Reminder (duplicate of email)

Greetings everyone,

I wanted to remind you that we're not meeting tomorrow night and that you can use that time to collect images for your visual projects if you are to the point that you're ready to do that. If not, don't worry--we'll be taking that up as soon as we reconvene next week. Enjoy Halloween. :-)

Also, I saw this announcement today and thought it might be of interest to some of you:

The Clemson University Student Video Competition

Everybody knows that actions speak louder than words. That’s why we’re looking for videos that show why it’s so great to be a Tiger.

Your entry should be something you’d watch and share with your friends that demonstrates one of the following:

* What you’ve learned at Clemson
* Why you chose Clemson
* How you’ve found your place at Clemson
* Why your blood runs orange
* What’s special about Clemson

Entries must be no longer than 90 seconds and will be judged on originality, creativity and successful promotion of Clemson University. Videos must be in one of the following file formats:

* .mpg
* .mp4
* .mov
* .flv

To enter, please read the official contest rules and sign the submission form. You must also submit your contact information. All entries must be received by 4:30 p.m. EST on December 3, 2007 for consideration.

How much do you love Clemson?
Yell it loud and proud with your 2007 CUroar video entry.
Our eyes and ears are waiting!


To enter a video in the contest, submit the signed official contest rules and submission form with your video on DVD or CD to 114 Daniel Drive (Littlejohn House), Clemson, S.C. 29631, ATTN: Dave Dryden. If a video is submitted without a signed form attached, the entry will not be accepted. Videos produced by a team or group are allowed. Each individual of the team must submit a signed form. The forms must be submitted together with the entry. If each team member has not submitted a signed form, the entry will not be accepted.

Info at: http://www.clemson.edu/curoar/intro.html

If you have questions or experience difficulty downloading the official contest rules and submission form, please contact Dave Dryden.

Some of you already have footage you could potentially use, and there is still time (for those of you who don't.) I'd be interested to see what you could do with this.

T. F.

Krug - 3 points and question

1. Don't be afraid to use conventions.

2. Three facts about "real-world Web use": 1) We don't read pages. We scan them. 2) We don't make optimal choices. We satisfice (satisfy/suffice). 3) We don't figure out how things work. We muddle through (22-29).

3. Five points in billboard design: 1) create a clear visual hierarchy on each page, 2) take advantage of conventions, 3) break pages up into clearly defined areas, 4) make it obvious what's clickable, and 5) minimize noise (31).

Question: When a designer invents a better idea, like the virtual shopping cart, does the designer collect any royalties from his/her idea? Can such an idea be "patented" or "copy written" per se?

Details on Paper

To follow up on our conversation at the end of class today, here are a few guidelines on the short papers you're doing to accompany the collaborative projects:

1. Their primary purpose is to allow you to reflect on the process, and think about what you did well and what you would change if you could.
2. I'm your audience, so you can talk in terms of the readings without having to spend too much time explaining them (the readings).
3. The main things I'll be looking for is your rationale for doing what you did and your understanding of the critical choices you made.
4. The big difference between the paper and the presentation is that in the presentation you had to show rather than tell--the paper is your opportunity to tell.

As always, if you have questions, you can post them here for us to discuss.

Lupton the third

1.) Mind your dashes. Em dashes are for grammatical breaks (dog—cheese or dog – cheese). En dashes are for numbers (11-12). Hyphens are for within words (long-term parking). Discretionary hyphens are for line breaks and should not be hard hyphens (which will remain in the text even if they are no longer needed). I care about these sorts of things, so I think everyone else should too. Lupton is on my side on this.
2.) “Every project should have a true editor, a person with the training and disposition to judge the correctness, accuracy, and consistency of written content...failure to edit carefully is the source of costly and embarrassing errors” (167).
3.) Editing and proofreading are different tasks, even though they can both be performed by an editor. I think this is important to point out, because editing needs to be something more than fixing spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, while proofreading needs to be completely focused on correctness over content. These two forms of correcting writing have to be balances so that the task can be completed successfully.

Has anyone used proofreading marks anymore? Do you think that these marks have become obsolete with the technology available to writers and editors today?

Week 10: 3 points and a question

1) Modular grids differ from multi-column grids because modular grids must have consistent vertical and horizontal divides. This is seen a lot in advertising to place words and images in appealing places that will most likely catch the viewers attention.

2) Working from the inside out seems to make the most sense as the golden section will in effect determine the margins, thus creating the opportunity to produce interesting asymmetrical designs.

3) The golden section is a mathematical equation that has been used to produce aesthetically pleasing images through art, architecture and design. I would have to agree with some designers who claim that it is nothing more than logical divisions, but it has been used extensively. It would be interesting to see if the theory of the golden selection is applied purposefully or if it happened by chance to better understand its dynamics in the design world.

