Reflections

As time pass by in doing this blog, I learned a lot on how to run a fully educative blog. I found it very hard as I had to do a lot of research and think of what issues to post in my blog.

Furthermore, I need to consider my target audience and post my content accordingly. This is done to prevent upsetting my audience. As Shriver (1997) says "document designer who misunderstand their audience and their frame of reference can create document that evoke confusion, and in some cases even anger".

As a blogger, I now understand my responsibility and I will write with ethic in my mind.

Reference

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

Facebook VS Twitter : DIfference in Genre

Gone were the days where people cant leave their handphone at home, now the young adult like me can't survive without Facebook. However, Facebook is facing a emerging competition, Twitter.

(source: facebook.com)

Let me explain what is most prominent feature for both Facebook and Twitter. Facebook allows users to connect with friend. Although that is the primary function, it applies Kress (2001) theory of multimodality where multiple modes is used to create multisensory messages. This multiple modes may includes visual images , songs, hyperlinks to stimulate our senses other than visual cues.

I personally have a facebook account, and it is very convinient for me to keep in touch with my friend even though they are hundred miles away from me. I

(source: twitter.com)

As for Twitter, it is a text based communicating with the context about 'what you are doing?' . It sends your messages to your "followers". It has 140 words limit. However, i found it non user friendly and I stopped using their services not long after I register an account. This apply to 54.88% of total Tweeter as they never 'tweeted' as stated by Hubspot.com(2009).

For a designer to utilize fully of these feature, many things has to take into consideration. According to Karp, it depend on the type of communication. If the message is meant for private usage ( annoucement on class gatherings as example), it is advisable to use Facebook as it provides you with the ability to send the message to your friends only. This is because Facebook user has approve every Facebook friend request.

However, if the message is intented to wider audience, it is advisable to use twitter. Your 'follower' does not need to know you in person in order to follow you. Therefore Twitter can reach to more audience if it's utilize appropriately. This is particular useful for politicians as their ultimate goal is to spread their ideology to as many people as possible.

In conclusion , a designer has to keep in mind on his intended target audience and purpose. If it is for private usage, it is advised to use Facebook as medium for message. On the other hand, if the target audience has wider range, it is advisable to use Twitter as medium for a message.

Reference

Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001, 'Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication", Arnold, London.

Hubspot.com 2009, "State of Twittersphere 2009', viewed 10 June 2009


Karp S 2007, "Web Communication Experiment: Blog Vs Facebook Vs Twitter", viewed 10 June 2009

Makkal Osai suspended ?

Makkal Osai, a Tamil daily, permit has been suspended for one month as written in The Star article. This due to Makkal Osai has published a sensitive image as shown below.

(Source: Tinyplanetblog.com)

The caption used by Makkal Osai is " If the person repent his mistakes , heaven awaits him". It is originally aim to quote Christ saying and potray the wisedom of Christ. As Walsh (2006) said, a picture can evoke possible senarios and reader could respond to it imaginatively or effectively. For Christian reader, Jesus is a holy figure for them. Such images would offend the Christian as it is a defamation of their holy figure. However, the non-Christian would take it as humour as the message is brought up in a creative way.

In a nutshell, the creatively made work has failed in their design. This is because the imagery used does not entertain the audience but offend them instead. As Shriver (1997) says "document designer who misunderstand their audience and their frame of reference can create document that evoke confusion, and in some cases even anger". Therefore , a document designer has to be careful when selecting imagery as a medium of message.

P.S Note that the imagery used for explainatory purposes, no insult are intended.

Reference

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal text’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

The Star 2007, Makkal Osai Suspended, Viewed 7 June 2009

Plagiarism VS Copyright Infringement

It is known that to copy other people work is a wrongdoing. It is known as plagiarism in academic world. Sometimes there is lawsuit filed to those who have done copyright infringement. However, our lecturer said it is alright as long the original author are given credit. Who is right ?

To really understand the situation, you have to understand the word plagiarism and copyright infringement. A definition from www.plagiarismchecker.com to explain the differences of this two word :

Plagiarism : is using someone else's work without giving proper credit - a failure to cite properly. School enforce plagiarism.

Copyright infringement : is using someone else's creative work, which can include a song, a video, a movie clip, a piece of visual art, a photograph, and other creative works, without authorization or compensation. The court enforce copyright infringement.

To further explain the differences , i may copied a non-copyrighted work (ancient literature work from Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, and etc...) as the author is long dead. Copyright infringement doesn't work on me . However if I did not credit the author properly, I may failed in assignments.

