it made me think about the sociology of internet communication.

During our in-class discussion of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," the composer brought up gutters, the space in between frames of a comic (or newspaper, cartoon or other media).  In a comic, as McCloud states in the image to the right, gutters "play host to the magic and mystery that are at the very heart of comics."  These gutters are vital, and can serve as more than a space to let the reader's mind wander.

When we talked in class about usability and the internet, it sounded like the conclusion as to what makes a usable website is simplicity. Creating a website to serve a very obvious purpose is the key to usability. But even when a site is usable, there are aesthetics that make a website a more enjoyable experience for the user. Color, formatting, and graphic elements can enhance usability by making a website visually appealing.

In Vitaly Friedman's article "10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of," the first item listed is  problematic hidden login links on websites. Friedman uses Backpack as an example because the login link is very small and placed right underneath a block of text that looks like an advertisement, rather than placing the login somewhere else on the page where it can be easily located.

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Of the recent readings for this course, I feel most compelled to comment on the writings of Jakob Nielsen. I had heard of him before, touted as the leading expert of usability. A great deal of the discussion in class was devoted to some apparent contradictions between his ethos and one of his now defunct websites. However, I noticed contradictions on the very page we were asked to look at for class.

Professor John Logie teaches us that comics have a place in academia. He teaches it in Visual Rhetoric. Why not? Comics are visual and they are graphic and they are certainly full of rhetoric. Comics teach us to engage ourselves with the comic we are viewing, on our own time, in our own space. Professor Logie teaches that Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" is an essential book to do just that, understand comics.
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