Question: Is the golden selection a principle applied to most designs as determined by the intent of the designer, or is it by random chance that it appears if it appears at all (so not the designers intent)?

3 P's and a Q

I should say that I'm not sure what the 3 P's and a Q should look like from this selection, as there was so little text. So I guess I'm going to select three entries from the appendix that I feel are significant.

- Make it Bigger: Amateur typographers make their type too big. The standard 12-point font may appear suitable on the screen but in print it can be too big.

- More is Less: "Just as designers should avoid filling up space with arbitrary visual effects, writers should remember that no one love their words as much as they do."

- Design is an Art of Situations: The best designs come about as a result of a demand or need to respond to a specific situation... I think this reaffirms the need to consider and analyze audience in all tasks, which we've talked about at great length in class thus far.

Question: Again, I don't really know if I have a question based on this material.

3 Posts and a Question

- When designing books and magazines, it is important to design them as spreads, where you consider facing pages. The two-page spread should be a symmetrical, mirror-image spread, where margins and spacing are equal. In some cases, however, assymetrical spreads are okay.

-Designers and software defaults tend to emphasize the grid of charts and graphs over allowing the data to dominate the page and establish its own territory.

-"Every change threatens to introduce new errors," (166). Remember that when you change anything within a design, it is important to re-edit every aspect of the overall design and the text within it because even one change can have a great effect on a document.

Question: When would it be acceptable to use an assymetrical spread in a book or magazine?

Lupton 3ps 1q

1. “Polyglot (multilingual) books display a text in several languages simultaneously, demanding complex divisions of the surface.”

2. “Visually driven, illogical layout” is often difficult for sight impaired users. Assistive screens cannot read the text as easily. Designers are encouraged to “linearize” digital text sound that assistive screens may read “cell by cell, row by row.”

3. By constructing your page dimensions and margin widths from the beginning you can design your pages from the “outside in.”

Question: What would be a modern day example of Futurist typography?

week 10: 3 points

• “A modular grid has consistent horizontal divisions from top to bottom, in addition to vertical divisions from left to right.” Using this type of grid to guide the design of a page will provide the designer with a variety of different layout options and help to create a hierarchy among the elements on the page. (151)

• Lupton provides visual demonstrations of the golden section in a format that we are all familiar with: single-spaced text in one column. With adjacent images of a document that uses the golden section ratio and a document that does not, Lupton proves that a document that uses the golden section ratio is clearly more visually appealing.

• In Lupton’s advice section, she says that “density is the new white space...and a rich texture of information can function better than sparseness and isolation.” This seems to go against what both White and Williams have said about white space.

Readings this week

Dr. Fishman-

For the readings this week, Kevin and I are going to present on pages 138-155 and 170-175. Pages 174 and 175 are the bibliography. I just wanted to double check the page numbers.

Thanks!

Katie

3 Points and a Question

1. I had never, ever heard of the golden section before in my life. It is a ratio that apparently has been used for quite a while and its formula is a:b = b: (a+b). The text describes this formula as to mean that "the smaller of two elements (such as the side of a rectangle) relates to the larger element in the same way that the larger element relates to the two parts combined. In other words, side a is to side b as side b is to the sum of both sides."

2. A modular grid has horizontal divisions from top to bottom and vertical divisions from left to right.

3. "Cheap stuff is usually cheap because of how it's made, what it's made of, and who made it. Buy better quality goods, less often." This bit of advice is well received, especially from a thrifty person such as myself.

Question: I'm having trouble understanding the golden section. Maybe I'm just jumping the gun because formulas make me nervous and I hate math-related stuff. Hopefully the presenters will explain this concept to the class.

4 points - 1 question

1. If you want to mix font families, adjust fonts so that the x-heights align.
2. You must watch out for bad rags when using flush-right text.
3. Don't use negative tracking to save space.
4. Jakob Nielsen-"Web users don't like to read....They want to keep moving and clicking."
   

I went to Nielsen's site: 10 usability heuristics It's very interesting! Check it...

Question: How do you use page anchors? I normally use them to jump down a page, but not up. I'm not sure why...:)

3 points and a question.

1. The author notes that due its ergonomic qualities, the computer display has resurrected the functionality and versatility of text.

2. It is interesting how a group of books on a shelf can reveal how the choices of stacked letters can positively or negatively impact the reader. I think we all can think of instances where we had turn our head sideways to find the book title we needed.

3. Italic may be the most common form of creating emphasis. But there are several others such as caps, changing color, parenthesis, small letters, and changing and mixing fonts.

