Well...How Did I Get Here?

While I already spoke a bit about my blog's visual evolution in this post, I'd like to take some time to reflect on my overall development as a "blogger." When I first created this blog, I was a bit hesitant and unsure about blogging as a whole-- it seemed to me a little more informal than the writing I had been used to doing. However, I soon found that it was possible to maintain a formality and seriousness to blog postings, while still having room for lightness and individual personality. As a blogger, I've tried to find the right balance between these two extremes.

My main concern has been to make sure that my writing sounds professional but is also thought-provoking and interesting. Rather than just summarizing and regurgitating information, I've tried to explore engaging concepts and make original observations. As I've gradually become more comfortable with the entire process, I think my blogs have become more engrossing and memorable. I feel that I am on my way to settling into my own blogging "voice," though as always there is room for improvement and growth.

One of the most striking differences between my original postings and my ones now are in the use of visuals, most notably screenshots. Embedding screenshots directly into posts are a great way to enhance the content and make the argument more powerful and persuasive. It took me awhile to realize this, but I have come to see that this is one of the great advantages given to writing in an online forum such that blogging provides. It only makes sense to embrace these technological capabilities.

Hyperlinking and making direct references to other online articles is another important feature of blog writing that should be utilized. While I have done quite a bit of this in my postings so far, I would have liked to include even more links to established and widely read blogs in the field. Unfortunately, I have not really had too much time recently to discover and read up on many of these other blogs, but it is something I hope to do more of in the future. While a lot of the content out there might not be totally essential, I'm sure there is enough worthwhile and interesting material to last a lifetime.

Because this blog is on the Web and theoretically open to anybody, I've tried to write with the broadest possible audience in mind. This means not making any assumptions about the prior knowledge of the reader and backing up all claims with explanations and examples. I hope that I have been able to do this and that somebody stumbling across this blog ten years from now will be able to enjoy and comprehend it without needing to look up too much information themselves.

Looking back, it's pretty amazing to see just how much I've written in the last three months or so. By doing about one entry per week, one can really develop a pretty healthy and robust portfolio. While I plan on continuing to add entries to this specific blog, I am also open to the possibilities of creating new blogs that pertain to other topics of interest. The mission statement of this blog included a focus on the music industry, but unfortunately, there wasn't too much room for this in the topics I explored. Perhaps I should create a new blog concentrating only on this? This aside, I have learned a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed writing about the topics covered here, and I hope you have too.

What I've Been Working on Lately...

Recently, a startup company called defero came to me for advice on how they can utilize social media and other communication platforms to get their company up and running. After a lot of hard work, I was able to deliver to them this proposal, via using the Blogger software. I chose to deliver it this way so that the proposal itself would in effect illustrate how an online communication medium can be used to deliver content. I am very proud of the work I did for them and felt I should share it with a wider audience.

First, a little background on the company. Defero is a new company with roots in old media and looking to expand to the Web 2.0 world. They plan to consult with other businesses to help them utilize social media and other online communication tools to create and deliver compelling content to their customers. It was perhaps a tad ironic that defero plans to provide to other companies the very services that they asked from me!

That aside, I was able to devise a fairly comprehensive strategy for the business launch. I started with an ad campaign, since they were a new company and had to first get the word out and brand themselves. This campaign was designed to drive people to the corporate website, which would then lead people to the blog and social networking accounts. Through this online media saturation, defero would develop contact and dialogues with potential business clients, which would eventually lead to sales.

As part of the ad campaign and overall branding efforts, I first set out to develop a "slogan" that would help to identify and set defero apart. I wanted a fairly short expression for maximum impact. After considerable thought, I came up with - "unleash your message." This gets to the core of what defero offers and describes it in a strong and memorable way. It implies that companies may already have a message, but defero will help them "unleash" it and truly get it out.

After coming up with the slogan, I set about to design a corresponding logo, and came up with this:

I found a pretty cool looking 3-d font and colored in the faces of the letters in blue. The blue and black together created a very visually appealing color scheme. The font had little white specks on the black shadow, which I kept because I liked how it gave it a feeling of being hand drawn. In keeping with this theme, I chose a handwriting font to be used to write the catchphrase. I doctored it up a bit to connect all the letters, and then I connected an image of an open leash on the end. The handwriting theme adds a personal touch, which complements nicely with defero's technological expertise.

With the logo and slogan, I now had all I needed to derive other marketing materials, such as magazine ads, Internet banner ads, and mock-ups of the website:

After I did all this, I could now include them in my proposal for visual enhancement and to use as examples of my ideas. From here, the process was simply about actually writing the proposal and convincing them of the merits of my plan. The key point I stressed was that in order to best market itself as an "expert" on new communication tools, defero must themselves show a mastery of them. Thus, the point of establishing the website, blog and social networking. Where possible, I backed up claims with research and references to other articles. One of the benefits of submitting a proposal online via a blog was that I could simply hyperlink to referenced articles or websites. I found this to be very useful, as seen here:

I think the proposal pretty much speaks for itself. While it was a rather long process, and there were many points where I wasn't really sure if I would reach the desired endpoint, the experience gained was well worth the time and effort. Hopefully this will be the first of many similar type projects, in which I can lend my skills to real-world business needs.

