A Work By Team Robbo
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. Recently documentaries such as “Exit through the gift shop” have brought attention to the subculture and personalities of street art. I find that not only is this art and interesting visual style, but it is an important demonstration of the power in blending pictures, text and color into one piece. The piece by Team Robbo, is in the style of more traditional graffiti, whereas the piece by Banksy is what some consider to be “post-graffiti”. I argue that the same goal is intended for each piece though how it is achieved varies greatly. For both of these pieces, the main choice is typography. In the Team Robbo piece, each letter becomes onto itself an image - and in some cases can be replaced by images as seen here. This is reminiscent of the heavily stylized lettering that would begin each chapter in old books. To those that follow styles like Team Robbo’s, the execution of this text; including color, shape, and its relationship to other letters and the backing, it’s execution and even the choice of placement all add together to build up the “street cred” of the piece and author.
A Work By Bansky
 In Banksy’s piece the use of a simple typeface reinforces the message by linking it to other simple graffiti that carries social motivation. The sparse use of colors is typical of a Banksy piece, but the red lettering on a white background and placed next to a black rat causes the words to really stand out and draw attention. But how do these very differing styles of typography align? Simply put, both of these pieces have been shaped by decisions to draw a large audience, one to build street cred, the other to spread the message. While the Team Robbo does this through a large, colorful, and eye-catching style, Banksy takes a simpler approach and uses two colors to the same effect.
Just as an aside, they once even had a graffiti-off as they fought over the same piece of wall. The progression pictures area great demonstration of how though style differs the message and drive can be the same 
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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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