Question: Can the Web provide "all people, regardless of physical or technological readiness, with access to information", as stated in the quote by Lynch and Horton?

Week 9: 3 points and a question

1. Designing is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. The typographer’s art concerns not only the positive grain of letterforms, but the negative gaps between and around them. (67)
2. In our much-fabled era of information overload, a person can still process only one message at a time. This brute fact of cognition is the secret behind magic tricks: sleights of hand occur while the attention of the audience is drawn elsewhere. Given the fierce competition for their attention, users have a chance to shape the information economy by choosing what to look at. Designers can help them make satisfying choices. (75)
3. Dynamic Web sites use databases to build pages on the fly as users search for specific content. Databases cut across the planned hierarchy of a site, bringing up links from different levels and content areas-or from other Web sites. (99)

Question: Regarding the third question, how would one bring up links form different levels and content areas-or from other Web sites?

Week 8 Post

Thinking with Type, Part II

- “Text can be solid or liquid, body or blood.” I think this statement gives you an interesting way to think about the role text plays.

- The computer did not “destroy” typography, but rather led to the “burgeoning of the alphabetic empire” (76). This is an important thing to keep in mind; electronic media is blamed for “dumbing down” our culture in many ways, so it is important to remember its contributions.

- Lupton suggests treating a user’s time like a commodity—don’t squander it with poor design.

- Question: It seems like many of the texts cover the same material. How does this text differ from the other design books we’ve read?

Week 8: 3 Points and a Question

1) "Perhaps the most persistent impulse of twentieth-century art and design was to physically integrate form and content" (74). Meaning, that the content was integrated with the actual concrete layout of the specific letterforms on a page. Today, especially as seen with websites, cascading stylesheets allow a global and systematic design as opposed to focusing on a fixed construction of a particular surface. I think the problem is that this loose structure causes a lot of the discontinuity that plague websites, or I think it could prompt a lot of templates that are easily reformatted and used often so that they coincide with the stylesheets.

2) Lupton argues that typography is usually ignored. With paper texts, the typography can make the page pop or make it the real identifier with the letterform, shape, size, texture, spacing, etc. She says one of the arguments is that it pushes design to the background, but she seems to share White's opinion that every element on a page is an element of design.

3) Tacking is the space between letters, Lupton calls it normal, positive and negative tracking. I find this interesting since Word refers to it as expanded, normal and condensed. I would think that it would be the same terminology. I think a good point to make is especially with long URL's applying negative tracking (or condensing it) is acceptable as that usually keeps it on the same line.

Question: Although from a design perspective it makes sense to have a user-centered design, in having the reader as the focus of all design aspects, what has been lost that the author could have contributed? What could the user-centered experience be taking away from the old design methods?

3 Points and a Question

1. Many people believe that reading on-screen text is more difficult than reading paper text, but studies done by HCI prove that this is only a myth. According to Lupton, on-screen crisp black text on a white background is just as easy to read as its paper counterpart.

2. Even though redundancy is usually frowned upon in writing, it is acceptable (and even advisable) in typography. Lupton suggests using no more than three cues for each level/break in a hierarchy in order to create an elegant appearance.

3. Because of HTML format, "most Web sites are controlled by hierarchies in an even more systematic way than print documents." Typography helps make these hierarchies clear and orders all of the features.

Question: While Lupton suggests that reading on-screen black text on a white screen is just as easy as reading the paper alternative, I don't really buy it. What do you think?

Thinking with Type, 3ps and a Q

1. Some vocabulary I was unfamiliar with before reading Lupton: Leading: divide the horizontal lines of type. Furniture: wide blocks that hold the margins of the page.

2. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the preferred form to use when designing because it can be used sufficiently in “print-friendly versions of interactive documents” (100).

3. “Alt tags” are used for visually impaired users. Alt tags allow for the computer to read aloud the text on a website.

Question: Is Clemson’s website 508 compliant?

Week 9: 3 Posts, 1 Question

1. "Spoken language is perceived as a continuous flow, with no audible gaps" (67). I have often wondered why actors in Shakespeare’s plays recite lines so quickly; yet, the text clearly shows punctuation marks. I had always been taught, as an English student, that punctuation either adds emphasis to or affects the speed of a sentence. Apparently, I am wrong.

2. Lupton describes design as a "transmedia" enterprise in that authors and producers create worlds of characters, places, situations, and interactions that can appear across a variety of products (75).

3. Stacks of lowercase letters are awkward because the ascenders and descenders make the vertical spacing appear uneven, and the varied width of the characters makes the stacks look precarious (91). I am guilty of committing this design crime on several occasions. To alleviate the problem, I usually hit the spacebar in an attempt to line up the letters. Needless to say, it never worked the way I'd hoped.