Let's Collaborate!

The Internet, perhaps more than anything else, is a tool for collaboration. Its entire structure is based on the linking of individual computers (and the users behind these computers) to create a network that together can do more than each component can do alone. Information is transferred, ideas are shared, and the network grows exponentially more powerful with each new link in the chain. I recently got to experience the collaborative possibilities of the Internet on two separate occasions.

The first of these experiences was at Writeboard.com, in which I collaborated with a group to create and revise a "writeboard," which according to the website, are "shareable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes." I found the software on the site to be both intuitive and easy to use. The group leader started us out with an initial, rudimentary document, and from there it gradually grew to the rather robust size it is now. Anyone from the group was allowed to edit and add to the document, and if significant changes were made, it was saved as the "newest" version. The older versions were all kept and displayed to the right of the page in chronological order, and a circle to the left of each version indicated how big the change was from the previous version, with a bigger circle signifying a bigger change:

Having these older documents accessible and capable of being referenced at any point in the process was quite handy in illustrating the gradual evolution of the document and all the different permutations it took. There was also a function available that let you compare two different versions of the document and see the specific differences between them:

I found this tool to be quite useful, and I used it for three important functions. The first was to compare the newest version with the next most recent, to get a sense of what the latest changes were. The second function was to compare any two chronological documents in the series, to see the specific contributions that were made by any one person. And the final function was to compare the newest version and the original version to really get a sense of all the changes that were made since the beginning of the process.

The one complaint I did have about the software was that the comments on the bottom of the page were not displayed in order of the most recent, meaning that the first comment was always shown on top. This seemed counter-intuitive and also at odds with the software feature that correctly displayed the most recent version of the document on top.

I also happened to be directly involved in what I felt was one of the more successful instances of collaboration that occurred during the process. In one of my comments, I made an observation about the lack of parallelism in the two main sections of the document, and another member of the group acted on this suggestion to make the necessary changes. This really opened my eyes to the potential power of collaboration and teamwork. As someone who usually likes to work alone and have autonomy over his work, it was somewhat liberating to (1) communicate an idea and have somebody interpret it correctly, and (2) to not have to do the work myself!

This same group and I also collaborated together to analyze a document using the website Co-ment.net. This experience was somewhat different than Writeboard because we were not actually creating content, but rather commenting on it. I found the software here to be rather effective and useful as well. To make a comment, you merely had to highlight the text, write something and then save it. All the text that was commented on stayed highlighted, and all the comments appeared on the left side of the page, in order of where the section of the document was that they were referring to. Clicking on a highlighted section displayed all the comment made about that section, and clicking on each comment also caused the highlighted text to be underlined, which I found pretty helpful:

However, one suggestion I would make about the software is that as you scroll through the source document, the "Comments" section should automatically scroll with you as well. That way, you won't need to scroll down through the entire "Comments" area to see the specific ones that pertained to the section of the document that you are viewing.

While the software on this site was pretty effective, this type of exercise seemed better suited for both a smaller group than we had and a larger document than we were working with. With so many people commenting, it became overwhelming at times, and by the end, most of the text was highlighted:

This seemed to almost defeat the purpose of the software--you couldn't really get a sense of the sections that were pointed out because they all were. It would have perhaps been more effective for the group to have set guidelines beforehand so that we would only focus on a specific idea or concept and not whole paragraphs of text. It also got a bit confusing because since there was so much overlap with the highlighted text, clicking on a section caused multiple comments to be displayed on the left:

All this seems to support the claim made here and here that smaller groups are usually better for collaboration, with the ideal number usually being three. While these articles refer more specifically to the process of creating a computer application, I'd imagine that this theory would extend to most types of collaborative work, as they seem to be similar in nature. For any type of collaboration, the key seems to be to make yourself open and willing to compromise. There is no way for something to turn out exactly the way you want it, but you must embrace the benefits and advantages afforded by collaboration, rather than harp on any of the potential drawbacks.

Now You See It...Now You See Something Else

I first created this blog about 3 months ago, and at this point, it seems appropriate to look back and reflect on how it has evolved visually since that time. I initially chose a pretty simple template, since I felt that the emphasis of a blog should be on the actual text, and I did not want to distract or take away from this too much. I figured that I would get my feet wet with the whole blogging experience before I tried any visual enhancements. Here is what my blog looked like during its initial stages:


I am usually not too attracted to overly flashy or colorful visuals, so this minimalist design suited me as I slowly familiarized myself with the Blogger software and blogging as a whole. However, as I began to get more comfortable, I couldn't help but try my hand at a visual redesign of the blog. Below is the first redesign I made, which was nothing more than a simple change to the background and link colors:


It was pretty interesting to see how a simple and easy change of color scheme had a profound impact on the initial visual impression the blog. One thing I realized is that when changing the background color, you have to make sure the other color aspects on the page match the new color scheme. This might mean changing the link, title and text colors.

