Screen Vs. Print Design

Nielsen (1997) has mentioned the few point below:

• users do not read on the Web; instead they scan the pages, trying to pick out a few sentences or even parts of sentences to get the information they want.
• users do not like long, scrolling pages: they prefer the text to be short and to the point.
• users detest anything that seems like marketing fluff or overly hyped language ("marketese") and prefer factual information.

So, designing a layout is important in attracting the viewers and readers’ attention in order to increase the interest of them. A good design of the presentation, weblog or print materials is not only can increase the interest of the readers and also allow the readers to remember the important point easily.

According to Nielsen (1999), he stated few differences between print and web design.

-Dimensional

-Navigation

-Response Time, Resolution, and Canvas Size

Nielsen (1999) explained that print design is 2-dimensionals where attention is paid to the layout more compare with the 1-dismensional design, web design. For navigation, he said that ‘Moving around is what the Web is all about’. However, print design is consist of page turning. Print is superior to the Web in terms of Response Time, Resolution, and Canvas Size. (Nielsen, 1999)

• bandwidth fast enough to download a Web page as fast as one can turn the page in a newspaper
• screen resolution sharp enough to render type so crisply that reading speed from screens reaches that of paper
• huge screens the size of a newspaper spread - in fact, I think that newspaper-sized screens are about the limit where it may not make sense to make screens any larger

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Referencing:

1. Nielsen, J 1997, Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html

2. Nielsen, J 1999, Difference between Print Design and Web Design, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

New Media Publishing

The generation is changing and improving year by year as well as the media publishing. When the digital convergence, personal computing and global networking combine together, it has given big changes to the media publishing in this 21^st century

From the old media to the new media, print media to the computing media, everything has changed to better and more convenient to the public to fetch the news from Internet. The media in this 21^st century not only uses tv or radio or newspaper to deliver the message to the public but also through the Internet such as blog, social networking tools and online newspaper.

Blogging:

In this generation, majority of people spend more times on the Internet. Instead of face-to-face discussion, they created a platform, which we known as blog to voice out, discuss and exchange their thought and viewpoint towards certain issues. ‘The explosive growth in blogging has prompted a predictable outburst of ‘endism’ – as in questions about whether the phenomenon marks the end of journalism.’ Says Naughton (2006).

Social Networking Tools:

Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, the three main social networking around the world wide in this 21^st century. From kindergarten children to old folks, they owned an account for these social networking website. However, these three social networking tools are not longer for you to meet friends whereas it allows the people to voice out their thought in any issues such as interest, political view and so on. Besides that, politicians also use these social networking tools to communicate with the publics.

By using the both new media above, the public gets to know the latest new in a very short time and also everywhere, anytime.

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Referencing:

1. Naughton, J 2006, 'Blogging and the Emerging Mediaecosystem', viewed on 22 August 2011, http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html

The Blogging Community

According to Kinkeldi (2007), she defined that blogging community is a term that used to describe people using the same blogging platform instead of personal. It is also defined as a group blog, where people contribute everything in a blog instead of individual blog. ‘blog communities aggregate the individual and independent blogs of a number of people with a shared interest’ Kinkeldi (2007).

“Blog communities usually focus on a shared interest, a cause, or an organization.”

Kinkeldi (2007)

Kinkeldi (2007) explained bloggers used different kind of applications to manage and host a blog which gather individual bloggers who has common interested to discuss and exchange their point of view towards certain topic in one platform.

There are three main types of community. (White, 2007)

- One Blog Centric Community

- Topic Centric Community

- Boundaried Community

One Blog Centric Community- a blog that owned by an individual or organization with few authors. Blogger can change, remove or censor certain reader but not but cannot control the topic. Click Downes for example.

Topic Centric Community- a blog that allow bloggers to share knowledge of their common interest. Example, food blog, photography blog, travel blog and etc. Click Global Voices Online for example.

Boundaried Community- numerous of blogs and readers are collected and host in a single site or platform. It is only for specific public to discuss or question specific topic. Click Share Your Story for example.