Question: How is it that in "enhancing the readability of the written word", typographical design also helps readers "avoid" reading?

week 9: 3 points & a quesiton

• In digital publishing and electronic communication, the role of the “reader” becomes more interactive and less passive. The “user” interacts with the digital environment differently from the way a reader uses a print-based text. In designing a document, particularly a digital document, it is important to consider the changing role of the reader/user.

• Lupton discredits the assumption that icons are a more universal mode of communication than text. She suggests that using icons across cultures actually requires more explanation because it is necessary to then explain those icons in different languages.

• Lupton also offers a slightly different take on the use of white space in design: “In order to help readers make connections and comparisons as well as to find information quickly, a single surface packed with well-organized information is sometimes better than multiple pages with a lot of blank space” (75)

Question:
What do you think of Lupton’s ideas about white space in light of what White and Williams have said about it?

if you have a couple of minutes- watch this

Hey guys, I was watching the film "The Grapes of Wrath" and there is a scene that elaborates a little on what we were talking about last class. Its a great clip and I thought it hinted on some of the concepts that were presented. I'll assume most of us have read the book so I won't go into the details of whats behind the scene (plus I'm lazy haha).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wke1RBvcNQ

enjoy!!

3 points and a question

The action of men without objectives...is action ignorant both of its own process and of its aim. (Kintgen p399) As designers and communicators we should have an idea, point, or purpose before we begin working on anything that we plan on finishing. How else would we know we reached the destination/end if we aren't sure where it is we're going.

It is the profile of a man whose consciousness is spatialized, and must be filled or fed in order to know. (Kintgen p399) Children learn by absorbing and observing later to imitate and imulate. This digestive concept of knowledge is one that we can not separate from because it's ingrained in our instincts.

The components of web sites, navigation, search field, site map, should be self explanatory. Your audience is looking to find what they're interested in quickly, rarely are they willing to take their time and think about how to use your web site. If this is the case, it's very easy for them to use the back button and find another site with a similar subject (your competitors). (Krug)


Since those who browse web sites have to learn how to read what the designer effectively and ineffectively communicates, would it be safe to say we "digestively" learn how to use and navigate each web site we come in contact with?

3 pts and a question

1- “If your audience is going to act like your designing billboards, then design great billboards.” It might feel a little degrading, but this is what a large portion of web design deals with. It can be so frustrating when you design something that makes complete sense to you, but others don’t understand it- so you redesign, and redesign some more.

2- “…I’ve come to think that what really counts is not the number of clicks it takes me to get to what I want (although there are limits), but rather how hard eack click is- the amount of thought required, and the amount of uncertainty about whether I’m making the right choice.” I think we can all agree with this.

3- “Happy talk is like small talk-content free, basically just a way to be sociable. But most Web users don’t have time for small talk; they want to get right to the beef. You can-and should-eliminate as much happy talk as possible.” This is hard to do when your client want a bunch of this on the home page and you know nobody is going to read it.

Question: I really don’t have any good questions. The only thing that sparked is: Is Krug’s assumptions on the short attention span of web viewers a bit too extreme?

3 points & 1 question

1. A bitmap font is designed for digital display at a specific size, and should only be increased in even multiples of its root size.
2. Anti-aliasing uses shades of gray to create the illusion of a curved edge.
3. Instead of torturing a letterform, choose a typeface with the proportions you need! (Right on...I have always been a letter-torturer.)

Question: Have the last few readings on typography encouraged you to find alternatives to Verdana, Helvetica, and Times New Roman??

Freire posts

1. Illiterate people are considered to be on the “fringe of society.” We are lead to believe the only way to cure the illiterate person is to teach them to read and thus make the illiterate healthy enough to return to society (402).

2. The only way to teach the illiterate person to read and write is to engage him/her into dialogue that pertains to concrete situations. By doing so, it offers the illiterate person the “instruments with which he can teach himself to read and write.” By working from the inside out the illiterate and the educator work in collaboration on learning reading and writing. This would be considered identifying “learning content with the learning process” (404).

3. When teaching and learning vocabulary, words learned should be words the illiterate is familiar with, not words the educator chooses. By already knowing the words, the illiterate person should use cards that are broken down phonetically. The illiterate person should visualize rather than memorize the words. This leads to “the discovery of the mechanism of phonemic combinations” (408).

Question: I wonder if Freire’s “Perspectives of Literacy” is an effective way to teach illiterate people how to read. Has anyone had any experience in teaching adults how to read and write, and if so what did you find to be most effective?

