~ Weird Twitter ~

Weird Twitter Work In Progress

I’ve started editing my documentary. I have collected all the footage that I need but I’m still in the process of gathering tweets to show as examples.

The documentary itself will introduce and explore the world of weird twitter through interviews with four different twitter users.

The essay that accompanies the documentary will look deeper into the visual culture of weird twitter.

I made a short preview that I will post in the next day or so.

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about convergence lately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Jenkin’s Convergence Culture, there is a passage that says, “a service that was provided in the past by any one medium can now be provided in several different physical ways.”

Magazine publications are brought to mind. Quite often, magazines are offered in both digital and physical media. The New York times prints a physical newspaper in addition to posting stories to their website. Very exciting stuff.

Vice is another good example. They started as a physical publication, and then adopted a digital medium in addition to the magazine, and are now also producing videos.

I tried to read through this whole article, but it strikes me as incredibly outdated. Convergence Culture was published in 2006. We’re in 2014 now. Most of the things Jenkins said have already happened, and we probably watched them happen. It’s really not that exciting unless you’re, like, really unfamiliar with technology or something.

Something that might still be relevant is Jenkin’s discussion of participation. A lot websites have comments sections. So you can make really ignorant comments on New York Times articles and get in internet arguments.

Blue Star Tattoos

Zac Gorman is an incredible artist. I discovered his work several years ago on his tumblr. He creates web comics mostly based on old Nintendo games. Sometimes the comics are presented as static images, while other times they are gifs. I love his style and the subtlety of the animation adds great visual interest to the narratives.

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud discusses the use of icons. McCloud says that an icon represents a person, place, thing, or idea. In the above example, Gorman illustrated a scene from EarthBound. Ness is an icon. He represents a lot of things. At face value, he represents childhood. If you had a respectable childhood, you probably recognize the character I’m talking about, and he should remind you of being in elementary school or middle school. 

Ness also represents some more abstract ideas. Maybe freedom, or experience, or even just growing up. The plot of EarthBound basically follows Ness as he leaves home to save the world from aliens using a baseball bat and a yo-yo. If I recall correctly, his mom was pretty cool with it but if you want to save the game you have to call his dad to check in. In that aspect Ness can be seen as an icon of freedom, and the entire game a coming of age story as Ness travels further away from his parents.. Ness is also an icon of experience. Like I just mentioned, EarthBound is sort of a coming of age story. Through this coming of age story, Ness gains a great deal of experience. In the comic I posted, his experience is reminiscent of psychedelic drug use.

There are also icons in the comic that allude to drug use. The melting frame in the top left corner, the electric ray things coming out of Ness’ head in the first panel, the neon colored buildings, and even the words Ness says all represent psychedelic experience.

Even if you didn’t have a childhood and you’re not familiar with the character I’ve been discussing and you can’t relate to anything I’ve just said, McCloud says that when an icon in cartoon form is drawn abstractly the reader should be able to identify with the character because of its simplicity.

I Already Told U That I’m A Minimalist

To reiterate, I really dislike this flyer.

After a long internal debate about what would be the best way to revise it, I gave in to my minimalist tendencies and came up with this.

I know what you’re thinking. “Ha ha what the heck is this, Andrew?” It’s a deconstructed version of the original flyer.

I started by changing the font of the SAMLA logo. In my version “samla” is in Helvetica, with the acronym spelled out in Helvetica Light. I think it looks much cleaner and more professional than whatever font it was in before. I also removed the wave thing.

The coffee cup was originally intended to stay in the composition, but I decided it was unnecessary and the flyer actually looked better without an image. SAMLA is an organization that is interested in words. So I gave them words.

As you can see, I got rid of “SAMLA welcomes all first-time conference attendees.” It is redundant. Of course SAMLA welcomes all first-time conference attendees. And hopefully they welcome returning conference attendees as well. This sentence seemed superfluous to me.

So that leaves us with “We’re Glad You’re Here.” I think it gets the message across just fine. And in this context, it doesn’t discriminate against returning conference attendees. I removed the punctuation in the sentence as well because minimalism. It’s also centered.

Regarding color, I kept the “SAMLA blue” because it’s actually a nice color. I made the background a gradient. It’s opposite of the gradient used in the logo.

On An Unrelated Note…

I’m proud to present my new avatar. It’s still a work in progress.

Helvetica

It was recently brought to my attention that Mike Parker, one of the men behind the absolute perfection that is Helvetica, died just three days ago.

This one goes out to my boy Mike for aiding in the creation of the most important type face ever created.

Here are a few examples of logos that utilize Helvetica:

Biting The Hand That Feeds

Perhaps I’m biting the hand that feeds by writing this post, but the examples of “good flyers” we were shown in class really irked me. In this post I’ll try to filter my criticisms through the scope of Williams’ The Non-Designer’s Design & Type Books as much as possible.

