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 the case of craigslist, they substitute an aesthetically appealing design for maximum usability. The website is designed to display information and facilitate sales between individuals with maximum efficiency and the least amount of confusion possible.

Below is a sample of a typical local craigslist website. It is used a personal classifieds for just about anything. Job searching, garage sales, and personals ads are all housed on this site. The beauty of craigslist is in its simplicity. The site looks like it could be designed by any amateur (I picture graphic designers cringing at the home page layout) computer programmer but the functionality of craigslist is astonishing. The search bar encourages the user to search for anything. Literally anything. If anything matches the search term on craigslist, you will find it. Occasionally, it takes a little sifting to weed out irrelevant results but from personal experience, the results I have had with craigslist are great. I think that the simplistic design is overlooked by the typical user when they realize how straightforward and efficiently the website gets results.  When going for great website design, sometimes simple is best.

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  1. 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.

    What is interesting about the two examples presented here is that they do not conform to the most-often-used transition cited by McCloud, the "Action-to-Action."  Instead, these particular panels, and their arrangement, necessitate a "Moment-to-Moment" reading.  This is interesting, because there is no shortage of action in these panels.  And in McCloud's admittedly small sampling of Western comics, "Action-to-Action" panels dominate.

    There is an underlying philosophy in the way stories are told, which is probably all the more exacerbated by the comics medium (65% "Action-to-Action!"), and it is the concept of agency.  McCloud touches on this a little bit in his book, but I prefer Lera Boroditsky's thought that Western (particularly American) readers are much more likely to "assign agency" when describing events.  "John hit Bob," as opposed to "Bob was hit by John."  Or "David broke the glass," as opposed to "the glass was broken." This way of constructing narratives and describing events comes out in our visual language as well, and those artists who break free of that paradigm (like Neal Adams) are to be commended.
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  2. 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.

    Here we have two separate albums, one from a single artist and the other a collection of
    trance music from multiple sources. but they both demonstrate characteristics demonstrative of album artwork from this genre. The use of psychedelic shapes and colors tie into the long history and association between trance music and drug culture. They sparse use of text and very modern, usually sans-serif fonts are present here also. There is a feeling of otherworldly-ness to these covers, in a way they try to touch on the shifting adaptive and full feeling that is found in trance.

    Here now are some examples of rap album covers. They have radically different themes, pallets, imagery and text. With the theme focusing around "urban" life and it's ups and down, there is use of urban settings mixed in with hard street life, loneliness and the like. this isn't to be mistaken for more popularized rappers that have been stereotyped as the "drugs, guns and women" group. I picked this subset of rap as I see it as a more "pure" form that has mostly stayed away from the influence of other genres ("nas" is a great example of this) This has also lead to there album artwork to maintain the same stylized lettering, with a heavy focus on the artist that was common with earlier records by Public Enemy, Sir Mixalot, Ice-T, etc. Where the trance albums had psychedelic colors, the color schemes are more subdued here using monochromatic color schemes and a more complex presentation. This captures better the type of music these record have: hard, biting, angry music with heavy drums, little treble and a focus on the spoken lyrics.


    What we have so far are two different sets of cover art accomplishing two separate things; on one hand, we have rap music and the other we have trance. now when brought together you have music that takes elements from each and can be best described with the word "bangin". But does the artwork follow? Left is a album cover from Cashmere Cat, a premiere dj who specializes in live shows and mixes trap. I chose to start with this one for the fact that it bucks my thesis. The most important thing to remember is that as much as they are blending two previous genres they are changing and adapting and creating new things that are separate and will start to exist in ways its predecessor could not. But we still haven't moved out of the formative years for this music so there are  plenty of examples of the combining I spoke of earlier. The album cover pictured below is an example of how  combining the two different art styles and typography into one piece can work.

    On the left we have a dj duo called RUN DMT's latest album cover that uses psychedelic imagery as well as the more moderated pallet for their album. The text is very modern, but the name is a pun on the oldschool rap group called RUN DMC turning it into a reference for the illegal drug DMT. This is on multiple levels a blending of rap and techno culture, and perfect does it job of representing the type of music found on the album.

    So does this hold? Guess if the genre is rap, techno of trap of the album covers below and see if you are right.



