Good design for screen genre

A good design is very crucial for a document. According to Reep (2006 p. 134), readers do not only read the printed words but they also "reads" the visual presentation of a document. Therefore, there are some basic design principles that should be take note of in the process of designing a document (Reep, 2006 p.135), such as balance, proportion, sequence and consistency.

Whereas Bernhardt's (1986) laws of gestalt is also important in document design and it is somehow similar to Reep's basic design principles, which emphasises on balance and equilibrium, good continuation, clousure and similarty (Bernhardt, 1986). We can see that both principles are very concern about the importance of balance in a document.

First Slide (Front Cover)

The picture above shows the cover page of my group presentation. It is simple and clear enough to brief the audience what topic we have chosen and the list of presenters tells the audience who is going to present. The pictures and color used are quite relevant and appropriate to the topic.

Second Slide

The second pictures shows an example of a bad designed document. The slides if fully packed with words and no pictures are shown to help in explaining the points. According to Nielson (1997), users do not read words by words on the web page, but rather scan through and pick out the points that they think are important. This slides is surely not a good choice for the readers as there are too many words and seems confusing. Furthermore, the last three words are out of margin, and is not readable by the readers because the of the colour of the words and the background is too close.

Third Slide

Fourth Slide

The third and fourth pictures shows nicely designed slides of the document. The sentences in the third slide are short and are clearly listed out. Just as Reynolds (2005) mentioned,the idea of simplicity is an crucial precept that is worth following because the best visuals are often ones designed with an eye toward simplicity (Reynolds, 2005). The design of the third slide is considered as simple yet understandable. As for the fourth slide, the sentences are short and straight to the point. The important keywords are bolded or highlighted, the points are shown in bullted list, and it is half the word count of the conventional writing (Nielson, 1997). Moreover, the design of the fourth slide is considered a formal balance (Reep, 2006 p.135). Hence, this is a simple slide which enables the reader to understand and remember the points easily.


References:

1. Bernhardt, SA 1986, 'Seeing the Text', College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66 - 78.


2. Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, useit.com, viewed 19 April 2010, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html


3. Reep, DC 2006, 'Chapter 6: Document design', Technical writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York.


4. Reynolds, G 2005, What is good PowerPoint design?, Presentation Zen, viewed 19 April 2010, http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html

New Forms of Media Publishing

(Source: Conversation Agent, 2007)

Due to the development of advanced science and technologies, the ways of communications have changed. The mixture of digital covergance, personal computing and global networking, these new forms of media is booming and is giving rise to great changes in the communication environment (Naughton, 2006). Blogs, video websites, Twitter, forums and social networking websites have become the latest trend in the field of communication.

The online publishing materials have changed the ways people used to contact with each other and the way people read. In Malaysia, online journalism only came into attention around 1997 - 1998 and is growing rapidly until today (Ghazali, 2009). The existence of blogs enabled us to share news and information easier and faster. Social networking websites provide a more convinient way for us to contact and keep in touch with families and friends. Youtube has made watching movies online possible. Based on the information from the measurement firm Nielsen, almost two over three of all video views in the United State happen on Youtube (The New York Times, 2009). In the past, people can only from a printed newspaper and books, but nowadays, they can read from the websites that provide online news or download ebooks which is more convinient and faster. For example, news articles and news clips regarding the Poland plane crash can be found on Times Online website and Youtube respectively.

One of the issues that surfaced after the existence of new media the politicians are following the trends, as we can see from the 1 Malaysia campaign introduced by our current Prime Minister. Other than posters and advertisements in the traditional newspaper and magazines, The 1 Malaysia Website serves as a platform for Prime Minister to post his opinions about the development of Malaysia and he also collects suggestion from the feedbacks and comments of the readers, so as to interact with them and bring him closer to them. Video recording method is also used by Prime Minister to deliver his messages to the readers.

(Source: Youtube.com, 2010)

Therefore, new media works together with old media can make the dedication of the intended message more effective, because more and more people knows about 1 Malaysia Concept. As said by Walker (2004), new media and old media complemented each other and they were the part of the same ecosystem (Walker, J 2004).

