Welcome to the World (Wide Web)

To round out a project-filled semester, my digital portfolio is complete!  My portfolio includes information about myself, my career aspirations, work samples, and my resume.        

http://amyclawrence16.wix.com/amylawrence

The Ultimate Branding Tool

Branding is a familiar and necessary marketing tool in the communications world.  But perhaps the most important thing to brand is oneself.  A website provides an effective and simplistic format for an individual to brand oneself and that is what I'll aim to do in my webpage.  

I seek to create a digital portfolio with the hopes of achieving many future goals I have set.  My site objectives are to produce a searchable website that showcases my communication skills necessary for a career after graduation.  I would like my site to display writing samples, my resume, and work samples from previous courses and internships to display my proficiency in communication studies. 

With aspirations to be a press secretary on Capitol Hill, my audience is any potential employer in a Congressional office in Washington, D.C.  They, as the user, will need to be able to easily navigate my site in order to quickly determine my potential as an employee.  My audience would need to know a little about myself, including education level and previous experience, in addition to what programs and platforms I am capable of working with.  Most importantly, I will need a way for users to contact me with questions (and potential job offers!).

The scope of my website is important as I begin to build it from the ground up.  I could embed a professional Twitter account, Instagram, and LinkedIn page to showcase social media skills.  A contact form and my resume are definite necessities for a successful webpage.  I also would like to include writing samples from previous internships, which include public relations blog posts, social media posts, and press releases.  Other work samples would include papers written on the topic of government from my political science classes.  Digital media can be provided from the slideshow created in Digital Communications in addition to photos taken while on a study away trip which visited 13 countries in 108 days.  Displaying photos can show my abilities to use Photoshop professionally, as well as capture important moments.

Here are a few website designs that were really aesthetically pleasing to me!

I like this Pilates Site's social media icons in the top left corner.

The simplicity of Stapleton's site exudes class and creativity!

Jason James's portfolio displays his subcategories uniquely.

The design of A Naturally-Aged Story invites their audience warmly.

People, People, Lots of People!

People are good for a multitude of things.  One of those things is intelligently reading webpages for their needs.  Redish describes how “Writing Web Content That Works” is crucial in creating a webpage.  The audience is hands down the most important part when making a webpage so you must understand them before you start.

Seven steps to understanding your audiences: (3)

1. List your major audiences.
2. Gather information about your audiences.
3. List major characteristics for each audience.
4.  Gather your audiences’ questions, tasks, and stories.
5. Use your information to create personas.
6. Include the persona’s goals and tasks.
7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site. 

Above is a homepage from Epic PR Group based in Alexandria, Virginia.  Originally, I sought the webpage because it wasn’t very functional, was difficult to navigate, and was extremely hard to find what you were looking for.  But to my surprise, the website has completely been redone since I have interned for the public relations firm.  The navigation bar at the top of the page provides shortcuts titled ‘Who We Are,’ ‘What We Do,’ ‘What We Think,’ ‘What You Need to Know,’ and ‘Contact Us.’  Overall, I think the redesign is mainly positive.  What else does the site do well?  

Despite a redesign, I still think their website could use a bit more of a user-friendly interface.  There is no search bar and it isn’t obvious at a first glance that Epic is a public relations firm.  They do provide a unique ‘Stay Informed’ form at the bottom, but who knows what you’re really signing up for?  What other improvements do you think Epic could have made?        

The User Experience

The Elements of User Experience, written by Jesse James Garrett, explains how to best build technology with the user in mind.  The first chapter focuses broadly on “The Elements of User Experience” and the second chapter narrows its view to display the details behind the specific elements.     

Garrett begins with defining user experience as “the experience the product creates for the people who use it in the real world,” (6).  A bit obvious, I know, but I felt it necessary for the audience to understand the central focus of the book: the user.

One of the more important points he makes in the chapter proves that product design matters.  The product must be functional, or who would want to use it?  There are far more companies who could perfect a mediocre idea and turn it into a million dollar business before you could even blink.  Therefore it’s most important that the product be user friendly and easy to operate.

Another important factor in webpage design is a company’s success in gaining capital.  In order to be a good business, your users have to have a positive experience.  If you want a good ROI, or return on investment, the product design must warrant customer support (13).

Ultimately, the user-centered design is a simple idea, but one that is more complex in execution (17).  Can you think of a product that was design with the user in mind?  What about one that needed a remodel after customer feedback?

