Humble advice from a graduate on document designing

In writing any document design, I believe the important aspect is not so much of how great it looks, but more of whether the design is appropriate and acceptable by different societies and cultures.

I realised I used mostly Schriver and Penman's theories. That's because I agree with them that in any document, we need to look at the audience's needs, habits and expectations (Penman 1998, p. 10). Documents make so much more sense when they fulfil these three things.

But overall, the most important thing about being a document designer, whether for blogs, magazines, newspapers, or advertisements, is being ethical and making conscientious decisions. Watch how you word sentences and make sure they are appropriate to the audience you are targeting. It doesn't hurt to put some thought and research before starting work on the design.

So, until next time, good luck in document designing! Have fun while you're at it!


Reference:

Penman, R 1998, 'Document structures and readers' habits', Communication News, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1, 10-11.

Why censor?

Since I was talking about censorship in the public sphere in my previous post, I would like to bring up the issue on 'why censor?'. We already figured that we cannot possibly censor the Internet, but at the same time, we cannot deny that we need some form of censorship in our lives. We need to protect ourselves from things that can harm us mentally.

Hamilton's (2009) 'Web doesn't belong to net libertarian' brought up two point of views: the first is that access to porn can cause harm to those who view it; and the second is that everyone should have the freedom to view what they like. In Bernardi's (2009) words, 'censorship is seen as a powerful example of the loss of personal freedom and a step towards totalitarianism...' while it can also be 'a necessary part of protecting the values that have provided the moral foundation to our society for generations'.

Judy Blume, however, sees censorship as fear disguised as moral outrage. The adults are afraid of letting children be open to what the world is really like, with all the obscenity in words, actions and thoughts (Blume).

(Source: www.deeppencil.com/images/censor211.jpg)

So, why censor? Because we are afraid of what is out there? Because we want to uphold good values? Or why don't cenosry? So that we can have freedom of speech? All views are valid and true, but I think they also are extreme.

I believe, at the end of the day, we censor for the common good of every stakeholder. But, that also depends on the culture and collective value of the society. What one culture may deem appropriate may not be for another society. As Schriver (1997, p. 365) says, reading is a social act that depends on the shared meanings of the society. Therefore, if a society is 'okay' with pornography (just an example!), then probably the children in that society wouldn't be affected negatively.

Thus, I think that there is a need for censorship for good reasons. But the most important censorship is perhaps self-censorship. We can't possibly ban every pornography sites, but we can censor ourselves from going into those sites. Indeed, it is a choice at the end of the day. It's just the matter of making the right one.


References:

Bernardi, C 2009, 'Blanket ban on the internet a folly', Australian, 6 February, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/blanket-ban-on-the-internet-a-folly/story-0-1111118775787>.

Blume, J, 'Judy Blume talks about censorship', Judy Blume on the Web, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://judyblume.com/censorship.php>.

Hamilton, C 2009, 'Web doesn't belong to net libertarian', Australian, 16 February, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/web-doesnt-belong-to-net-libertarians/story-0-1111118869227>.

Schriver, KA 1997, 'Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers', Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

Old but surviving

(Source: www.fpettit.com/)

How did you hear about Michael Jackson's death? My guess is you heard it through Twitter or Facebook. Niles (2009) pointed out that AOL's celebrity gossip site TMZ was the first to report on the King of Pop's death. Nonetheless, Twitter users were on fire, retweeting TMZ's report, sharing rumours, confirming and mourning Jackson's death (Niles 2009).

But, what were established news corporations doing at this time? They were, appropriately, waiting for confirmation from authorities before reporting on the news (Niles 2009). I think this 'restrain' from simply jumping into conclusions is a great advantage of established newsrooms and perhaps a reason why the old media will not die out.

Furthermore, the traditional media are never anonymous in their reporting, unlike some new media (Sennitt 2007). They have researchers and resources that are qualified to provide news to their audience (Sennitt 2007). This credibility helps make news more convincing.

But looking at the more physical side of things, traditional media conveys messages in printed hard-copy. Let's generalise and say there are two groups of people in this world: those who love to read on screen, and those who love to read on paper. I generalise with the support that the United Kingdom's KPMG's first Media and Entertainment Barometer (2009) found that 43% of the audience prefer consuming the media offline while only 24% preferred online media. Additionally, a survey conducted by Lynn, Turner and Cooper (2008) found that 86% of the respondents still use traditional media for local news and information.