References:

1. Ghazali, R 2009, Online Journalism: The Malaysian Scene, Agenda Daily, viewed 15 April 2010, http://www.agendadaily.com/cmspreview/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_a64ff57d-ca9db1d0-13cd05a0-11d95ab0


2. Naughton, John 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk, viewed 15 April 2010, http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf


3. The New York Times 2009, Youtube, The New York Times, viewed 15 April 2010, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/youtube/index.html


4. Walker, J 2004, Old Media and New Media - Like it or not, they're partners, Reason Magazine, viewed 15 April 2010, http://reason.com/archives/2004/09/15/old-media-and-new-media

The Blogging Community

Online community is formed when people with same interest comes together and exchange ideas and resources through the Internet (Mandel, C 2008). Blogging has recently become a new platform for online community, which has always played a crucial part of the Internet that are mainly formed by email lists, bulletin boards and forums (White, 2006). Therefore, blogging community can be defined as an online community where bloggers and readers share the same interest in certain topics and issues, and they are eager to discuss and share about their views and opinion with each other, using blogs as their platform.
Currently, we have three kinds of identified blogging communities, which intercepts each other and form a hybrid in between (White, 2006), namely:

(Source: The Knowlege Tree, 2006)

• Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community is formed with a central identity, the blog owner, who controls the focus and power in the community firmly.
• Those in the Central Connecting Topic Community are those who have passion and are very into a certain topic, less interested in positioning themselves and the bloggers and readers with the same interest will link each other.
• As for the Boundaried Community, it is formed a collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single platform such as forums.

The central identities of the Single Blogger Centric Community are usually those who have high reputation, or celebrities, or ordinary people but they wrote things that attract a large amount of readers. For example, Xia Xue, a famous Singaporean blogger, is the central identity of her own blog. She blogs about herself, her lifestyles and things happening around her. She has her own group of readers, and that builds up the Single Blogger Centric Community, because her readers build up the population of her blog. The readers will leave comments and also discuss with each other, subscribe and link to her blog, follow her on Twitter and the readers will also get to know each other when they are having discussion. Therefore, Xia Xue needs to constantly update her blog and interacts with her readers to maintain the community.

References:

1. Mandel, C 2008, Form your own online community, Microsoft Home Magazine, viewed 12 April 2010, http://www.microsoft.com/canada/home/communications-and-mobility/articles/form-your-own-online-community.aspx


2. White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 12 April 2010, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Classification of Blogs

Blogs can be classified into different categories, according to the content of the blog, or subject matter, such as:

• Food
• Technologies
• Education
• Personal
• Music
• Politics
• Gaming
• Sketch
• Fashion

(Source: Fagstein, 2008)

Vlog is also a blog but uses video recording method rather than the written word for post entries (articlealley.com, 2010). The users record and upload a video to certain video websites, such as YouTube.com and Tudou.com. Some other forms of blogs are linklog, sketchblog, photoblog, Phlog and moblog (Revell, 2009).

However, a blog is not necessarily tied to only one style of content. Just like the movie genre, we get horror comedy movie from the crossover of genres of horror and comedy. The blog content can be overlapping each other, for example, a technology blogs can blog about gamings and art.

Margaret Simons, a freelance journalist, further specify blogs into nine types (Funnell, 2008):

• Pamphleteering Blog - A blog for a person or more to blog about an issue they argue, or to voice out strong point of opinion.
• Digest Blog - A blog with contents that summarize materials from other source.
• Advocacy Blog - Ran by advocacy groups, commercial organisations or the political parties, similar to pamphleteering blog.
• Popular Mechanics Blog - Blog that tells readers about certain specialities and they work, such as scuba diving.
• Exhibition Blog - A blog for those creative people who wants to show their works and share with other people.
• Gatewatcher Blog - Runs by people who expertise in certain fields, work as a goalkeeper to decide what can or cannot be shown in media.
• The Diary - A personal blog but the contents are public, which can be share with relatives and friends.
• The Advertisement - Blog for advertising and promoting products.
• News Blog - Blog that reports news that are happening around the world

From all of the classification above, we can see that the world of blogging is quite complex and hard to have a specific name for a specific blogging style. However, bloggers are free to choose the style they prefer for their blogs, and readers are free to read whatever style of blog they want.

