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.
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.

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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. 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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Every day we are faced with multiple typefaces: the good, the bad and the ugly. Some help us to read faster and more clearly, some to invoke a specific feeling or emotion, all the while persuading us to do something (or buy something).
... and how clashing implications continue to shape our reactions to these colors.

Depending on the region and cultural upbringing, one may have different connotations associated with the colors black, white, and red.
When talking about the ethics and rhetoric of data displays in class, I brought up the example of geographic information system (GIS) and their technique of interpolation.
"The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" makes the assertion that:

The core ideas of teaching- explanation, reasoning, finding

things out, questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronizing

authoritarianism-are contrary to the cognitive style of PowerPoint.
When I first pulled out Tufte's packet on Power Point, it looked like one of the most boring texts on the planet. 30 pages on the style of Power Point? But as I read, I started to see his point and even found myself laughing at certain parts (talking about the “stupefied audience”).
Since media technology has advanced past the typewriter, the capabilities of visual, and eventually digital, rhetoric using images have grown exponentially. By appealing to different human attitudes and emotions, digital images have the ability of persuasion and gaining compliance alike.
Often referred to as graffiti, tagging, or more negatively as vandalism, street-art has been around for 40ish years as it was birthed in the 70 but only gained a real popularity in the mid-80’s.
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