Week 8: 3 points and a question

Is either communicative action or instrumental action really ideal if the underlying aim of instrumental action is the exclusion of the nonexpert audience in making decisions and the control of their perspectives through discourse created by experts, and communicative action considers input from many people with different perspectives, making it less cost effective and time efficient?

Great question Susan. I guess my question back is what is the alternative or the happy medium between the two? I would think that communicative action is maybe not ideal, but at least the most productive of the two. Instrumental action I would think would dispose of the rhetorical situation and would as a result, not be a user-centered document. I do not understand how the an instrumental document would have any control over the audiences perspectives if it ignores them in the first place. I do not think of communicative action as less time efficient or cost effective. I would consider communicative action as more empirically based while utilizing different heuristics. I would venture to think that they each have their place in the proper situation. It is like Carter's executive order to make federal documents readable to the users, but how is that accomplished? Clearly, the rhetorical situation that Killingsworth and Palmer emphasize is the cornerstone for all technical documents.

Kevin makes an excellent point when he faces the environmentalist against mainstream scientists. We clearly see a rhetorical debate that says there are two sides to every issue, and neither one is necessarily correct. I think this ties into Freire's discussion Aldous Huxley's "dissociating ideas." Freire, in so many words, describes it as a way to see through the bullsh*t; through his example of seeing the deceit in the cigarette ad. Like Kevin says, the environmentalist will have a completely different stance and evidence than that of mainstream scientists backed by corporate funders. The way in which the information is printed and displayed is going to be entirely different on both sides. The thing is, we know that each group has an agenda, so we can expect deceit in either camp. However, what about the Challenger article. I think it would be interesting to investigate the development of the visuals and how the information was displayed. I guess my thought process is, were there technicians and engineers pressured to get the launch off (as the notion of exploration and space travel was again revived) and as a result presented factual and truthful information in an ambiguous way purposely, OR, was the information presented factually and truthfully but ignored by the higher-ups who were certainly under monetary and reputable constraints?

Lupton discusses how types evolved during different eras for different purposes. In our professional writing seminar especially, we've been exploring how technical documents came to be. In Freire's example of the Labor Day example; a very logical, Aristotelian concept is employed: an enthymeme. He seems to have constructed two view points of the illiterate man in the same fashion: illiterates are marginal to society therefore "the literacy process reinforces the mythification of of reality..." and the second view point, illiterates are oppressed therefore the literary process is a "cultural action for freedom." Again, different perspectives will drastically change how the rhetorical situation is analyzed and solved.

Question: I think these article propel us towards the ever questionable debate regarding ethics. The writer obviously has an ethical responsibility to present factual and truthful information; however, the overall presentation can leave the interpretation of the information up to the audience.Where do you draw the line between the writer and audience's responsibility?

Thinking with Type

Italic letters were first created in Italy as an inexpensive form of printing. The cursive italic letters were less expensive than upright scripts because they could be written more rapidly and took up less space.

The new types that were created during the Industrial Revolution were larger (for advertising use) and more mechanized. Some designers saw this “distortion” of the alphabet as “gross and immoral” and distinctly linked to the “destructive and inhumane” industrial system of the times.

Type classification was devised in the 19th century by printers who wanted to give their craft a “heritage...analogous to that of art history.” (42). The three categories were humanist (types based on handwriting; analogous to Renaissance art), transitional (analogous to Baroque art), and modern (analogous to Enlightenment era art). Types from these categories are still used today to create new typefaces.

Would you agree that type style is closely tied to the culture? Can you think of any typefaces that are particularly representative of certain times?

3 Posts, 1 Question for 10/10/07

When choosing a font, graphic designers consider the history of typefaces and their current and former qualities and connotations. The goal is to find a style of letters that effectively address the social situation and body of content for the project at hand.

In Friere’s scheme of “digestive” concept of knowledge, the illiterate are “undernourished” of the “bread of the spirit”, or “deposits of vocabulary”.

K&R: “Noun style” favors stasis and “verb style” favors expressions of actions.

Question: How are we to tie the two readings together?

My 3 pts. + 1 ?

1. Lupton explains how typefaces evolved through the ages. The three main periods, Renaissance, Baroque, and the Enlightenment brought interesting developments in type creation, and for over five-hundred years typeface production was a difficult process requiring lead casting techniques. The complex science continued to evolve until the first digital typefaces along with photo typesetting became the norms of the 1960's and 1970's. These newer forms were still highly specialized and labor intensive in their own right, and finally in the 1980's and 1990's typeface design for personal and business computer applications became accessible to the masses. However, modern digital type production is still quite complex and labor intensive due to issues such as character refinement, spacing, software platform consideration, media functionality, and language compatibility(Lupton p. 49).