Garrett’s second chapter touches on The Five Planes.  “These five planes…provide a conceptual framework for talking about user experience problems and the tools we use to solve them,” (21).

1. The Surface Plane
2. The Skeleton Plane
3. The Structure Plane
4. The Scope Plane
5. The Strategy Plane

The iPhone Rises

For my video project, I chose to focus on the climb of the iPhone to success and how Furman students utilize social media on a daily basis.  In a world where iPhone has become synonymous  with cell phone, I set out to determine how our generation sees the digital world differently.    

Online Editing for Dummies

Brian Carroll’s Writing for Digital Media devotes an entire chapter to “Getting It Right: Online Editing, Designing and Publishing.” 

The chapter opening proclaims, “online publishing is not at all like editing for print, at least in terms of job responsibilities,” (120).  Luckily for us, Carroll lays out eight key points to step-by-step edit online.

1. Identify the readers and the purpose of the content: Focus mainly on the needs of the reader
2. Define document structure and links: Make sure the website is easy to navigate
3. Define the style: Use templates and keep it consistent
4.  Edit: Editing chunks of randomly spread information is more effective than reading start to finish
5. Copyedit: Search diligently for typos and misspellings
6. Copyedit (again!): Utilize other sources this time, such as dictionaries, stylebooks, or encyclopedias
7. Write headlines: Headlines are necessary for quick skimming and finding useful information
8.  Test usability: Navigation should be easy and make sense for your content

Another concept Carroll dives into is multimedia storytelling.  The two necessary skill sets for editors include XHTML coding and being proficient in multimedia (128).  These two ar

e most important when it comes to telling your digital story, but the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack studies reveal four succinct characteristics of first-rate multimedia presentations (129).

1.     Short is better.

2.     Interactive is better.

3.     Personal (or local or hyperlocal) is preferred.

4.     Navigability is central.

So, can you think of any well-designed webpages? Which characteristics make it that way?

Do You See What I See?

John S. Douglass and Glenn P. Harnden focus on “Point of View” in their work, The Art of Technique: An Aesthetic Approach to Film and Video Production.  The authors meticulously explain the perspective of the storyteller and the best approaches to telling a story.  Decisions must be made to determine how to best display a perspective in the most effective manner and Douglass and Harnden walk the reader through it.

First Person

First person is most useful in narratives.  “Presenting the ‘truth’ about events is probably most credible as a first person, eyewitness account” (32).  When telling of an event that a character witness himself, a “direct, personal expression,” works best (32). 

The technique used most often is a voice-over narration.  A first person narrative lets a viewer know what a character is thinking or feeling at a moment in time.  It also allows viewers to more easily characterize the narrator in their role.  How does a first person narration enable the story line to progress more quickly?

Second Person

The second person in productions is often deemed “you” as the viewer in the audience.  The authors elucidate on their point with examples such as, “This is how you do such-and-such.  This is of concern to you and you and you,” making the plot significant to the audience (34).

Cinema verite operates on a platform somewhere between first and second person.  Its unique style introduces the camera as a participant in the story, rather than an “invisible observer” (34).  Can you think of an example where cinema verite is used?  

Third Person

The majority of productions are made in third person.  “The actions of characters and people on the screen are rendered from an observer’s point of view, but this point of view is not omniscient,” (35).  There are still things left unknown for both the audience and observer to uncover.

The authors end the section with a powerful, although seemingly obvious message.  “When choosing a point of view, the best choice is the one that tells the story in the most compelling way,” (38).   

Once Upon a Digital Story

Osgood and Hinshaw write an entire book on Visual Storytelling, but for our purposes their chapter on “The Aesthetics of Editing” serves the most purposeful for our class.  As we begin our video projects, the authors offer helpful tips on how to edit video effectively.

Director Louis Malle is quoted in the chapter as saying, “I keep telling my editors, if you win an award for editing, I won’t work with you anymore. Your editing shows,” (230).  The cardinal rule of editing is to be sure the viewer isn’t aware that the story is being cut, as the story should flow so naturally that a viewer does not have time to consider whether or not the editing is quality or subpar.  

Have you ever noticed the editing as a viewer?  Do you notice it because it is excellent editing or poor editing?

Osgood and Hinshaw identify several aspects of good editing to consider when cutting a video.