After making this first change, I decided to come up with a logo for the blog, which I did with this:


The background image is that of a music mixing board, which I found on the Internet. I changed it from a color image to black and white, increased the contrast, and then cropped it down considerably, all to hopefully have it fall under fair use. I chose this image since it went along with my blog's "music" and "sounding board" related theme. I then combined this with what I thought was a pretty "cool" looking font and uploaded the logo as an image file to replace the blog title, as seen here:


Eventually, I grew out of favor with the orange background, since it seemed a bit too heavy and had a "retro" feel that I wasn't really going for. I changed it to a nice shade of green that had a lighter hue and seemed to feel more current. It also brought out the text more and made the blog easier to read:


So as it is, I'm pretty content with the look of my blog right now, as it maintains a "minimalist" type feel with an emphasis on the words, but still has some visual stimulating elements to make it interesting and individually distinguished. There is, however, always room for further redesign, if nothing more than to break up the visual monotony and change things up now and again.

Is it Readable or Not?

Readability, as its name suggests, refers to the ease with which written text can be read by a specific audience. Readability formulas assign a numeric value to a given document, and this value identifies the reading level that the audience is expected to have. Among the various types of readability tests are the Flesch Reading Ease, the Gunning-Fog Index and the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level. All of these assessments utilize some type of mathematical formula that is based on the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. Obviously, this is a very superficial way at looking at language, but it does have particular relevance in the field of usability.

A readability assessment of a given document can provide a pretty quick and effective way to determine its potential suitability for a specific audience. However, these assessments can really only determine if something is "not usable." If a readability test calculates that a document is beyond the reading level of the intended audience, then it would be safe to assume that the audience will have trouble getting through the text. It wouldn't matter if the other elements of the document are appropriate for the audience; if the audience can't read it, then it's not usable!

However, if a readability assessment determines that the reading level of the document is within the range of the reading level of the intended audience, it would not be safe to assume that the document is totally usable. This is because there are so many other factors that readability formulas can't take into consideration, such as the document layout, the complexity of the concepts, the audience's interest and knowledge of the material, potential gender or racial biases, and so on. If something is unusable in one area, then it is generally unusable as a whole; thus, one cannot only use a readability assessment to determine a document's usability.

What this means is that readability assessments don't really have much bearing or relevance beyond what they have specifically been designed to measure--that is, the readability of the text. They would not be very effective in assessing the visual design elements of a document. This is because design elements are generally subjective and much harder to define; as such, they cannot be mathematically quantified the same way readability elements are. Nor does the readability of a document imply anything about the actual quality of the writing. Just because a document is potentially readable doesn't mean it is any good or even worth reading in the first place. While readability assessments do have a role to play in the field of usability testing, it is a very specific role; attempts to make use of them beyond this could potentially yield unreliable results.

My Kind of Website

As discussed in a previous post, the design of a website should be heavily influenced by the intended audience of that site. I recently got a chance to put this theory into practice when I used Google Sites to create the website How To License Music. The intent of this site was to teach and inform about the process of licensing a piece of music for a visual project, and it was designed with a specific audience in mind--myself. That is, someone with a learning style similar to my own.

After taking this Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire, it was revealed that I was a highly Reflective and Global learner and a moderately high Intuitive and Verbal learner. Using these descriptions of the different learning styles as a guiding tool, I went about designing my website so that it would best be utilized by an audience with these particular learning styles.

In general, my website is designed to present information in a broad, conceptual manner. This is partially achieved by having the key important terms stand out, which are first seen on the page as bolded text, as such:


When these terms are "moused over," more information and an additional description is revealed. This is illustrated below, showing how the page looks when the cursor hovers over the the bolded term "Music Library" at the bottom of the page:

Bolding the text in this way causes it to stand out, which highlights these important concepts at a glance. This way of presenting information is conducive to the global learner, who prefers to see the larger, more important concepts first, as opposed to the tiny details. The ability to see the terms first and then find out more information about them will help the reflective learner, who learns best by taking things slowly and having time to digest and "reflect" on the information.

In addition, there is a separate "Important Terms" page that collects all of the bolded terms used throughout the site and presents them in a dictionary-like format. This uses language to enhance the visual aspects of the page, which aids the verbal learner:


In keeping with this theme, a universal aspect of the website's design is that all of the navigational icons are enhanced with text, as seen here:

And here, with the illustrations of various movie scenes having captions underneath:


Site navigation is also presented in outline format with clickable text, as opposed to images or icons. In terms of the background and color scheme, pale yellows and grays give the page a muted look, causing the text to stand out as hierarchically dominant. All of this plays to the strengths of the verbal learner, who generally prefer words to images. This does not mean that there is no use for visuals; rather, the optimum learning experience is to strike the right balance between both verbal and visual information. This is the point in having all the images enhanced with additional text.

I also employed design features that were helpful to the other ends of the learning spectrum. Attachments of actual licensing contracts give practical examples of the issues discussed, which encourages the "sensing" learner who prefers to see connections to the real world. In addition, pages are presented in a logical, sequenced order, which helps the "sequential" learner. Employing these design features helps to broaden the reach of the website and also challenges the other types of learner to overcome their limitations.