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Referencing:

1. Kinkeldi, B 2007, Forging Connections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities, Whitepaper Blog Communities, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf

2. White, N 2006, Blogs and community-launching a new paradigm for online community, Going Communal, edition 11, viewed on 19 April 2009, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Classification of Blogs

As the size of the blogosphere is growing year by year, we have notice that bloggers started to post up variety of post such as tutorials, political views and so on. However, the blogs nowadays have been classified into different category.

According to the Australian author and media analyst, Margaret Simons, she has classified blogs into total 9 types.

-Pamphleteering Blog: an individual or a group of individuals arguing, discussing or expressing a viewpoint on politics or border events.

-Digest Blog: point to, summarize or collects material from elsewhere, usually in the mainstream media

-Advocacy Blog: similar to pamphleteering blog but usually by a vested interest group or an advocacy group

-Popular Mechanics Blog: where show tutorials or guidance to those who are interest in certain topic

-Exhibition Blog: usually maintained by craftspeople, artists, writers who want to show their extraordinary work to wider audiences.

-Gatewatcher Blog: where allow the specialists, experts and others with particular knowledge of public events to watch and to critique with the reports.

-Diary: where an individual posting pictures, daily life details and so on, as we known as personal blog

-Advertisement: created by companies to promote their services or products.

-News Blog: where blogs to break news, bloggers try and give public news.

However, Haskins (2007) mentioned that the blogs classified into four different types, Table as below:

(Source: growchangelearn.blogspot.com)

I personally think that, there is no any good or bad classification that can be judge. Here the example, the blogger travel around introducing places and foods. I may classify it as food blog but you may classify it as a travel blog. I think it is your choice that how do you classify the blogs as different people have their own perception.

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Referencing:

1. Haskins, T 2007, Different Motivation of Blogging, Growing Changing Learning Creating, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://growchangelearn.blogspot.com/2007/03/different-motivations-for-blogging.html

2. Simons, M 2008, Toward a Taxonomy of Blog, Australian Policy Online, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0

3. Funnell, A 2008, A Taxonomy of Blog, The Media Report, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

4. Oech, RV 2007, A Taxonomy of Blogs, Creative Think, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://blog.creativethink.com/2007/03/a_taxonomy_of_b.html

The Blogging Phenomenon

Blog- has became a trend where it is a space for an individual to share his or her experiences that have gained or voice out the perspectives either from academic, personal interests, political and so on. Furthermore, the size of the current blogosphere is growing year by year. From the article, “A Look into the State of Blogosphere 2010 report by Technorati” by Autumn Morris (2011), she mentioned that the uses of mobile blogging help to increase the size of blogosphere as mobile blogging allow bloggers to make posting easy, quick and frequent.

The trends of blogging changes frequently. For what I have noticed, there is two types of trends nowadays, lifestyle blogger and commercialize blogger. Lifestyle blogger, those who posted about their personal lifestyle such as fashion, food, travel, events and so on. Click Here for the example of a Lifestyle Blogger. On the other hand, commercialize blogger is mean a user who uses blog to sell products online which we also known as BlogShop. Click Here for a Blogshop.

Basically, Political blogs are really widespread in United States compare with Malaysia. In US, public will voice out their thought on their blog or internet to allow others comment on it just to exchange their viewpoint. However, in Malaysia, online blogshop is hitting the market as consumers are allow to purchase goods while sitting in front of the laptop, PC or Smartphone instead of walking out from the house. As we can see, blogosphere has brought different benefit to the public in different country.

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Referencing:

1. Morris, A 2011, 'A Look Into the 2010 State of the Blogosphere Report by Technorati', Ignite Social Media, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/blogging/2010-state-of-the-blogosphere-report-by-technorati/

2. Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2011, Technorati, viewed on 22 August 2011, http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010/

Purpose Of The Blog

As we are in the midst of changes of times, the technology have getting improved as well. The purpose of this blog is to show my understanding of the use of the theories that I have learned. Besides that, the audiences that I targeted will be those who are interested with the issues of media publication and design.