    Album 1

    Answer: RAP        

    Album 2

    Answer: TRAP      

    Album 3

    Answer: TRAP      
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  3. 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. While many individuals would be hard pressed to name a single film that Mickey appears in, the ears logo has become entrenched in popular culture, in part thanks to its simplistic circular design. The company has utilized this circle theme in other deliverables, particularly in their movie posters. While the story lines and animations styles may differ, the inclusion of these symbols generates a sense of unity throughout the various films’ posters. 

    A main archetypal definition of circles is inclusion. One Disney poster where this is especially evident is for the 1991 movie “Beauty and the Beast”. The rounded silhouette of the title characters in the middle of the page enhances the idea that the story focuses on them and creates the notion that the two only have eyes for each other. The light emanating from the middle of the poster is reminiscent of the sun, signifying a cheerful, hopeful plot line.

    Conversely, circles can also symbolize exclusion. In the poster for the 1989 feature “The Little Mermaid” the placement of the protagonist, Ariel’s, outline over the moon might represent her status as an outsider in the above-shore world. Again, the circular image isgenerating light, putting a greater emphasis on the role that natural elements play throughout the movie. A summary of plot elements can also be seen in circular form in the posters for numerous other films, particularly those from the 1950s-1990s.

    Though the posters in question may not pay direct homage to Mickey himself, there is a definite reoccurrence of the shape in the company’s materials. As Mickey illustrator John Hench once quipped, “Mickey Mouse is made up entirely of curves and that’s very reassuring. People have had millions of years experience with curved objects and they’ve never been hurt by them. It’s the sharp and pointed things that give you trouble” (Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination), which serves nicely as a tenet for Disney. 
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  4. The above comic by Robert Berry appears in his Ulysses “Seen” adaptation of the James Joyce novel Ulysses. In an article, Adaptation and Narrative in Ulysses “Seen” by Janine Utell for The Comics Grid, she explains how “how well Ulysses lends itself to comics adaptation.” Utell goes on to explain how the Berry adaptation is a wonderful use of comic to hopefully entice readers to “…engage both with the story of Ulysses and with the art of the comic.” I have not read Ulysses and all I ever heard was "it's bad because it's about women committing adultery back in the day." I thought "How can the art of comic make an old mundane book about adultery enticing?"

    I was interested to learn about the mechanics, the gutter and the other frameworks of comic art during Professor Logie’s lecture. Janine Utell’s article reinforces those aspects of the art. The article is really a review of Robert Berry’s comic skills at interpreting the James Joyce novel Ulysses. I needed the interpretation. I suppose that another attribute of the comic art. The visual gets you to look, to read and to maybe consider spending more time thinking about something new. Something different.

     

     I saw the comic and read it three times. I was not amused and a bit confused. I was missing the point but, my interest was piqued. Finding the Janine Utell article was fortunate. She brings together the reasons the comic art is an important part of visual rhetoric.  Janie Utell puts it best: “the conventions of comics allow for representing shifts in perspective, splits in the subject, movement over time and space, and the manipulation of voice–in short, because comics allow for a high degree of narrativity…”  



    http://ulyssesseen.com/  Accessed on 4/25/2013
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  5. 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.

    I’m not much for social networking, but I do spend a lot of time on certain sites that fit Kaplan and Haenlein’s definition of social media as “a group of Internet-based applications…that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”: I’m into fanfiction.

    Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar, makes an interesting argument about fandom and participatory culture (we discussed the Xena website study in class). It’s about reclaiming storytelling—folk culture—from corporations, and bringing it back to the public sphere where people can share the ideas and give them new meanings.

    For fans, it’s about engagement— interaction with the stories and with each other.

    Since websites replaced fan magazines, the features of communication that have become popular in social networking (embedding images, video, and links, tagging, and so on) have begun to be applied to storytelling in this new medium.


    The site is interconnected with other sites.

    Pages can be linked to other pages, both external and within the site.

    It’s a key part of the site’s arrangement.

    This story was written by a native English speaker based on a graphic novel series by a Japanese man. A French woman linked the story to her own page of works. She supplemented the tags and also used tagging to comment on the story.
     

    Stories can be written, oral, or video; illustrated; transformed from text to audio; originally in any language and translated to any other. The medium is flexible and interactive, and nothing stands in isolation.
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  6. The magic: The man holding the ax actually dropped it on his foot.
    (Image Source: Flikr, originally from "Understanding Comics")
    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.  While these gutters are often empty, brave artists in comics and other visual fields have placed notes, drawings, even actions in and across the gutter. This can build on the readers' imaginations and pull them into whatever they may be reading or watching.