As this was my first foray into web design, it was quite useful to have this background knowledge on how to use design elements so that they are geared towards a certain audience. This helped me develop a focused site that should specifically appeal to learners like myself but also be accessible to a general audience.

Judging an Album by its Cover

Images have always had an important role to play in communication; perhaps even more so now with the rise of the Internet and all of its visual possibilities. When used effectively, images can create a meaning beyond what simple words can express. In the online world, images can also serve a functional role in aiding with navigation and maintaining the "authenticity" of the online experience with the real-world one. One interesting example of this is the use of album covers in music websites and online stores.

An album cover is a representational illustration that was logically packaged with a record or CD to enhance the overall artistic product. These images helped to create an iconography for what was otherwise a strictly aural experience, and they also defined and set apart each album in a visual sense. However, with the advent of the MP3 and digital downloading, album covers were no longer needed in the same way. One can buy and listen to an album without ever needing to know what the CD cover looks like, yet digital album covers are still frequently used in the online music marketplace.

Within digital stores such as iTunes, album covers can function as icons in helping with navigation. Taking a look at the screenshot below, we can see the album covers dominate the storefront:

By clicking on each cover, we are taken to the corresponding page where that album can be actually purchased, as seen here after clicking on one of the images:


By using the album cover as the means for online navigation and purchasing, the online music buying experience is linked to the real world, recreating the feeling of being in a physical record store and rummaging through the CD's and glancing at the different covers.

This use of album covers as icons for navigation can also be seen in music review websites such as Pitchfork, as seen below on a section of their homepage:

Each cover is a corresponding link to a review for that album or track. However, unless the title and band name are actually included within the image, you must scroll over the album cover to see this information. As seen below, when the album on the far right is scrolled over, the artist and album name are displayed along with the corresponding review score:


This does not seem to add much in terms of ease of navigation, as it would be easier to see the artist and album name by just listing it as text without the corresponding image. However, by using the album cover, Pitchfork is maintaining the visual traditions of the art being packaged with the music to create one unified product. This can also be seen in their individual album review pages, which all prominently display the album cover, as seen here:



This last online use of album covers fulfills their traditional role as representational illustrations that create a visual iconography to be associated with the music. By keeping with this tradition, Pitchfork and other music websites are maintaining the richness and credibility of music consumption by making the online experience similar to the real world one.

Bookmarking the Web

It is easy to get overwhelmed by the massive amount of information that is available on the Internet. On virtually any topic, there are a multitude of websites, articles, blogs and wikis out there just waiting to be found and pored over. However, the task of sifting through cyberspace to find the information that is truly relevant and useful to you can be frustrating and time-consuming. Hours can be wasted on unnecessary tangents and dead-ends. This is where "social bookmarking" sites such as Delicious and Digg come into play.

Social bookmarking refers to the act of "bookmarking" links to websites and articles and then sharing that list with the online community. These links can also be "tagged" with descriptive terms that allow the article to be searched for at a later time. This whole process is sometimes referred to as "folksonomy," a taxonomic classification system created from the "ground up" by the end users. As more people link to and tag a certain article or website, the higher up in the ranking it goes and the more likely it is someone else will see it. This works as a natural "peer review" by weeding out the less popular content and ensuring that the articles the most people actually want to read will remain the most visible.

There is another side to this coin though. By putting the power in the hands of the general masses, we are trusting much to the "wisdom of the crowds." Mass popularity, however, is not always an indication of high quality or of interesting content. The most popular movies, music, and books are usually not the ones that are the most critically acclaimed and prone to further analysis and study. The process of peer reviewing and determining what content to publish has traditionally been done by a small, select group of professionals, as opposed to the general public. This brings us to the question as to whether social bookmarking is really a "democratic taxonomy that allows the community to peer review the content of the Web," or if it's just "a disorganized collection of personal preferences." My take on it is that it can be both, depending on the context.

Chances are that a person taken at random will have different interests than myself, so their list of favorite websites and articles might not interest me very much. However, because the online community is such a vast and broad group of people, patterns begin to emerge on a large scale. By playing with such large numbers, we can ensure that there will be at least some validity to the shared content. Sub-sets of smaller communities branch out from the overall online community, and the key is to find these communities of like-minded people. By utilizing the "tagging" system and searching for relevant keywords, you can cut right to the topics that interest you and bypass all the extraneous content.

A logical extension of this is the potential use of social bookmarking in the clearly-defined worlds of academia and the professional workplace. By nature, these groups have common interests and benefit from the collective sharing of information. Social bookmarking allows them to organize and break down the information on the Internet into relevant "micro-content" that pertains to their particular area of study or work. This can be a very effective way to organize the massive amount of content on the Internet to make it more easily searchable and manageable.

As an example of this, I have tagged 6 articles in my account at Delicious that are relevant to my fellow students in the graduate program for Technical Communication at NJIT. The articles cover recent topics of study, including web design, typography, usability and digital copyright. Because we use a unique code that only the other students and professor will know, we are able to create our own separate community within the broader Web. This allows us to zero in only on the information that pertains to our studies and is a great way to enhance the collective learning experience.