References:

1. Article Alley.com, 2010, Video Blogs - What is a Vlog?, Article Alley.com, viewed 11 April 2010, http://www.articlealley.com/article_1413906_13.html


2. Funnell, A 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, viewed 11 April 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript


3. Revell, M 2009, Types, WebEditorBlog.com, viewed 11 April 2010, http://www.webeditorblog.com/types.html

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits of blogging to the community

Blogging, which is described by Dvorak (2002) as "proliferation of public diaries", can be said as an overwhelming phenomenon that changes the way people used to write their diaries and most people are making good use of it.

(Source: Small Business Marketing Guide, 2009)

Technorati (2009) has been constantly providing information about the size of blogosphere in the past few years but there is no solid number for the size in 2009. However, back in year 2008, Technorati (2009) has recorded a number of approximately 133 million blogs since 2002 (Winn, 2009). Furthermore, McLean (2009) stated that the blogosphere is strong and its influence in various fields is still growing rapidly (McLean, 2009). Therefore, we can predict that the size of the current blogosphere will be bigger.

Blogging is now a trend in many countries. In year 2009, the use of twitter and the impact of bloggers on political issues in US and globally are the two leading issues in the blogosphere (Sussman, 2009). Many politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in US and Lim Kit Siang in Malaysia use Twitter to update about political issues and interact their followers. Blog and Twitter are also used by many celebrities to keep in touch with their fans. In Nigeria, NigerianBloggers.com, is aimed to increase and sustain blogs from Nigeria and they encouraged the Nigerian to blog (Nweke, 2006).

The types of blogs that are prevalent in certain countries varies based on the reader's personal interest, cultural factors and political factors. As we can see, blogs about lomography are now quite popular among youngsters all around the world. In Malaysia, Travel Blogs, Food Blogs and Blogshops are prevalent, based on my own experience. Whereas in China, blogs that are prevalent are Celebrities blogs and blogs about stock exchange, followed by lifestyle personal blogs (Ning, 2007). In UK, blogs about technologies, computers and music are prevalent (Brown, 2007).

Blogs becomes prevalent when readers have high interest in the contents. It is a benefit for the readers to search for the contents they like, and while they are gaining more knowledge and ideas, they also get a chance to share their views and opinion regarding the topics they like. For example, travel blogs benefits the readers because they get to know more about other places and have ideas about where they want to visit.

References:

1. Brown, S 2007, UK Blogosphere: Top 10 British Blogs, Modern Life, viewed 10 April 2010, http://modernl.com/article/uk-blogosphere-top-10-british-blogs


2. Dvorak, J.C. 2002, The Blog Phenomenon, PCMag.com, viewed 10 April 2010, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,12899,00.asp


3. McLean, J 2009, State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/


4. Ning, S 2007, China Top 10 Famous Bloggers and Blogs, ShangNing.net, viewed 10 April 2010, http://shangning.net/blog/china-top-10-famous-bloggers-and-blogs.php


5. Nwekw, R 2006, Blogging as a trend in Nigeria, ITREALMS Online, viewed 10 April 2010, http://itrealms.blogspot.com/2006/01/blogging-as-trend-in-nigeria.html


6. Sussman, M 2009, State of the Blogosphere 2009, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/


7. Winn, P 2009, State of Blogosphere, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/

Purpose Of This Blog

(Source: christinethompson-blog.com, 2009)

Greetings. This blog will serves as a platform to talk about topics and issues in media fields that are related to publishing and design. My blog is targeted at those who study media and communications,those who are interested in media and those who work in related field. I wish to share about my views, thoughts and opinions here and find out more about the topic that will be discussed, and please feel free to join the discussion by dropping a comment.