2. The Environmental Impact Statement dilemma brings to light the enormous task of satisfying the needs of different and opposing audiences with one federally mandated document. The internal and external stakeholders have distinct needs. Additionally they present obstacles which confine language choices for the communicators who prepare the EIS. Also, since an EIS is required by federal law, and environmental lawyers wrangle over its validity in each case study, the highly technical jargon dominates over the plain direct language desired by lay people. And since opposing legal and governmental personnel tend to use the document as a delay tactic to stall law suits, the EIS remains an unsatisfactory summation of serious issues.

3. Environmentalists are looked upon as a force to be neutralized by governmental and corporate forces. Likewise, environmentalists tend to distrust scientific data paid for by the parties seeking justification for activities affecting the environment. Rather than using constructive argument to determine the best way to use precious national resources, the combatants line up against each other and attempt to manipulate scientific and social data to defend their positions.

Question. Due to the harsh criticism of its scientific and social validity from mainstream scientists as well as respected social scholars, should the EIS be eliminated in its present form? Additionally, how could it be improved as a communicative instrument?

3 Points and a Question

-Logotypes use typography or lettering to depict an organization's name in a way that the audience can remember, using letters to create a distinct visual image. Some examples of logotypes would be the Coca-Cola script and the Johnson and Johnson script. Every time we see one of these logotypes, we almost immediately associate it with a product or company.

-Freire believes that in order to teach illiterate adults to read, educators need to view these learners are inside of a social structure as opposed to marginalizing them as outsiders of a social structure. Only then can these learners become the subjects of learning rather than passive objects that are filled with knowledge.

-Freire suggests that the words/sayings educators choose to teach illiterate adults need to come from the everyday world in which these learners live. This is important, he emphasizes, in order to show these learners the importance of learning to read and write for their own lives and motivate them to start learning on their own as well as in the classroom.

Question: Can we apply Freire's method of teaching illiterate adults in the United States even though our language is not generative like Portuguese?

3 points & a question

Thinking with Type
• The rise of industrialization and mass consumption during the 19th century created a large-scale need for advertising, which led to a demand for different kinds of typography that would be appropriate for this type of communication. Designers created new typefaces with features—shadow, inline, etc.—and sizes—much bigger and bolder than traditional typefaces—that were necessary in these advertisements, not only because of space limitations in the advertisements, but also because these different typefaces allowed the ad designers to attract audiences based on the typeface they used.

Freire
• Freire’s philosophy about learning and literacy is based on the idea that the instruction of a student (a person who is illiterate) should be a dialogue rather than a “domestication.” He suggests that when students have the opportunity to play an active role in their education, they will understand why it is important and necessary to become literate and to be able to contribute substantially to the society through more than just oral communication.

Killingsworth & Palmer
• Killingsworth and Palmer discuss the difference between communicative action and instrumental action and reveal the dangers of instrumental rationality through examining the language and audiences of the government’s Environmental Impact Statements. At the end of the article, the authors show the importance of understanding the rhetorical situation, the audience and the purpose of the communication in creating a document that is useful to the audience—similar to Flower et al’s “Functional Documents.”


Question:
Is either communicative action or instrumental action really ideal if the underlying aim of instrumental action is the exclusion of the nonexpert audience in making decisions and the control of their perspectives through discourse created by experts, and communicative action considers input from many people with different perspectives, making it less cost effective and time efficient?

Revamping the class schedule

I am not sure if any of you really notice how often I mess up my blog postings, but it's a lot. For some reason, I have a lot of trouble figuring out when things are do for this class, especially the blog posts. I talked to Dr. Fishman yesterday about my dillema and a possible solution to it. I suggested that, instead of the chart-like schedule she has now, she create a calandar schedule with the various assignments and blog posts represented on the days they are due. Each assignment/post could then be hyperlinked to a description of the assignment, so we know exactly what the requirements are for each. Dr. Fishman seemed open to the idea, but she wanted to know what the class thought about it to, so here I am throwing it out there. Let me know what you think or if you have any other ideas.

3 ahs and a hmm.

Consider the Source - Credibility is very important. Data can be shifted to support the case of the presenter. We have to keep in mind what's being presented and who is presenting or where the support is coming from.

The Act of Communication (K&R p5) The act of creating any workplace communication is driven by the writer's understanding of three basic elements: audience, purpose, and context.

These are things that we take into consideration whenever we're interacting with other people. Whether we are asking our parents for something, or trying express our stress to a friend (who may or may not be the cause of said stress), we have to think about who were talking to, what's to be accomplished, the circumstances we find ourselves in at the time.

Being conscious of those elements keeps us in the boundaries of appropriate and sufficient.