The ability to manipulate and organize the information on the Internet to make it more personalized and relevant is a necessity, given the size and scope of the Web. Social bookmarking fulfills this need, and as such, is an important tool of the Web 2.0 era. While there are concerns as to giving too much sway to the whims of popular sentiment, this still remains the most effective way of organizing the vastness of information that is the World Wide Web. As it is, the process of peer reviewing would be too massive an undertaking to be done by a select group of professionals. This provides further proof of the Internet as the ultimate "democratic" communication tool, for better or worse.

Web 2.0 - Powered by Collective Intelligence

Web 2.0 is one of those buzzwords that is tossed around a lot but rarely defined, almost as if you're expected to intuitively know what it means without needing a formal explanation. Yet, it probably means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and it has no doubt changed some of its meaning along the way.

From a broad conceptual standpoint, I look at the beginning of the Web 2.0 era as when the Internet became "self-aware" and started to take advantage of its unique characteristics as a medium unlike anything before. The key focus became not in finding new ways to "create" content but rather new ways to "consume" content. This manifested itself through an emphasis on website interactivity and user contributions. An important realization was that the Internet's greatest asset was not the new communication tools it introduced, but rather the fact that the average person now had access to these same communication tools that had normally been reserved for a select few media professionals. Websites like YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, which rely heavily on user-generated content, established themselves as relevant social forces. Social networking took off, and people began to create an entirely new "online" persona for themselves that seemed to exist independently from their actual self. Basically, Web 2.0 replaced passive participation of online content with active participation.

In his prescient blog on the issue, Tim O'Reilly mapped out what he saw as 8 defining characteristics of Web 2.0. One of the characteristics he mentions is "Harnessing Collective Intelligence." As he explained, "Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it." Taking a look at the site Metacritic.com, we can see this aspect of Web 2.0 in action.

Metacritic is a collection of critical reviews about various forms of entertainment media, such as movies, music, TV and videogames. The site provides direct links to the original reviews and also formulates a "Metascore" based on the average review. This Metascore is a great way for the user to instantly get a sense of the general critical consensus, without having to search for all the information themselves. This is illustrated in this page for a new album by the band The Flaming Lips:


As you can see, the Metascore is prominently displayed, with a corresponding description of "Universal Acclaim" to further summarize the information and make it easily digestible for the user. All of the relevant album information is listed, along with a short summary. For those who want to read the actual reviews themselves, a short excerpt is provided on the page with a link to the full article:


Along with these formal reviews, there is also room for audience input and interaction. A separate User Score is listed underneath the Metascore, and user-submitted reviews are displayed along the sides and bottom of the website. There is also an area for discussion forums on the separate entertainment topics. Here we see an example of the User Reviews displayed on the right alongside the other, more formal content:


This audience participation and user-submitted content is a key feature of Web 2.0 and reflects the sense of the Web as an online community and social portal. According to Daniel Nations of About.com, "Metacritic has all you want in Web 2.0 site with both user reviews and expert reviews from around the web."

Like many Web 2.0 websites, Metacritic doesn't actually create its own content but rather organizes and presents it in a simple, user-friendly fashion. It builds upon the infrastructure of information that was available in the old media days and provides a service that is unique to the Internet age. As stated by Metacritic co-founder Marc Doyle in this interview:

"Before the rise of the world wide web, consumers were at the mercy of their local critics for advice about which movies to see, what games to buy, etc. Furthermore, the influence of advertising campaigns and the emphasis on fawning quotations from obscure critics that nobody had ever heard of in newspaper/magazine ads was huge. Bad movies and games could be thrust on consumers without a great deal of education to rebut the messages from PR companies or the potential biases of individual critics. Metacritic's mission is to bring together the most professional, skilled and respected critics in each section of our site (movies, games, music, and TV) to provide our users with the most reliable indicators of quality upon which they can base their purchasing decisions. Again, this type of service would not have been possible before the web was developed." (Emphasis added)

This quote perfectly articulates one of the key aspects of Web 2.0--the opening of and democratization of media, so that it is no longer only in the hands of a select few. This is an extraordinarily powerful development that has had a profound effect on our culture and society. Metacritic serves as a great example of this collective sharing of information and intelligence that has permeated the Web 2.0 era.

It is also interesting to note that there is growing talk of a Web 3.0 and speculation as to what that might entail. However, as O'Reilly points out, Web 2.0 came about as a result of the dot-com bust, so for there to be a Web 3.0 there would need to be a "serious discontinuity from the previous generation of technology." Even so, some of the ideas as to what Web 3.0 will be include "web without browser" and "the breaking of the screen/keyboard paradigm." These are certainly interesting and exciting concepts, but no matter what the next generation of the Web experience turns out to be, it will no doubt be heavily powered by the collective force of the end user.

History of the MP3

If you have about 20 minutes to kill, I highly recommend checking out this utterly fascinating article from Pitchfork magazine on the social history of the MP3. Beyond just chronicling the rise of this new music format, the article gives a broad overview on how advances in technology can work to change and shape culture in powerful and sometimes unforeseen ways. I was amazed by the breadth and depth of the piece and how meticulously it was researched. It almost functions as an argument for itself--it is exactly this type of well thought-out and intelligent "criticism" that the author is advocating for in this new world of global music sharing and online communities. I am continually amazed by the individual writing on Pitchfork, and this speaks to the growing reality that web-based media is capable of creating content just as good as that from reputable newspapers, magazines and other print media.

