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.
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).


The very same day after we discussed Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint", I was subjected to a PowerPoint presentation in which the student committed many of the mistakes this comedian points out in the video "How NOT to use powerpoint". It was rather difficult to not laugh, and indeed I had trouble focusing on the message because all I could think about was how bad the presentation was. I distinctly remember my professor telling us that having visual presentations wasn't necessary, but that they wouldn't hurt to help the audience understand our topics. That, my classmates, was a horribly mean lie.

Here is a summarized list of what is covered in the video, along with some choice quotes:
1. Putting everything a presenter wants to say on a slide, then reading off the slide
2. Not runing spell check... then attemting to read of of the slid
3.

  • Excessive
  • bullet
  • points
  • "...Term bullet point comes from people firing guns at annoying presenters"
4. Bad color schemes
5. Too many slides
6. Too much data/too fancy of graphs
    -"You can improve effectiveness by adding some shading and some 3D effects"
7. Too much animation
8. Stupid font choice (Thankfully, blogger.com saves it's users from this blunder)

Now let's look at a few things that Tufte has to say:
For mistake 3: Use of bullet points often clouds topic or key point - Almost always BAD (16)
Mistake 4: While Tufte doesn't say anything specific about color, the "standard ready-made" template shown on page 18... Yeah. - BAD
Mistake 6: 3-D effects for graphs, in one word - BAD (21)
As to mistake 7: Animated transitions and things liked the "dreaded slow-reveal" - BAD (6)

Faith in humanity cannot be completely lost when there are people in the world who are able to recognize the horrible blunders of PowerPoint usage like the comedian in the video, and we must thank him for posting his message on Youtube.com. He presents the mistakes so clearly (ironically using PowerPoint to do so) that the issues become instantly obvious and everyone can admit to having committed at least one at some point, but we really shouldn't need a comedian to point out these problems! 
In conclusion, don't use PowerPoint because it "can just suck the life out of you".
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... 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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