    The gutter space can also be used to set the audience up for an unexpected turn.  One of my all-time favorite gutter space violations comes from an animated sketch from the TV show Wonder Showzen, a mature-audiences parody of a children's show, which is known for its controversial (and often offensive) dark humor.  In the sketch, a bionically reconstructed drunkard (a parody of the Six Million Dollar Man) is shown running toward the screen in two split frames.  This is practiced broadly in animation, and, as McCloud classifies it, an action-to-action cut, which American viewers readily interpret as a left-to right time progression. 

    Na na na na na na na na...



    In this case, however, that logical progression is thrown out the window. 

    Winobot Knockout
    Take that, space-time continuum!

    As the man on the left reaches across the gutter space and hits his future self across the head with a bottle, viewers suffer a moment of confusion, resulting in (ideally) a chuckle or two.  While completely disregarding the gutter space like this would not hold water in any serious work, it was perfect for the show's humorous purpose and extremely unusual audience.

    Depending on the action that crosses the gutter (not to mention the context, audience and purpose), this approach can be used to credible ends, in comics and in other fields.  Perhaps a boxer throws a punch in one frame and lands it across the gutter space, or a bullet is fired in one frame, passes through a wall (gutter) and hits a target in the next frame.  Bold composers in any area can use gutters to nearly infinite ends, expected or otherwise.
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  7. 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 the case of craigslist, they substitute an aesthetically appealing design for maximum usability. The website is designed to display information and facilitate sales between individuals with maximum efficiency and the least amount of confusion possible.

    Below is a sample of a typical local craigslist website. It is used a personal classifieds for just about anything. Job searching, garage sales, and personals ads are all housed on this site. The beauty of craigslist is in its simplicity. The site looks like it could be designed by any amateur (I picture graphic designers cringing at the home page layout) computer programmer but the functionality of craigslist is astonishing. The search bar encourages the user to search for anything. Literally anything. If anything matches the search term on craigslist, you will find it. Occasionally, it takes a little sifting to weed out irrelevant results but from personal experience, the results I have had with craigslist are great. I think that the simplistic design is overlooked by the typical user when they realize how straightforward and efficiently the website gets results.  When going for great website design, sometimes simple is best.

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  8. 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. If you try to visit the Backpack webpage now, a message appears saying the site is "retired" and services are only available to existing customers. However, the page recommends trying Basecamp, which is basically an updated version of Backpack.
    Coincidentally, I use Basecamp at my internship; it's a platform that allows employees within the business to keep track of projects and progress on tasks, and clients are able to access the site to allow for free-flow communication between clients and project managers. Anyway, I'll get to the point. The login link on Basecamp is still hard to find. Although Basecamp is an improved version of Backpack and the link is not nearly as hidden as it was, the first few times I tried to login to Basecamp I spent a good 15 seconds looking for the link.
    This is just the top half of the page and the login button/link text is not any larger than the advertisements next to it. In addition, I was confused because once you login to Basecamp, it looks completely different than the homepage so I was overwhelmed by the lack of consistency.

    Websites should make sure to take their current users' needs into consideration when creating their homepage; while websites like this obviously want to gain as many new customers as they can, they should shift a small amount of the homepage's focus to ease of use for existing customers. Having a login link that's hard to find will frustrate users (many times, if you're like me). Basecamp offers great services but their page layout should reflect the convenience they hope to provide to their customers.
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  9. -->
    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. For example, Nielsen advises designers to "conform to design conventions" by making links blue and to “change the color of visited links” as the ones in Figure 1 appear.  However, Figure 2 displays a series of links on the same page that appear as black text, giving no indication that they are in fact links. What’s more is that these links do not change color after they have been clicked, as the blue ones do.
    The concerns of the article also seem somewhat subjective and dated, though it was updated within the last two years. For a top ten list of “egregious offenses against users,” such things as advertisements, pdf files and opening new windows seem like either minor inconveniences or simply not everyone’s cup of tea. Considering the work at hand, I am somewhat puzzled by Nielsen’s reputation as a usability guru. His advice strikes me as either blatantly obvious, subjective, or irrelevant. I do not see much insight.
    Figure 2: un-highlighted links
    Figure 1: Links following Nielsen's guidelines
         
     







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  10. 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.


    http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2010/09/felix-cat-great-comic-book-tails.html
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