•        Image and Sound
•        Shot Order
•        Shot Relationship
•        Time
•        Rhythm and Pacing 

Additionally, transitions are critical to high quality editing.  A transition is  “the fundamental action that advances a story line from shot to shot and scene to scene,” (240).  There are three major techniques when cutting:

•        Cut on dialogue
•        Cut on action
•        Cutting on the beat

Sequencing is another characteristic of first-rate editing.  “The purpose of the sequence is to add interest and sophistication to a scene and provide the viewer with a better understanding of the scene,” (239).  Different shows utilize different sequencing techniques because those patterns work for their material.  

Rachael Ray’s Thirty Minute Meals uses close up shots so that viewers can see how the chef whips up her favorite dishes in thirty minutes.  Displaying the cooking process in close ups makes it more appealing to viewers.  Check out Rachael making BLT Burgers with Sriracha Aioli below.  

Just a Matter of Perspective

Zettl writes a chapter entitled “The Two-Dimensional Field: Forces Within the Screen,” in order to explain spatial fields in the digital media world.  Zettl describes the many different perspectives of how we see the world in movies, television, and on computers.

According to Zettl, “There are six major types of field forces: main directions, magnetism of the frame and attractions of mass, asymmetry of the frame, figure and ground, psychological closure, and vectors,” (123). 

These six field forces define what our eyes are immediately drawn to, and how artists orientate their photos or shots to be aesthetically pleasing to viewers.  By human nature, we are attracted to the arrangement of certain objects in a certain way.  For instance, in the article, Zettl displays an original photo, and it’s asymmetrically flipped duplicate.  We focus consistently on the object on the right side.  Businesses utilize this strategy in marketing products to customers.  In what other ways do businesses attempt to focus our attention on the product?               

One important type of field force is figure and ground.  There are five defining characteristics to determine the figure in contrast to the ground.   

  

·      The figure is thinglike. You perceive it as an object

·      The figure lies in front of the ground

·      The line that separates the figure from the ground belongs to the figure, not the ground.

·      The figure is less stable than the ground; the figure is more likely to move.

·      The ground seems to continue behind the figure. (113)

For example, the optical allusion below is a classic example of figure and ground.  Can you determine which is the figure and which is the ground? Is it possible for both images to fit both criteria?

The Impact of Technology on Relationships

The Question of Perception

Virilio focuses his final section of Open Sky on images and how we interpret them.  On the topic of how we see such images, he poses one important question: “Can we still talk of images when there are no longer any pixels, the laser beam directly stimulating the retinal rods and cones of the eye?”

I believe these impressions without pixels will still maintain their place as images in our world.  So long as they stimulate our brains, make us feel emotion, and can be differentiated from another impression, images will continue to be an important part of our daily lives.  With technological advances, these laser beams may even push our brains to strain farther than we ever thought before.  So, how might these new laser beamed images enhance our abilities to collect information?

“’It is in the nature of the French not to like what they see.’ Well, are they right or wrong?  That is indeed the question: the question of choice in perception.  Are we free, truly free, to choose what we see?”

Virilio makes an interesting point.  The question of choice is in perception.  We perceive things differently and therefore must act on those images.  How we make our choices defines us as a person.  One who likes a sunrise may also like a sunset.  However that same person may not find the rolling hills to be attractive.  What defines good taste from poor taste in viewing images?

A Sunrise at Pretty Place, Camp Greenville

Is Less Really More?

Virilio’s Part II of Open Sky takes on more manageable topics for the everyday audience.  One of his major points reads: “If the recent evolution of post-industrial machinery is anything to go by: less is more” (54). 

Virilio is commenting on our industrialization as a society and how more is not always better.  For example, iPhones, televisions, radios, all of this new technology…is it beneficial to our society? Or detrimental to our livelihood?    

Ultimately, “The burning question is: if less is more, to what extent?” (54).  What justifies as enough?  If people really were happy with less, as opposed to more, why do inventors continue to expand their horizons and improve technology?

I can assure you that Apple isn’t planning to discontinue innovations anytime soon and Toyota is going to continue to continue to make more efficient hybrid cars for consumers.  What Virilio is overlooking is the consumer.  If there is a market for products that are bigger and better and more high tech, I would presume there will be an audience that wants such a product.

The last ever MacBook?

If we all have “enough,” what more is there to strive for?  Without aspirations of achieving greatness, I would argue that society, as a whole would become unproductive and complacent.  Our relentless attitudes and determined spirit is what we, as a society, utilize in order to keep moving forward.  

Time as a State of Mind

Beginning Part I of Paul Virilio’s Open Sky was an eye opener.  Not only because of its difficulty to understand, but once I conquered the language barrier, I learned what Virilio has to say is fairly radical.     