As for copyright infringement, I copied a copyrighted work without gaining permission from the owner. Despite I given credit to the original author , I still liable for copyright infringement. This happens when "Harry Potter" Author Wins Copyright Claim reported in CBS news.

(Source: Photobucket.com)

When Steven Vander Ark, the owner of Harry Potter Lexicon Website has copied J.K Rowling work. Despite the Lexicon Website has stated that the information created is based on Harry Potter book. However, Steven did not gain permission from Rowling for publishing purpose. Thus, Steven may faced a court order to close down his website.

In conclusion, although reading is a good hobby. Reader tend to use their schemata (prior knowledge) to interpret meaning from a text. This schema theory ( Putnis & Petelin, 1996) where reader interpret text and construct their meaning based on prior knowledege,and background knowledge. Steven used Harry Potter as basis of his work as many people have known Harry Potter. However, Steven has to be more careful on creating his work as he might face another copyright infringement.

Reference

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, "Professional: Principles and Applications: Writing to Communicate", pp 230

Plagiarismchecker.com 2006, "Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement: Is Copying Illegal?", Viewed 5 June 2009,


CBS News 2oo8, "Harry Potter" Author Wins Copyright Claim", Viewed 5 June 2009,

The power of photograph

Photo can expressed a thousand words. This is agreed by Walsh (2006) that pictures give more meaning than text using visual grammar. Shriver (1997) said that readers can still remember a picture even after long time seeing it. In The power of photograph, it is said that the images in newspaper is what newspaper editor wants the public to see. However what newspaper editor wants the public to see may not be the truth, it may be their political ideology , their bias views.

How can they achieve that, they manipulate the truth , by using pictures.

How Picture lie?

Unfortunately , this is a common practice among media field. Below is the video showing how a normal looking girl can look pretty in billboard.

Other than that, another example is taken from flickr.com to demonstrate the power of photoshop.
The sad thing about this is that "people believe in news photograph. They are more inherent trust in what they see than what they read" ( Lasica, 1988) . It is the matter of ethics that news photos is edited by the publisher. I personally think that it is a dilemma for publisher to be ethical and to be profit making.



In the conclusion, it is advised not to believe some pictures as it may be edited by editor to distort your perception and views.

Reference

Lasica JD 1988, Photograph that lie, viewed 4 June 2009


Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York


Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print and visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literarcy, vol. 29, no. 1, p.24-37.

Print VS Online Print. Can you spot the differences ?

Most people didn't realize that online print has different aspect of design compared to print. But there is differences. While both has the same purpose , but they carry themselves in different manner.

First noticeable thing when it come to print is that the the picture complement with words as they work together to convey meaning( Schriver 1997). But for online print, theory of multimodality (Walsh 2006) is applied where multiple form of medium helps convey a message. Such medium may range from music to pictures to hyperlinks to videos.

Secondly, the text is usually shorter for online print. This reduces readers left-to-right eye movement and thus make the online print reader friendly.(Parker 2003). Another noticeable difference is that the most important information is placed at the top left corner of a page. This is because read online print in F-shape pattern. (Nielsen, 2006)

In conclusion , when designing for print or online print, text alone is not enough. For print, it is better to have images and text to convey meaning. As for online print, it is advisable to incoportae video and musics ,hyperlink to make the online medium more intereactive.



Nielsen, J 2006, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, Jakob Nielsen Alertbox, viewed 4 June 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>.

Parker, RC 2003, Looking good in print, 5^th edn, Paraglyph Press, Arizona.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australia Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1,p24-37

Blogging Classification and Communities

Blogging Classification


According to Technorati.com (2008), blogs are classified into many categories, some of them are:

• Entertainment
  
• Lifestyle
• Sports
• Business
  
• Politics
• Technology

Reader reads a blog according to subjects they are interested in. For example, a photography lover like me would enjoyed reading camera review in technology section.

Blogging Communities

According to Vinson (2006), a community of blogger is like any other communities. They come together due to common interests, and they are held together by that interest.
One of the online community that are demonstrated by this Vinson definition is Devianart, a photography online communities. Devianart is a place for user to share their own art like photography, digital art(photoshop-ed photos) , sketch and etc...

What about blogs ? Xanga is the perfect example for blogging community where blogger are connected to other blogger. Xanga is a community where blogger can create blog for free, sharing picture and videos, meeting up friends. A photography lover like me can create a blog for photography purposes in Xanga. After that, i can share my pictures and my interest with many other blogger in Xanga.