Penman (1998, p. 10) said that it is a general principle that documents should be designed to accommodate to the different habits of readers. Therefore, the traditional media and the new media has merged to come up with something better. Notice how most news corporations use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other alternative media in their publications? For instance, the Star newspaper has an online version that offers the same news as in the print version. They also have blogs where people can voice out their opinions. These are especially targeted to the users who prefer reading online than on print.

Thus, the traditional media will not possibly die out because they are still used by many and they have cleverly merged with the alternative media to be bigger and better.

Hmm... just an afterthought, traditional=old=wise. No wonder they are surviving still today.



References:

KPMG UK 2009, 'Media: Consumers still favour traditional media - but for how long?' 12 October 2009, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://rd.kpmg.co.uk/mediareleases/17183.htm>.

Lynn, A, Turner, SD & Cooper, M 2008, 'Traditional content is still king as the source of local news and information' in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, 21 May, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p233147_index.html>.

Niles, R 2009, 'Michael Jackson's death and its lessons for online journalists covering breaking news', OJR: The Online Journalism Review, 25 June, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200906/1755/>.

Penman, R 1998, 'Document structures and readers' habits', Communication News, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1, 10-11.

Sennitt, A 2007, 'Traditional media "still has advantages", Media Network, 31 May, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/traditional-media-still-have-advantages>.

Can you stop it?

I believe somewhere in one of my postings, I spoke about how weblogs had grown explosively rapid. However, this is not so in certain countries like China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (Funnell 2008).

Before moving on further, let me share with you something I learn from Jurgen Habermas' theory on the 'public sphere'. The most important feature about this 'public sphere' was how the public used it in rational-critical debate in the eighteenth century (SparkNotes 2009). This rational-critical debate, thus, puts the government, and those who are in power, in checked (SparkNotes 2009). In those days, the 'public sphere' took place in a barber shop... or a bar.

Now that the world has evolved, the Internet has become the 'public sphere'. It has become a medium where the public can voice out their opinions on anything, and that includes the government... sometimes. See, in countries that I had mentioned earlier, the government actually suppressed such freedom of speech and democracy (Funnell 2008).

Antony Loewenstein, who visited this six countries and wrote a book called The Blogging Revolution, said that the government bans personal blogs and sites that could cause dissent and threat towards them (cited in Funnell 2008). In fact, we don't have to look far from home to see this happening.

(Source: http://www.deliberations.com.au/2009/08/poisoning-public-sphere.html)

The Malaysian government had tried to ban some Internet sites, particularly anti-government websites, sometime in the middle of last year. In the attempt to ban sites, police had raided Raja Petra Kamarudin's (he is the owner of independent online news Malaysia Today) house and 'seized a laptop, a scanner and some documents' (Hamid 2008).

Now, here comes my point. (I know, I talked so much and now i'm only getting to my point?) This modern 'public sphere', the Internet, cannot be stopped from speaking up. The Internet is so wide, it has infinite space in its world. If the government bans a site, another site will come up advocating the same issue. The Malaysia Today website was not available the Friday after Raja Petra's belongings were seized but there was a message that directed readers to a "mirrored site" which the government did not ban (Hamid 2008). (Well, the site doesn't work anymore since Malaysia Today is 'un-banned'.)

Thus, can we stop the 'public sphere' from talking? It doesn't necessarily have to be about anti-government issues. It could be about human rights, homosexuality, pornography... can anyone ban ALL of these?

I highly doubt so.



References:

Funnell, A 2008, 'The blogging revolution', ABC Radio National, 4 September, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2351985.htm>.

Hamid, J 2008, 'Malaysia ban on anti-government website draws outcry', Reuters, 29 August, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSKLR2429420080829>.

SparkNotes 2009, 'Structural transformation of the public sphere', viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/public/summary.html>.

Photo-power in war!

Photographs are interesting communication objects. They keep the memories alive. One look at them and you would feel as though you were back in that good ol' times, or maybe some, not so good.

In a radio transcript from ABC Radio National on 'The power of the photograph' (2007), Sonja Heizmann shared about the photo gallery in Dubrovnik that was showcasing war photographs of Lebanon and Israel. Nonetheless, the city of Dubrovnik itself has had suffered much war in the early 1990s and like Funnell (2007) says, "... most of the locals would rather forget the war. But a photographic gallery in the city's centre is trying to keep the memory alive."