Tone(K&R p20) We are constantly trying to express the most thought in the least amount of energy. One of the means used in every publication,document,note that we come across is tone. One good example of how we aren't always cognizant of our tone is in instant messages that we receive on our phone/computer. Something as simple as caps lock can change the tone of a message from pleasant to angry. The people on the receiving end of those messages actually feel like they are being yelled at even though that may not be the case.

It seems like we live and experience these communication and design elements every day. I wonder what other areas of life can we pull into design.

New Gannt Chart

Nick, Kiel, Kevin, and Julies new post.

Week 7- 3 posts and a question

Kostelnick and Roberts

1. “Like writing, design is a process of inventing, revising, and editing. As Fred designs, he make several discoveries, just as writers do as they draft and revise.” There are many similarities between the editing process of both writing and design. Content and subjects are modified throughout the process of creation which requires new strategies and directions to take in the design. With this being said, a designer should never become “married” to the first design approach. All designs can be subject to change. (Sounds a bit like the “terms and agreement” to licensing.)
2. “Using conventions helps you satisfy your readers’ expectations and also helps readers understand the message-on a variety of levels” If the designer doesn’t conform to certain conventions, for example: grammar and punctuation, they risk confusing the viewer, miscommunicating, or possibly sounding ignorant. Another good point is, “On a larger scale, including an abstract in a formal report or an article gives readers a glance at the big picture as well as helps them decide whether to read the text.” There can be a fine line between being bold or flashy and being misconstrued and distracting. Its handling the design in a rational view through systems such as conventions that helps create a successful, interpretive design.

Tufte

3. Snow wrote: “It was now time to act; after all, the reason we seek casual explanations is in order to intervene, to govern the cause so as to govern the effect: Policy-thinking is and must be causality-thinking.” A method to which you cause to effects to happen in order to gain information.

Question: With regards to “causality-thinking”. Wouldn’t this be considered a reckless method by which any information gained could be misleading as to what the true cause of the situation? Couldn’t wild allegations run rampant with this way of annalization?

2 points and another question

1. The shuttle disaster explanation is fascinating to me. Better visuals very likely would have assisted in persuading the commanders to delay or scrap the launch. But it also seems that since these are some of the most intelligent people in the country, hard facts might have been enough. The visuals used were very poor and some shown in the article appear as simple photo copies of data logs. Tufte's article shows the importance of risk communication skills, and why it has become a specialized field. Tufte stresses the corporate and political pressures that can affect sound decision making even in multi-billion dollar projects. NASA had to wake up and realize that bad communication in the management offices planning the launch could end lives as easily as poor communication from ground control during and after the launch. .

2. Kostlenick and Roberts state that arrangement, emphasis, clarity, tone, conciseness and ethos are key strategies of visual design. They are interrelated, and failing to address even one of them could dampen the effective qualities of the work. Just as written and spoken word rhetorical challenges require these same type of strategies, visuals are not to be taken lightly and perfecting any significant visual design is usually a tedious process. The effort applied is a reflection of the designers intelligence and their serious approach to the audience's needs.

Question: It seems the two articles taken together are asking us to realize the potential persuasive benefits of a solid, concise and well thought out visual rhetorical undertaking. Also, effective and persuasive visuals can save lives in the case of crisis and risk communication. What would be a good example of a scenario today in which poor visuals could lead to a national tragedy?

Three Points and a Question

1.) Tufte summarizes Snow’s “scientific detective work” that “exhibits a shrewd intelligence about evidence, a clear logic of data display and analysis” as a “good idea” and a “good method.” This method includes: “placing the data in an appropriate context for assessing cause and effect,” “making quantitative comparisons,” “considering alternative explanations and contrary cases,” and “assessment of possible errors in the numbers reported in graphics.”

2.) Authorship is important to consider—if the names of authors are given, the ethos of the author becomes part of the document. If texts are anonymous, then no one has to take individual responsibility for the document.

3.) Technical communication does not exist in a bubble; it has real-world implications that must be considered when the document is designed.

Question: Would you agree with Tufte on the importance of visuals? In the case of the Challenger disaster, is it fair to place so much responsibility on the designers of visuals? Consider the role of authorship in government documents; do you think it would lead to unnecessary scapegoating?

Kostelnick & Roberts 3 Points and a Question

- K&R provide a definition of emphasis, "In any communication, even a single paragraph, the rhetorical situation demands that some parts are more important than others and should therefore receive more attention. This prominence or intensity of expression is what we mean by emphasis." Now I suppose we've heard this or a similar definition in the past but what stands out to me is a line in the following paragraph, "emphasis strategies are about controlling what stands out." I really like the word controlling in this context. I'm not sure if we've come across it in the past or I just didn't pick it up but I like the way that word frames the situation and gives authority to the designer.