Reference

ABC Radio National 2008, A taxanomy of blogs, viewed 2 June 2009,
<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>

Technorati 2008, Blog Directory, viewed 2 June 2009,
<http://technorati.com/blogs/directory>

Vinson J 2006, Blogging and Communities, viewed 2 june 2009
<http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2006/06/26/blogging_and_communities.html>

Blogosphere

When blogs are newly introduced, many people are skeptics about it.
This is because the users are mainly teenager who blog about their life.
Today, blogs has turn into a dominant place for internet surfers.
Even Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak also has his own blog now.
Click here to visit his blog.

As Brad Feld, Managing director of Foundry Group has said that :
"“In 2004 when Technorati started, the typical reaction to the word ‘blog’ was ‘huh - can you repeat yourself?’ Today, blogs are everywhere —even presidential candidates have blogs"


Other than that, this phenomenon is proven by the number of blogs available in the blogosphere.
(refer to picture below)

With that much of blogger , what are they blogging about ?
Well, it is highly depend on the country.As Schriver (1997) say that whatever is designed or publish must cater to the audience's needs, wants and belief.
For example , Malaysian audience tend to read blogs that are related to politics. Some famous blogger like Jeff Ooi, Lim Kit Siang,Former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir mainly include their political views.

There are many type of blogs that are categorized by Thinkquest (2006) such as :

• Personal
  
• Corporate
• Collaborative
• Humour
  
• Spam

Benefits

Blogs now serves as alternative media in Malaysia as people are more dependant to blogs. The corporates also gain benefits as it provide platform for marketing and advertising.

Reference

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Whiley Computer Pub, New York.

Technorati 2008, State of blogosphere 2008, viewed 1 June 2009, <http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere>

Thinkquest 2006, Types of Blogs, viewed 1 June 2008, <http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs.html>

What is a good document design

What makes a good document? Reep ( 2006) states that a good document need have four major element .
1) balance, 2) proportion , 3) sequence and 4) consistency.

However, a good document need to have information value as Kress ( 2001) stated. A document is useless without information value.

Using my group and my individual assignment's presentation slides as example , I will compare these slides and explain how i utilize the design principles in it.

I have used the same design principle for my group and individual introduction slides. I improvise on Kress (1998) idea on newspaper layout. In this case would be the Ideal-Real design.

Source:http://www.bris.ac.uk/poverty/news_files/independent%20page.jpg

To further explain this concept, Krees ( 1998) explains that the composition of Ideal is at the top part, and Real will be the bottom. Usually Ideal will be fictional , and Real would be facts.In example shown in figure 1. The front page is conveying a message that a lot children is starving. The number 1,000,000,000 is an estimated figure hence justify it's Ideal figure. The bottom Real is real as it shows the picture of starving children as facts.



Group Presentation Introduction slides

Individual Presentation Introduction slides

Both of my introduction slides has the same Ideal-Real Concept shown in pictures above. The placement of UniSA logo and it's name on the top Ideal part is because my ideal goal is to get a degree from UniSA. As for the bottom Real part, my name and my id number is factual and real.



However, my purpose is different for both of my presentation. Therefore its have different style of presenting.The main difference is the content of my presentation. For my group presentation, I am explaining theory and designing concepts whereas I explained coca-cola advertisement for my individual presentation. Therefore my group presentation slides is text heavy and my individual presentation has more pictures.
Group Presentation Slides
Individual Presentation Slides

My group presentation slides is text heavy, and it make the slide boring.According to Nielsen (1997), he say that people do not read word by word especially documents on the internet.People tend to take text in documents for granted and only focus on what their eyes want to see ,therefore i made some changes for my individual presentation slides. To adhere for that theory , i decided to add more picture to my individual slides

The 4 major element in good design stated by Reep (2006) is added to my slides.
There is 1) symmetrical balance ,2) the pictures used has same proportion, 3) there is sequence from left to right as from day to night, 4) the 2 pictures used is consistent with coca cola advertisement.Therefore I believe that my Individual Presentation slides has a good document design.

Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, 'Chapter 6: the meaning of composition', in Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edn, Routledge, New York , p. 175-214.
Nielsen, J 1997, How users read on web, viewed 5th April 2009,
< http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html >
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ' Front pages: The critcal analysis of newspaper layout'.

Reep, DC 2006, 'Chapter 4: principles of document design', in Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson Edu Inc, New York, p. 173-190.

Introduction

Blogging is one way of expressing oneself. In this blog, I will go in depth in researching issues that are related to publication and design in the media world. 

Publication has various forms, it consist of videos, television,  print, advertisements etc..In this blog, I will point out the issues in different forms of publication that happens around the world.

 This blog also caters for those who are interested in communication field as they can venture into media world through this blog.