The gallery's curator, Wade Goddard, said that Dubrovnik was an appropriate place to hold the exhibition because it had suffered one of the worst wars in the century (cited in Funnell 2007). He probably figured that the people of Dubrovnik could related to the victims of war because they had experienced it once before.


(Source: Sinclair 2006)
This picture showed a relative of the Lebanon-Israel war victim holding pictures of her loved ones in a mass funeral.

This supports one of Schriver's (1997, p. 365) theory that 'individuals share an incredible variety of connections between signs and meanings'. Thus, reading and understanding the photographs become a social act that depends on the shared meanings between the Dubrovnik community and the victims of war.

(Source: Morris 1991)

Caption: Serbian soldiers ducking shots from Croatian fire

Besides that, Wade Goddard made an interesting point when he said that photographers were the ones at the scene while editors and publishers, who were not, schemed up ideological ways to tell the story (cited in Funnell 2007). There is always the issue of reporting objectively, accurately and completely. However, in a study by Renita Coleman (2006, p. 835), it was discovered that the effects of photographs improved ethical reasoning of decision makers in journalism. She said that images could cause people to become aroused and thus, to generate more thoughts and evidently, these emotion-evoking images would stimulate people to think more rationally (Coleman 2006, p. 836-837).

Photographs do leave big impacts and impressions on their viewers. Sometimes, they can't simply be judged at face value as they can speak more than words can say. The next time we look at a picture, let us not only think about what it is trying to tell us, but also to relate it socially. And as journalists (though I am not one... yet), allow these photographs to help us make conscientious decisions in our reporting.



References:

Coleman, R 2006, 'The effects of visuals on ethical reasoning: what's a photograph worth to journalists making moral decisions?', J&MC Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 4, pp. 835, 850.

Funnell, A 2008, 'The power of the photograph', ABC Radio National, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm>.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/webservices/fedoraldap/default.aspx?bibid=556340>.

New media for a new generation

Once upon a time... people were 'pushed' with information by the traditional media, like newspapers and televisions.

Today, people have the power to 'pull' information, especially with the evolution of the new media. Not only did weblogs grew explosively, there were also social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

John Naughton (2006, p. 7) sees this evolution as "an interesting parasitic/symbiotic relationship between blogging and conventional journalism". Indeed, we can see this relationship in Malaysia, particularly during the March 2008 elections.

The media are supposed to be watchdogs of the government. Ironically, that is not so in Malaysia because the mainstream media are mostly controlled by the government. Thus, the public was always fed with pro-government news. However, ever since alternative media began to sprout like mushrooms, the public became more aware of what is happening in the nation.

Kaufman (2008) reported that 70% of Malaysian voters decision for March 8 elections were influenced by blogs and this led to a surprise loss for the ruling party. The alternative media like MalaysiaKini, The Malaysian Insider and MalaysiaToday, match their audience's needs, habits and expectations by providing news that is independent and transparent (Penman 1998, p.10). Furthermore, they cater to their audience by using the social networking sites mentioned earlier.



References:

Kaufman, S 2008, 'Malaysia’s Alternative Media Become Decisive Political Factor', American.gov, 3 April, viewed 13 November 2009, <http://www.america.gov/st/democracy-english/2008/April/20080403175441esnamfuak0.1705591.html>.

Naughton, J 2006, 'Blogging and the emergent media ecosystem', in Seminar to Reuter's Fellowship, University of Oxford, viewed 13 November 2009, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

Penman, R 1998, 'Document structures and readers' habits', Communication News, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1, 10-11.

Designing: Web vs Print

Designing for the Web is different from designing for print documents and I think the best way to explain these differences is to look at how readers read the content on Web and print.

Nielsen, Schemenaur and Fox (1999) discovered that 79% of readers scan the pages on Web. Therefore, it is a good idea to make the word count on Web half of what is in print.

Take for example this webpage from The Environment Agency. Notice how little words there are in the page and how simple the sentence structures are? Furthermore, the sub-heads are highlighted to create a visual hierarchy, providing readers with a visual cue on the important topics they can read on (Wilson 2007). Readers can click on these sub-heads that will link them to another page. Let's say, we clicked on 'Prepare for flooding'.