- In the case of Fred, "rhetorical concerns push the process ahead." I was drawn to this because I recently did a summary of Brown's article about the revival of Ethos in publication management. I think that article is relevant to this situation. It talked about how when there are bottom lines to be met and organizational concerns often times the composers sense of ethics can be overlooked. I think its good that we talk about ethics and I'm glad to see that there is some recognition of how significant demands (rhetorical concerns) can be in the design process.

- Identifying relevant conventions for any design problem you're trying to solve. This point emphasizes how most any design problem will fit into a certain category with its own set of design, text and other conventions. I think this is partly common sense but what I think we might be able to take away from it is the importance of planning. To me this is something you would give thought to ahead of time and then use your conclusions to guide and reassure your design process.

Question: The conclusion summarizes by saying that among other things, a document must be tailored to an audience, enable the document to fulfill its purpose, and be suitable for the context. Now is some ways these ideas overlap, but I'm wondering, given constraints of time, budget, etc. If we must sacrifice one concern what should that one thing be?

Week 7: Tufte and Kostelnick and Roberts

1) I think Snow offers an interesting point in regards to the visual of the charts playing a major role in the Challenger disaster; however, I also believe that visuals were not as defining a factor as he makes them out to be, and I say this from a rhetorical analysis. First of all, some mechanic in NASA says that the O-rings are not going to seal at such cold temperatures. What ethos exists? He can make all of the charts he wants, but by the time those charts have worked their way through the hierarchy, whatever information he had is probably lost through the bureaucracy, time constraints, financial resistance, and the fact that he is a lowly mechanic. I would venture to guess that verbal discourse was at as much fault, if not more so, than the poorly constructed charts.

2) Kostelnick and Roberts make the point that rhetorical situation relies heavily upon who the audience is (4). One thing I will notice in the Tufte article is that the audience is unknown, OK, some officials at NASA, but what does that mean? If the information started with mechanics and worked its way to the director, what can you devise from the charts? Aside from the use of little representative rockets, which was probably in hindsight, not the best design choice, could we not entertain the idea that the chart maker was using some unorthodox design to perhaps shock and awe? I just have a hard time believing that visuals were a main culprit in the disaster. Information travels in many different ways, what about the memo's or reports that accompanied the charts, perhaps a contextual analysis and content analysis would provide further insight into their purpose and presentation. I do think that Tufte makes a valid point in echoing what we have been discussing in regards to visual representation playing a major role. Obviously these documents failed (on some level) to do their job, and certainly did not prevent the disaster from taking place.

3) I think one of the striking differences in the Tufte article when he compares Snow's charts to that of Challenger's is the different methodologies he employs. Tufte gives Snow's piece a thorough content analysis. He identifies the conceptual and relational as well as qualitative and quantitative relationships existing in his report. We can also note that his charts reflect empirical research taking place at the time of the epidemic. Although suspicions were raised at NASA about the faultiness of the O-rings at such cold temperatures, the fact of the matter is, the disaster itself was only hypothetical as it had never happened before. So Tufte compared Snow's answer to an age old question, to a hypothetical situation. And as we can see, warnings are not always heeded, and information is lost in translation as the Columbia shuttle disaster will attest to. But is it the fault of the documents? Tufte says that "Reliable knowledge grows from evidence that is collected, analyzed,and displayed with some good comparisons in view." So can we conclude that since O-rings were never tested during a flight that speculation is reliable knowledge? Feynman said that "The O-rings of the solid rocket boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred." Could we say then that the charts did do their job, but those interpreting them and those responsible for the decision just did not heed the warnings?

I guess my question would be at what point do you make the distinction between the visual doing its job or failing and the reader choosing to ignore the advice or failing to make a correct decision because of a poor visual?

Tufte 3 points and a question

~Tufte cites Snow’s map that indicated where the cholera epidemic broke out in comparison to the proximity of the Broad Street Pump. He cites how the dot map was highly effective in showing how localized the outbreak was, even though the map could get “cluttered with excessive detail” (35). I find this interesting since we just read Tufte’s stance on chartjunk, yet he cites Snow’s effective chartjunk.

~“Since it is all evidence – regardless of the method of presentation – the highest standards of statistical integrity and statistical thinking should apply to every data representation, including visual displays” (35).

~Tufte says if displays of data are to be accurate and truthful then the logic of the display should reflect the analysis (53).

Question: The diagram of the O-Rings on page 47 is so confusing and exhausting, why was it used at all for such a serious and dangerous expedition?