Entry 7

Response to Butterick's Practical Typography

It is obvious that typography is important for the text such as the articles publishing on the newspaper, magazines, or the internet. As a visual thing that presents in front of the eyes of the readers, the most important purpose the typography is used is to attract readers at first sight, so then they will be willing to read the following contents carefully.

Also, the typography is not only used to show attractive styles and leave readers a good impression on a newspaper or magazine, and it can be used to make the page layout more effective and clear for the readers to follow. With a successful typography, the contents can be better organized and the readers will be guided to read articles they interested in more easily. Just like the author mentions, the resume with a well-organized and noticeable typography catches the eyes of the interviewer. So also when designing the typography, it is necessary to understand the general information of the text first, so that we can make the typography more effectively.

Entry 6

Infographic is different from the video lecture. The video lecture tells the audiences complete content of its topic about how to write a story. From watching the video lecture we learn the information more detailed and directly by watching and listening, and we understand the idea better. But infographic is created to present the important data of this lecture by using static pictures and graphs which help us to get the general idea more easily and clearly. It simplifies the content of the lecture and leave out some details.

In my perspective, infographic information is easier for me to comprehend. Because the infographic shows important data clearly by providing visual pictures and graphs, so I can understand its main idea more easily. But from the video lecture, it is difficult to figure out the main points by listening to the whole long speech, for sometimes we cannot recognize what it important and what is not.

However, watching the video lecture is a more enjoyable experience than reading infographic. The infographic is static and just providing the visual data that helps to understand the main idea. But the video is dynamic and we can listen and watch how the speaker presents his idea. It is a more interesting method to learn the information by listening speaker’s expression with his own way.

Entry 5

Infographic essay

“Behind The Scenes of Viral Music”

http://www.designinfographics.com/social-media-infographics/behind-the-scenes-of-viral-music

1) Outline the infographic essay

1. Digital download’s revenue and ad revenue of the 30 most-watched YouTube music videos in the past five years.

2. Six reasons make music go viral: emotional response, song quality, effort, creativity, relatable, other reasons.

3. What it takes to engineer the viral hit.

2) Provide the Rhetorical Situation of this essay

●       Purpose: explore the phenomenon and reasons why music goes viral

●       Audience: people who are interested in viral music

●       Stance: objective stance

●       Genre: analysis paper

●       media/design: texts, pictures, infographics

3) While you are only outlining the essay--not writing it word-for-word--you can still get a feeling for what this essay would look like. How is the infographic different from the traditional essay you outlined?

The infographic uses pictures to show information and gives audience a vivid and visual image. It is easier to understand and analyze information for writing an outline. In traditional essay, we need to read carefully and summarize the important contents.

4) Strengths and weaknesses of the infographic: what does the infographic do better than the essay? What does the essay do better than the infographic?

Strengths: The way of presenting data is more interesting and eye-catching because it has visual aids instead of just text. Meanwhile, it is vivid because normally it is designed to interact with reader with animation. Infographic is also easier for readers to understand information clearly.

Weaknesses: By using infographics, some details may not be shown or included in the graphics, in which case some minor data needed notice are not well presented. So the essay does better in providing the complete content with detailed explanation of some information needed notice.

5) How does this qualify as an essay and not a series of pictures?

It is consider as an essay but not a series of picture, for it has clear purpose and main ideas, provide the analysis of data and give a conclusion to the result. 

Entry 4

In the reading “Searchin” by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the author shows that in today’s digital era, music as an audio file can be searched from the websites and appreciated freely by every people online. Also he considers the differences of music from old days, when people buy the music records form record store. The music has changed because of web.

Besides, as we know the reading “Searchin” has changed from Web 2.0 to Web 1.0, the differences between them include that Web 1.0 is static and lack of interaction, and using Web 2.0 we can read this article more enjoyable with its dynamic characters and we may interact with the author by providing comments on this web. Beyond these, the content of the reading is actually the same no matter which web tools we use. “Searchin” uses intrographic to provide information, which looks more direct, clear, and attractive. The content can be understood easier by audience. But in order to transfer the text article into an infographic, first we need to summarize the article and find out important ideas. Also creating infographic needs creativity and choose proper ways to classify data.

Entry 3

Response to “The Data Miner’s Guide to Romance”

It is a pretty interesting reading with its original topic which is to provide guide to romance by the data miners. In the reading the author uses PowerPoint to displays many collected photo data and analyzes them by using statistics among with some sentences’ explanation in words. It is a creative way that makes the contents more visual and vivid, and also attracts readers and helps them learn information better.

From the reading, the author provides several tips about how to write perfect profile and take nice photos which help audience to be more attractive. For instance, the second tip: reverse and engineer your photo. By demonstrating various avatar photos as examples, and with interesting comparative and statistical method, it clearly shows the idea of how to take great photos for profile. And it is also effective that optimizing for our target audience by comparing two different kinds of collected data from oneself and suitors, with specific category and pictures provided.

Overall, the reading shows a creative and effective example of data collection and analysis which is worth learning, but also it is not an easy method for us with its complex process of collecting and demonstrating data.

Entry 2

The punk music and Web 2.0 are similar in some aspects. Firstly, they both have a fast development and draws lots of attention at a time. The punk, which was a kind of rock music born in the 1960s and 70s, grew very fast and became particularly popular in the late 1970s with its unique music style and rebellious spirit. Just like punk music, Web 2.0 appeals much attention and owns many users at the time it appears on the internet. With its new platforms for communication and the collective intelligence application, Web 2.0 plays an important role in people’s lives with a large number of users around the world. In addition, Punk and Web 2.0 also focus on social. The punk movement has the idea that uses music to show the social state, express their attitude the current society and calls for progress. The same as Web 2.0, it also stresses the importance of social, for providing the new platform to interaction and share clever ideas. Moreover, as the article “Safety Pin as Signifier” mentions, the progress of punk experimental. Because with country development, the original spirit of the music may change into some others that we do not know within different social state. Similarly, Web 2.0 will develop with technological innovation and the need of today’s netizens, so what it will be like in the future is also unpredictable. 

Entry1

Response to “Web 2.0 to Social 3.0: The Next Big Thing”

This article gives an introduction of Social 3.0 with its transition from Web 2.0. As we have known, with the collective intelligence application, Web 2.0 has brought users much convenience by collecting and providing multiple information and clever ideas from all around the world. Considered a progress, social 3.0 pays more attention to the collection of intelligence within the idea of synchronous collaboration. Take the example of Google Drive which the article has mentioned. With this software, it is realistic that people work together on a same project simultaneously with different computers. In this way people get more convenience with synchronous cooperation and also collect intelligence with interaction. In addition, with the transition from Web 2.0, Social 3.0 emphasizes more about “social” with its interactional feature, which means people have more communication and interaction with each other from the internet. With the advance of technology, people can use various applications as platforms to connect with each other synchronously on computers or mobile devices, which brings more convenience and effective communication in today’s network era.