In this new page, readers come across more sub-heads on various topics. This allows readers to choose and narrow down specifically which information they are looking for (Nielsen, Schemenaur & Fox 1999). The hyperlink at the bottom also helps add credibility to the webpage as it links readers to other relevant information (Nielsen 1997).

Print documents, like the one below from Aveweb.org, plays with certain laws. There's the law of similarity, where units which look alike are considered as a homogenous grouping (Bernhardt 1986, p. 72). There's also the law of equilibrium, where the layout of information is balanced horizontally, vertically and diagonally so that it's easy on the eyes of readers (Bernhardt 1986, p. 71).

In addition, one can have non-visual information in print documents compared to Web. It is found that readers read 25% more slowly on screen than on print (Nielsen, Schemanaur & Fox 1999). In the above fact sheet, we see an 'essay' section. To facilitate reading from paragraph to paragraph, transitional links are used (Bernhardt 1986, p. 68).

These aren't the only differences in designing for Web and print. If you would like to read more on this, you should read Jakob Nielsen's article and other articles from WebsiteTips.com.


(ps: you can click on the images to view them at a larger size.)


References:

Bernhardt, SA 1986, 'Seeing the text', College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66-78.

Nielsen, J 1997, 'How users read on the web', Alertbox, 1 October, viewed 11 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>.

Nielsen, J, Schemenaur, PJ & Fox, J 1999, 'Difference between paper and online production', Sun Microsystems, 13 September, viewed 11 November 2009, <http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/index.html>.

Wilson, D 2007, 'Writing web copy that's easy to scan', Web Marketing Today, 24 July, viewed 11 November 2009, <http://wilsonweb.com/design/danwilson-webcopy.htm>.

Cyberspace community

Ever wondered what a 'blogging community' is?

I tried googling about it and stumbled across a very down-to-earth answer: a 'blogging community' is exactly that - a community - where bloggers have a sense of belonging and identity and are welcoming towards others (Anthony 2009).

To be part of a blogging community or to create one, one should take the time and effort to find people in the blogosphere. Denise (2009) advises bloggers to become "a visible, contributing, supporting member of the blogosphere" and they can do this by using tools like RSS, blogging platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Skelliewag.org (2009) has a few good tips on building a blogging community, like focusing on writing viral articles and commenting on other sites.

According to White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities.

The first is the 'one blog centric community', where the blog owner is the central identity.

(Source: White 2009)

The second is the 'central connecting topic community', where a common passion links the bloggers.

(Source: White 2009)

The third is the 'boundaried communities', where blog readers are hosted on a single platform, such as LiveJournal.

(Source: White 2009)

In LiveJournal, members can register and express themselves through a private journal, a blog, a discussion forum or a social network. It was pioneered by Brad Fitzpatrick in April 1999 as a fun project, but it eventually grew into a community blogging platform (LiveJournal Inc. 2009). In addition, LiveJournal Inc. has employees who develop new features, applications and ideas for their users (LiveJournal Inc. 2009).


References:

Anthony 2009, 'What is a blogging community?' The Travel Tart, 27 September, viewed 9 November 2009, <http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/>.

Denise 2009, 'How do you build community?' BlogHer, 3 September, viewed 9 November 2009, <http://www.blogher.com/how-do-you-build-community>.

LiveJournal Inc. 2009, 'About Us', viewed 9 November 2009, <http://www.livejournalinc.com/aboutus.php>.

Skelliewag.org 2007, 'The first month: Building something out of nothing', 18 October, viewed 9 November 2009, <http://www.skelliewag.org/the-first-month-building-something-from-nothing-116.htm>.

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and community-launching a new paradigm for online community?', The Knowledge Tree, 11th edn, viewed 9 November 2009, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Classify? How?

As the blogosphere grows, the number of blog types grow too. There are personal blogs, organisational blogs, blogs that are categorised according to their genre, such as politics, travel, fashion, and anything you can find under the sun; you name it, you got it. Then, there are blogs classified under their media type, like vlog. Besides that, blogs are now also classified by the device that is used to compose it, like a moblog where people update their phones with a mobile phone (BBC News 2003).

Classifying blogs helps readers find that specific topic that matches their interest and eventually become a medium where they can help one another over worries and concerns, such as Mommy Blogs (Brown 2005). I suppose that is true. However, Mayfield (2004) argues that "the topic or objective of a blog can change over time, as most things do, and most individual blogs defy categorisation".