Calibri: The New Default

Those of you using Microsoft Office 2007 may have noticed there is a different default font than you were probably used to. Taking the reins from Times New Roman and Arial, Calibri has become Microsoft's new "go-to" font. Calibri is a sans-serif font, meaning it lacks "feet" (the short cross lines at the end of main strokes). This differs from serif fonts such as Times New Roman, which have these "feet":


Typically, serif fonts are considered better than sans-serif fonts for reading long lines of text, making Microsoft's choice of Calibri all the more interesting, particularly when it comes to word processing. Perhaps the reason for this is that sans serif fonts are also considered better for on-screen reading. This would be yet another indication of how technology is changing the tools we use to communicate; clearly, Microsoft realizes that the majority of reading is now done on the computer as opposed to in print.

Being that Calibri will become a ubiquitous font now that it's the default font for Microsoft Office, it is particularly appropriate to conduct an analysis of this typeface. In Kathleen Yoshida's article Avoiding Typeface Terrors, she points out three general characteristics of typefaces that are useful to consider. One is legibility, which refers to the ease of which the reader can identify the individual letters. She outlines a simple test to measure this, which is illustrated below:


In real life, this would be comparable to placing a piece of paper over the bottom half of the letters. As you can see, the words are still pretty readable; however, there could be some confusion with the "y," "n" and "b" being mistaken for a "v," "p" and "h" respectively. Overall, though, Calibri is an adequately legible font.

The second aspect of typefaces mentioned by Yoshida is readability. Readability differs from legibility in that it is a broader consideration; it focuses on how easily a line of text can be read. This depends on many factors, one of which is x-height. X-height refers to the distance between the baseline to the top of the letter; basically, everything above the descenders and below the ascenders. It turns out that Calibri has a fairly small x-height when compared to other common sans-serif fonts. Below is a comparison of Calibri next to Arial next to Verdana, all at 72 point size:

Calibri is obviously smaller than the other two fonts, and this has an effect on another aspect of readability--white space. Because Calibri has a small x-height, the space between separate lines of text is larger than with fonts with larger x-heights. This can result in too much white space, which reduces readability. Thus, when using Calibri, the space between lines of text (or leading) should be reduced.

Another factor that influences readability are variations such as italics, bold and underline. According to Ann Van Wagener in The Next Big Thing in Online Type, "Calibri set in regular, bold, or italic is a pleasure to read." As seen below, the typeface variations for Calibri are straightforward and readable:


Personality is the last feature mentioned by Yoshida, and this one is much more subjective than the other two. The main features that distinguish a typeface's personality are the presence or absence of serifs and its stroke weight. Calibri has a fairly light stroke weight, which makes it pleasant to read. According to Van Wagener, Calibri has a very "warm" and "friendly" personality. She attributes this to the "soft rounded corners," which create a "smooth reading experience." Another unique characteristic of Calibri is that it is considered suitable for both smaller, body text sizes as well as larger headline sizes. This versatility is perhaps another reason why Microsoft chose it as the new default font for its latest Office suite of programs.

Tightrope Walkers and Talking Pandas: An Analysis of Website Audiences

Knowing your audience is a crucial part of any type of communication, including web design. As the Internet is used by virtually everyone, websites can be geared towards a whole variety of audience groups. If they're effectively designed, websites with widely different intended audiences should look and feel different from each other. Official movie websites can be particularly effective in illustrating this point because the intended audience is clear--it is the same as the audience for the movie itself. Let's examine the websites for the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary "Man on Wire" and the 2008 Academy Award-nominated animated kid's feature "Kung Fu Panda."

"Kung Fu Panda," an animated feature with talking animal characters, is clearly a movie marketed to kids and families. "Man on Wire," a thoughtful documentary about a tightrope walker that walked between the Twin Towers, has a much more serious subject matter and is undoubtedly aimed at an older crowd. The difference in intended audience is clear from a simple cursory glance of each website's home page:




The simple black-dominated color scheme for the "Man on Wire" website conveys a weighty and serious tone, while the eye-grabbing orange and yellow of the "Kung-Fu Panda" site is light and cartoonish. The font text for "Man on Wire" is small and completely ordinary, while for "Kung-Fu Panda," it's large and colorful. While both contain advertisements for the DVD, they do so in a very different manner. The advertisement for the "Man on Wire" DVD is small, simple and to the point. In the larger context of the website, it almost blends into the background. The "Kung-Fu Panda" DVD advertisment seems as if it's jumping out of the page. It's fairly large and filled with exclamation points and other attention-grabbing elements. All of this can be seen by comparing the two separate images:


