Part I is based on the idea of time and an individual’s time in a specific space.  He dictates the importance (or lack thereof) of near and far, and here and now.  While these spaces of time may have been important previously, Virilio asserts that soon there will be no difference between these spaces. 

For instance, teleportation is not far off when telecommunication (such as conference calls) is a medium of today.  Business executives in Hong Kong can videoconference the chief executive officer of a major corporation in New York City to discuss international trade.  Consequently, the businessman in the United States is in two places at once, as is the foreign trader.  These assumptions erase the present man, and take their position as telepresence and tele-existence.  Can we really be two places at once, even if only via technology?

I believe the most drastic claim Virilio makes is in his last few pages of the section. He states: “Whether we like it or not, for each and every one of us there is now a split in the representation of the World and so in its reality,” (44).  Has our world, specifically how we view the world, changed this drastically?  Virilio believes it has, but what argument does he make for this dramatic division? 

Maybe there is a drastic divide between reality and how we represent reality, but can we go as far to say there are two separate realities?  Virilio thinks we can.  I’m not completely convinced that our means of communication and technology can intermix so far as to create separate realities, but I will be interested to see how the rest of his argument pans out.

He concludes, “We thus find ourselves faced with a sort of great divide in knowing how to be in the world,” a task that may be more difficult than we imagined (25).  We must determine whether we will exist as a civilian or as a nomad on a journey.  For Virilio, it is this decision that determines how we will interpret representations and reality in the future.       

Before and After: Technology at Furman

Before: Dark glow

After: Brighter, sharper

Before: Overexposed

After: Darker Contrast, All Black Screens

Before: Overexposed, Wide Shot

After: Zoomed in, Colors Darkened

Before: Wide Shot, Bright Image

After: Cropped, More Contrast

Before: Underexposed

After: Brightness increased, T added

Technology at Furman

Created with flickr slideshow.

Composition Matters...Or Does it?

Chapter six from Reading Images, written by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, discusses “The Meaning of Composition” in images, advertisements, television shows, and other mediums.  Kress and van Leeuween make several convincing arguments regarding the composition of images that we see on a daily basis.  I had never heard of the “rules” they advocate, and after researching a bit I found it difficult to accept their theory.

Kress and van Leeuween argue “a theory of language is no longer sufficient and must be complemented by theories which can make the principles of the new visual literacy explicit” (Kress).  They address their theories with three directives of composition.  According to the authors, “Composition…relates the representational and interactive meanings of the image to each other through three interrelated systems” (Kress):

1.  Information Value: The location of images associate them with their informational value
2. Salience: The images must draw the attention of viewers and prove their relevance
3. Framing: Including or omitting framing devices shows importance to other items nearby

In some mediums with a divide down the middle of the image, the left side of the image is the “given” and the right side is the “new.”  For instance, in this Taylor Swift feature in Seventeen Magazine, the singer is placed on the left side of the page as a familiar face, while the article and new information on the music star are on the right.

However, there are plenty of popular images that do not fit within the constraints of the authors’ rules.  Oprah, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, anchors on CNN, magazine spreads in Vogue, and the like do not follow this theory.  In fact, I had a more difficult time finding images that did fit into the criteria than those that did not.  Do you think the authors’ theory is followed or merely a suggestion of how images should be compiled?  Are images that do not fit within the constraints of the theory as aesthetically pleasing to you as images that do? See below examples that defy the theory set out by Kress and van Leeuwen.

 

Vogue Magazine spread

Nike advertisement

A Culture Built on Capital

In their chapter “Viewers Make Meaning,” Sturken and Cartwright decipher how audiences uniquely analyze images they see.  They determine that images interpellate viewers and of noteworthiness is how audiences interpellate, defined as “to interrupt a procedure in order to question someone or something formally,” (50).  We, as viewers, are interpellated when viewing a commercial, advertisement, piece of artwork, or billboard.  We are forced to wonder what the purpose of the image is, how it got there, and what it should mean to us.    

Two things that all viewer interpretations involve are aesthetics and taste (56).  Aesthetics rely on one’s analysis of an image’s style or beauty, while taste is a cultural reference.  Taste can be varied among viewers depending upon one’s class, cultural background, or education.  The authors allude to this as a matter of “cultural capital” (60).  This creates a divide between highbrow cultures and lowbrow cultures.  For example, look at Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans.”

