Week 13 - Visual Technique

The screen captures above represent works from news organizations. These works are considered multimedia packages, in which teams of journalists compile a series of theme-related stories for the story package. The design used in presenting the information use several of Dondis's visual techniques. The top image shows a New York Times audio slideshow about the plight of the people in Columbia. The design of the slideshow player is understatement. The designer/programmer used great restraint in deciding how to present the information. The second image is of a story package by the Sydney Morning Herald. The design is a good example of sequentiality. Each chapter or separate components of the story package are set up in a way that suggest that they are to be watch in a sequence. The user, however, can choose which sequence to watch them in.

Week 12 - Contrast

The top image shows the War on Drugs project by the LA Times. There is great use of big and small contrast. The red circles show the reach of the drug wars. This design decision is more effective than simply plotting the locations of murders or drug lord territory with simple dots, which may have crowded the design.

The Current TV website uses great light and dark space contrast. The site background is dark, the content is housed in a lighter background, drawing the user's eyes to the content.

Week 10: Dimension/Depth

1. Choosing photographs for news websites

















Choosing photographs for a website can easily apply to the concepts of dimension and depth. In the news media, still photographs are as important as headlines and words when it comes to communicating what the story is about. Communicating as much as you can is important. For example, using overlap as a depth cue in the picture chosen for a website can communicate the scale of an event, the closeness of two people (above) and corresponding emotions or conflict.

Blog Exercise: Week 6

Syntactical Guidelines in Journalistic Story Packaging

The Not Just A Number site, by the Bay Area News Group, demonstrates a good use of the "stress" syntactical guideline because it uses "art" in the right places to draw attention, emphasis and interest to certain elements of the story package.




























The Being a Black Man site, a product of Washington Post doesn't make a significant enough distinction between the positive and negative in its use of dark tones. The interface and layout in general is almost mono-toned, making an emphasis on active and passive element of the design hard to pick out.

Blog Exercise: Week 5

Fine and Applied Art
































Photograph of painting by Kehinde Wiley

Functionality: the photograph/painting uses contradictions in it—black men in urban clothing painted in a scenery and with postures that they wouldn't normally be associated with. Bucks stereotypes.

Aesthetic beauty: the feathering, the use of small details, like the blue bird, present an aesthetic beauty in contrast with the subject in street clothing.

Communication: the photo/painting communicates how things/people can be perceived differently when taken out of their natural setting.

Decorative and Entertainment value: the photo/painting is decorative because of the pattering, feathering. The entertainment value is the contradiction or unusual subject in the scenery.

Blog Exercise: Week 4

Didn't get around to finding someone to do the puzzle with me. :(

Blog Exercise: Week 3

Feature Channels and Visual Search

Wonder Bread logo














Obama photograph























With feature channel processing, in the both the Wonder Bread logo and the photograph of Obama, the use of color and shape make the dominant message or meaning of the image stand out. In the logo, the yellow circle stands out because its hue or brightness—this may be communicating that the yellow circle is of significance to the product message or of the branding. In the photograph, a photography editor for a news organization may have chosen this photo to illustrate an element of a story on the subject (Obama). The shape and orientation of the illuminated cross in the center of the photo is clearly meant to be the dominant focus. The photograph communicates to the viewer that this object might carry more significance than the subject (person) in the left, lower part of the photograph.