To further explore this point, the website for "Kung-Fu Panda" is really intended as an interactive user experience. To actually enter the site, you have to first watch an action-packed intro that introduces the main characters of the movie and further advertises the DVD. When you get to the main page, the screen moves around almost as if you're playing a video game, and you can click on the different characters to get more info, see a gallery, or download wallpaper, screensavers and other visual content. Music and sound effects are played as you navigate around, and the whole experience is visually stimulating to the end user. The website enhances the movie itself and is an entirely new entertainment product in its own right; it adds to the story and to the internal mythology of the characters. Looking at the screenshot below shows the kind of supplemental storytelling employed:


Analyzing the intended audience of this website reveals just how technologically adept today's youth are. To navigate the site effectively, it is necessary that the user have fairly advanced computer and internet navigation skills. Clearly, the designers assumed their young audience would have these skills. In addition, the website contains a tremendous amount of information for the audience to absorb and process. This kind of information overload is commonplace among this generation of kids that have grown up in the Information Age and are used to having the boundless knowledge of the Internet at their fingertips.

In contrast, the website for "Man on Wire" is intended for an entirely different audience and is designed accordingly. As opposed to being an active, entertaining learning experience, the website is fairly passive. Its main goal is to simply provide the audience with relevant information about the movie. There is a link to the Wikipedia page of Philippe Petit, the man whom the documentary is about. An unobtrusive trailer is embedded on the home page, with quotes from critical reviews slowly alternating over the top. There is even a separate tab for a list of other quotes about the movie:



Clearly, the designers of the site realize that this information is what would most interest the audience and make them likely to see the movie. These external movie reviews are noticeably absent from the "Kung-Fu Panda" website, as the designers assumed that the younger audience would probably not care about this type of information.

Along with the simple, black color scheme, a bluish tint gives the "Man on Wire" website a feeling of being dated, which is appropriate given the movie's use of original videotape from the events depicted. As opposed to the over-the-top qualities of "Kung Fu Panda," the website has a very natural and real feel, and there is no external music or sound effects. It focuses on the movie itself and communicates mostly through verbal means, using simple, text-based information. In general, it attempts to provide substantial information to its more sophisticated audience and do so unobtrusively. In contrast, the "Kung-Fu Panda" website is dominated by visual forms of communication and employs the use of stimulating colors and images. Its goals is to hold the attention of its young audience and to enhance the experience of watching the original movie.

By analyzing these two websites, we were able to see how a difference in intended audiences can result in a difference in web designs. Both sites seem to take their audience into consideration and are able to communicate and connect with their audience using the appropriate tools and information. This is no doubt an important skill to master if one hopes to use the Internet as an effective communication tool.

Being and Nothingness

In today's globally connected world, visual communication is an extremely important tool, as it can cut across language barriers and convey universally understood messages. To be an effective visual communicator, one must be able to identify and understand some of the commonly used elements of visual design. I recently came across this video that, in communicating its message, effectively utilizes a lot of these elements:




The video itself seems simple enough. At first, we are presented with a still, female body standing completing erect. Parts of her outline are incomplete, yet the form is still implied. There is not much depth, but a light shading gives the form some volume. As the video plays, black text begins to stream out of her mouth and cover up her body. We hear a "buzzing" of human voices attempting to pronounce the letters of the text, resulting in an unintelligible and disconcerting mumble. Eventually, the black text completely envelopes the woman's body, and beneath her feet, the text spells out an expression in French:



"L'etre Et Le Neant", which translates to "Being and Nothingness," serves as the title to a classic essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. A little research on Wikipedia reveals that, in the essay, Sartre attempts to define consciousness as an "act of negation" and a "transcendence of the given world." Looking back at the video, it becomes apparent that many of the visual elements serve to illuminate and enhance Sartre's thought-provoking concept.

The main visual theme employed in the video is that of creating tension through contrasting elements. The simple black and white color scheme conveys the sense of two opposing forces. The outline of the body is a thin, quivering line, yet the black text becomes a solid fill. The body is symmetrical and organic, yet the text is geometrically shaped and moves in an asymmetrical pattern. The shape of the figure remains flat and without much depth, yet it remains fixed in the foreground because of the volume created from the shading and from the slight quivering of the outline. There is also a interesting dynamic created in the overall use of space, with the "positive" object being surrounded by the "negative" empty space. All of these tension-filled elements seem to fit in with Sartre's theme of "the impotence of physical causality over human beings."

The visual dominance of the black text is shown in a literal sense by its complete enveloping of the body. However, what's interesting is that it's not entirely clear as to whether or not the body is becoming something or nothing. Is the black text negating the body, or is it merely turning it into a different form of being? These questions all relate to Sartre's theme of the relationship between physical reality and the human consciousness.

One of the most captivating features of the video is the rhythm created between the vibrating body, the moving text, and the buzzing sound of the human voices. This forces our eyes to follow the stream of text as it pours out of the mouth into the body, and the repetition of the pattern holds our attention throughout. The mumbling voices create and maintain a constant tension, which is eventually released at the end when we hear a man with a very deep voice say "L'etre Et Le Neant," along with it being spelled out by the text. This serves as a pronouncement, as if what we just saw was an actual visual representation of the dynamic between "Being" and "Nothingness."