The Warhol print gained notoriety among ordinary people as his art sought to shed a positive light on the novelties of common things.  In my eyes, “Campbell’s Soup Cans” represent a modern, universal message for those of a different societal class than previous artists had sought after.  The Product Marketing Manager even wrote Warhol a note expressing his gratitude and appreciation for the artist along with a case of Tomato Soup!  People could finally relate to this kind of artwork, in a way that only highbrow viewers could previously to artists such as Monet and Van Gogh.  Warhol gave cultural significance to an ordinary class of people that formerly could only dream to associate with those of higher culture!

As social subjects of culture, we are forced to view images in daily life and translate their meanings.  How do images interpellate viewers?  Where is the line drawn between interpellating the viewer and manipulating the viewer? Or are they one in the same?  How else can societal class alter how we view images?

The Beauty of Sports Photography

In the chapter “Framed and Mounted: Sport Through the Photographic Eye,” Rowe constructs an argument of how sports photography has changed the notion of aesthetics to the public eye.  He correctly asserts, “The most important object in sports photography is sport’s prime instrument, the human body,” (143).  There are some iconic photographs ingrained in our memories, such as Michael Phelps displaying his eight gold medals from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, or Brandi Chastain taking off her shirt after scoring the winning penalty kick for the United States in the 1999 World Cup.  However, the act of capturing an athlete’s body in action is one that has also been harshly criticized in recent years.

Take for example, Sports Illustrated and their yearly swimsuit edition.  The magazine which usually features athletes playing a sport, celebrating a victory, or donning a gold medal on the cover, once yearly features a female swimsuit model (frequently wearing more skin and less bikini).  The athletic publication known for football biographies, game predictions, and previews of an upcoming season dedicates an entire issue of their renowned magazine to women in swimsuits (or lack thereof).  Rowe points out an admirable piece of information to readers however, when he emphasizes that this kind of marketing for Sports Illustrated works.  “If Sports Illustrated has felt some concern about criticism of, especially, its gender politics (Davis 1997: 6-7), it has also provocatively drawn attention to this aspect of its activities,” (169).  The swimsuit edition was first published in 1964 and so long as people continue to support the magazine, it is unlikely that the magazine’s reputation will suffer (169). 

Perhaps the problem is not how people perceive the magazine models, but in fact how people perceive themselves.  We, as a society, judge ourselves in comparison to the models we see in advertisements and on the cover of magazines.  The result is a generation dedicated to doing everything in their power to have muscles like the male bodybuilder, or be as thin as the model on the runway.  Especially prevalent in females, these aspirations can cause physical and emotional damage.  So much so that Dove has created a “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” encouraging women to view themselves in a different light.  Check out their video below.  Their tagline: “You are more beautiful than you think,” emphasizes how critical women are of their bodies today.  Dove’s campaign builds on Foucault’s (1979) “concept of the ‘panoptcion’ (self-monitoring and self-discipline imposed by feelings constantly under surveillance) of women’s body images” (156).  So Dove set out to change the minds of women all over the nation.  Is the media to blame for an audience’s feelings?  How do you determine if photograph is moral or immoral?

Life's a Party, Dress Like It

Images are everywhere.  Literally, they surround us.  From the Ralph Lauren logo on a friend’s shirt, to the front page of the New York Times, to artwork hung on library walls, images are omnipresent in our daily lives. 

Sturken and Cartwright explain this overload of images in their chapter entitled, “Images, Power, and Politics.”  They assert, “Looking is a social practice,” something all humans are trained intuitively to do, regardless of how we feel about an image (9).  Yet images do have inherent value to us.  The authors add, “The work of detecting social, cultural, and historical meanings in images often happens without our being aware of the process and is part of the pleasure of looking at images,” (34).  We consume hundreds of images daily, and we analyze them according to our opinions on what they represent.  What factors make a person like or dislike an image?

“Conventions are like road signs,” and a company logo is a road sign pointing to their ideology (26).  Lilly Pulitzer is one such company.  Their story all began with a 21-year old woman named Lilly Pulitzer who moved to Palm Beach and started her own juice stand.  Lilly created a dress of her own to hide juice stands while working and people when wild over her fun, colorful designs.  An icon was born!    

Today, Lilly designers still aim to create the same kind of artwork that maintains the Lilly image.  The name it has made for itself is one of bright colors and fun.  People make associations to the brand based on their personal taste.  Lilly Pulitzer is every hipster’s nightmare and every preppy girl’s dream.  The brand caters to the audience that aligns with their ideology, and supports the way of life they advocate.  What other images can you think of portray a way of life for their intended audience?