The font really bothered me in this flyer. As far as I can tell, there are two fonts being used, with two variations of each. “SAMLA welcomes all first-time conference attendees.” is written in a font using all caps. The portion of text below it uses the same font, but is italicized and in small caps. The SAMLA logo has “samla” written in lowercase with the acronym spelled out below it in title case. If repetition is as important of an element as Williams says, then it seems odd to me that this flyer has so much variation in font.

I’m assuming that “SAMLA welcomes all first-time conference attendees” is supposed to be the focus of the flyer, but the red coffee cup takes center stage here. The red of the coffee cup create contrast with the “SAMLA blue” (color code #085eab, if anybody wanted to know) used throughout the flyer, which is certainly not a bad thing, but the way it has been cropped is, dare I say, laughable. The jagged edges of the coffee cup are extremely noticeable next to the smooth edges of the text.

White space is also an issue in this flyer. The white space has a significant dominance over the flyer. As a good rule of thumb, try to design a document that has just as much white space as not-white space.* Below is a picture to illustrate how over-powering the white is in this flyer.

In regards to alignment and proximity, I don’t see a strong relationship between any of the elements in the flyer. I made a chart to aid me in my explanation.

1. This portion is centered. There’s also a weird amount of white space above it that isn’t reciprocated at the bottom of the flyer.

2. The coffee cup is thrown off to the left side of the image but it isn’t flush left. It looks like there’s an equal amount of white space above and below it, which is great, but its distance from 3 isn’t the same as from 1.

3. My criticism of this element is similar to my criticism of 2. It is off to the right of the image, but not flush right. If it was flush right it would line up with the SAMLA logo at the bottom (5).

4. I think you could consider 2 and 3 one single element because if you combined them, then that element would just centered, thus connecting 1 and 4. If this is the case their centers are aligned, but with their current composition I don’t think it really works.

5. The SAMLA logo is fine where it is except for the fact that it isn’t aligned with anything else on the flyer.

So the question arrises: how would I fix the flyer?

I would start with the font. One font for the whole flyer. I like Helvetica because I’m boring (see: minimalist) and it looks good on everything. I can’t think a situation where Helvetica isn’t an appropriate option. I understand that SAMLA is an organization that caters to people who are really into English so if Helvetica is out of the question, a serif font like Times New Roman (for digital and print) or Garamond (for print only) would arguably be more pleasing to the eye than either of the two fonts in the current flyer. They’re classic, used in a ton of books and publications, and are relevant to the event.

Next (maybe this should be first on my list) is the image of the coffee cup. It’s a great idea for an image because it appeals to the audience, but the fact that I can see the reflection of the coffee shop in the saucer bothers me a great deal. It’s on a white background, so the reflection defies logic in the context that it’s being used. To fix this problem, my first step would be to find an image of a coffee cup that’s better suited for this purpose. After that, I would be really precise when removing the background from the image to avoid sloppy edges.

For aligning the text, I would probably make everything flush right. It’s much easier for me to actually arrange elements in a photoshop document than to just talk about it. Sometimes better results come from experimentation.

I will post a revised flyer shortly.

*is there a technical term for this please help

Great Shirt, John Berger

 

I thought the first segment of “Ways of Seeing” was really vague and I didn’t really get much out of it. I came away with the understanding that paintings can hold a specific meaning and the meaning can be manipulated when the painting is filmed rather than seen in person. While the majority of what Berger discussed appeared irrelevant, his assertion that an image’s meaning can be changed when viewed through other mediums (i.e. a painting being filmed) seemed particularly important to a class on visual rhetoric. In the first segment, Berger essentially says that while an image can have deliberate meaning, the meaning can be changed if the image is viewed in ways other than what were intended.

The second segment says almost the same thing as the first, just with different examples. Here Berger discusses the differences being naked and being nude; he claims the difference has to do with the viewer’s perception. Just as in the first segment, Berger basically says that an images meaning changes depending on the way it is looked at. In this segment, his argument is made using women’s body image and self-perception.

In the third segment, Berger talks about oil paintings and their relationship to the time period in which they were painted. I think Berger’s main point in this entire segment was to say that everything was painted as an object, except he took a full half hour to illustrate this point. I’m really not sure what else he might have been trying to say because from the very beginning of the segment his argument quickly turns into rambling about different important paintings.

I found it hard to even watch the fourth segment, as the previous three contained such vague arguments. Perhaps I should have read the accompanying essay instead of watching the video. Maybe Berger’s writing would persuade me to believe that he is in fact knowledgeable about art.

To summarize, how we view images can affect their meaning. Images also have the ability to influence the way one views a particular part of history.