Though it first appeared to be pretty straightforward, upon further analysis, the video revealed itself to have enormous depth in both form and content. It was particularly amazing how it was able to use some rather simple visual elements in expanding and building upon a rather complex idea. This really illustrates the power of visual design as a communication tool, a tool which becomes ever more useful in this increasingly image-dominated society.

Corporate blogging in the music industry

While I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing, apparently so is the music industry. Or more specifically, major record labels. I was a bit surprised to come across this article from Wired Magazine to find out that only one major label has an official corporate blog. That would be EMI Australia, which recently launched the blog The In Sound From Way Out earlier this year, becoming the first major label to do so.

While it's a step in the right direction, it certainly speaks volumes to the slowness of the industry in adapting to and utilizing new technologies in general. It does, however, gives EMI a giant head start in the field. As they state in the About section, they are "the only major label with this level of openness about who we are and what we do." This will no doubt help them differentiate themselves from their major label brethren and perhaps project a more positive and "hip" corporate image. They go on to state, "We hope you respond to that with openness of your own." While it's refreshing to see that level of candor displayed, it certainly underlines their intention of using the blog as a marketing tool in which they can interact with fans and attempt to sell and market their catalog.

The most notable and striking thing about The In Sound From Way Out is definitely the use of visual elements. From the layout, to the color scheme to the abundance of pictures and videos, it's clear that the blog is intended to function as a user-oriented interactive experience. The end goal seems to be to promote the EMI brand and catalog. It emits a surprisingly informal tone that contributes to the desire of projecting a more open and inviting corporate image, rather than being thought of as stuffy and uptight as most major labels are.

In terms of the blog entries themselves, all of them contain visual content such as pictures and embedded videos or have links for the user to stream or download MP3s. Because of the abundance of peripheral content, the entries seem to vary quite a bit in length. The actual text is usually only a few lines or so, though some can be a few paragraphs. The frequency of posts is a bit puzzling, as there only seems to be a few each month and they all seem to fall around the same time. The blog clearly encourages audience interaction by having a comments box and "share" tool at the end of each post, though only a handful of entries actually had reader comments.

While The In Sound From Way Out (or TISFWO as I like to call it) is the one and only blog run by a major label, it seems that just about ever indie record label out there employs this communication tool. This certainly makes sense, as indies have traditionally been ahead of the majors in terms of openness and innovation. One indie blog I found to be particularly interesting was the Matablog by Matador Records, one of the biggest and most successful indie labels.

The Matablog takes on a much more personal and conversational tone than TISFWO, and some of the bloggers seem to speak directly to the readers as they would to a regular friend. They frequently use the first person "I" when writing, as if speaking only for themselves, while the bloggers on TISFWO almost always used "we," as if representing the company as a whole. This definitely illustrates the difference between the bottom line, business-oriented mentality of the majors and the more independent and maverick nature of the indies.

As with TISFWO, the Matablog seems to be intended for the fans and consumers of Matador Records, however, they employ less clear cut marketing and sales efforts. The intent of most of the posts seems to be more informational than anything else; a lot of them are simply updates about current show and touring information. The entries are also a bit longer, usually a few paragraphs, and are posted much more frequently.

This is not to say that the Matablog is not used as a marketing tool as well, as there are still plenty of links to MP3s and ways to order and pay for music. Visually, it's not quite as busy as TISFWO, though it still has a lot of going on; there are a ton of pictures and a some embedded videos too. As with TISFWO, comments and reader participation is encouraged, with a link at the end of each post. Overall, the feel of the blog seems to project the image and aesthetic you might expect from an indie label: laid back, honest, and not necessarily obsessed with selling their product down your throat.

Clearly, blogging is an important communication tool that can be utilized productively in the corporate world. It offers a new outlet for companies to interact directly with their consumers and to further market their products. While the independent entities of the music industry seem to have embraced this new technology, the major label behemoths seem much less interested in creating a blogging experience for their consumer base. Hopefully, they'll soon follow EMI's lead and not underestimate this technology the same way they underestimated the rise of the Internet and the transformative effect it would have on their industry.

Mission Statement

The internet has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. From email, to instant messaging, to blogs, our world is becoming more and more interconnected, and information flows fast and freely. It can be overwhelming at times. The future will belong to those that can master these communication tools and synthesize this information into coherent and meaningful ideas. While the democratization and "opening" of media is a fundamentally great thing, the need for quality remains as strong as ever. This blog will attempt to explore and monitor modern communication tools, while keeping an eye towards the role of the "professional" technical communicator in creating and maintaining a high standard of content.

When appropriate, consideration will be given towards the role of music in this ever-changing world. Perhaps no industry has been as affected by the rise of the internet and received as much publicity and attention (mostly negative) as that of the music industry. From the advent of the MP3, to digital streaming and downloading, technology has forced the business of selling music to re-invent itself and evolve more rapidly than anyone could have foreseen. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it has forced progress and change on an business model that was growing stale and a little too content with the status quo. As one of the most ubiquitous and universal forms of communication, music should evolve with society and technology. This forum will hopefully function as a "sounding board" for ideas and issues pertaining to new forms of "technical" communication, including how new technologies might affect the function of music in the digital age.