In ABC's radio transcript titled 'A taxonomy of blogs' (2008), Margaret Simons gave nine very interesting blog classifications. In my humble opinion, her taxonomy differs greatly from other classifications because she takes into consideration the style, format, targeted audience and the topic of the blogs. Ikeda, Takamura and Okumuta (2008, p. 1156) in their research state that it is an important information source to identify the characteristics of a blog in terms of its writing style or topic to better classify that blog.

Thus, I believe the best way to classify blogs is to look at it from every angle like how Simons did. A blog is like a person, complex and made up of many factors. No one factor can define a person, in that same way, no one factor can define a blog.


References:

BBC News 2003, 'Blogging goes mobile', 23 February, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2783951.stm>.

Brown, J 2005, 'The drooling minutiae of childhood revealed for all to see as 'Mommy blogs' come of age', Independent, 5 February, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-drooling-minutiae-of-childhood-revealed-for-all-to-see-as-mommy-blogs-come-of-age-485573.html>.

Funnell, A 2008, 'A taxonomy of blogs', ABC Radio National, 25 September, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

Ikeda, D, Takamura, H & Okumura, M 2008, 'Semi-supervised learning for blog classification', in Proceedings of the Twenty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI.org, pp. 1156-1161.

Mayfield, R 2004, 'Internal and external corperate blogs', Ross Mayfield's Weblog, 13 August, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2004/08/internal_and_ex.html>.

The undeniable phenomenon of blogging

Source: www.tonisant.com/blog/pix/blogosphere8.jpg

Blogging is no longer a foreign word in this Internet era. Everyone is talking about it, reading it and doing it. In 2006, Technorati tracked more than 35.3 million blogs - making that 1.2 million blog posts everyday with an average of 50,000 per hour (Hughes 2006)! By 2008, there are 133 million blogs listed by Technorati (Winn 2009). The blogosphere is clearly growing and it is really, really large.

The trends in the blogosphere differ from country to country because of the social cognitive perspectives. For instance, in Europe, bloggers are free to write whatever they want without any restrictions but in China, the government controls the Internet. Therefore, Chinese bloggers usually blog in a collective dimension (Liu 2007, p. 4; Liu & Larose 2008, p. 4). As for Malaysia, Ooi (2007, p. 38) found that bloggers usually write about their personal interests and hobbies. Nonetheless, in Europe, Asia and Malaysia, personal blogs seem to be more prevalent than other types of blogs.

Blogging has many benefits to the community. In the Malaysian context, blogging is a way of sharing and gaining knowledge (McRea 2009). For example, although Ooi (2007, p. 38) mentioned that "political blogs are only a small part of the blogging landscape in Malaysia", Ramadass (2006) found in a study Blogging Asia: A Windows Live Report, 20% Malaysians listed political blogs as their favourite. This shows that through political blogs, Malaysians are able to voice their opinions and share information about the political arena that is not portrayed by the mainstream media.



References:

Hughes, R 2006, 'Current size of the blogosphere', Open2Learn-Open Learning in Higher Education, 17 April, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://open2learn.blogspot.com/2006/04/current-size-of-blogosphere-april-2006.html>.

Liu, X 2007, 'A personalized media in a collectivism country: Chinese bloggers perceptions of blogging self-efficacy, outcome expectations and i-anxiety', in International Communication Association Annual Meeting, pp. 1-27.

Liu, X & Larose, R 2008, 'A social cognitive perspective on blogging: comparing the U.S. and China', in International Communication Association Annual Meeting, pp. 1-35.

McRea, B 2009, 'Radical blogging-uses and benefits', Mcreasite.com, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://www.mcreasite.com/blog/1313/radical-blogging-uses-and-benefits/> .

Ooi, YM 2007, 'Blogging thrives in Malaysia', Communication World, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://www.zenguide.co.uk/2007/11/blogging-thrives-in-malaysia/> .

Ramadass, V 2006, ‘Blogging phenomenon sweeps Asia’, 28 November, Lowyat.NET, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://www.lowyat.net/v2/latest/blogging-phenomenon-sweeps-asia-4.html>.

Winn, P 2009, 'State of the blogosphere: Introduction', Technorati, 21 August, viewed 7 November 2009, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/> .