It's the Last Class

Hello gang!

It's time for me to leave with you my final blog post of the semester, but surely the most entertaining! On this very page, you will see the 4 photos that make up my visual argument for Studying Abroad. While some of it may seem a bit forward, obvious, or uncomplicated, you haven't read the paper that goes with it that fully explains the pictures, so allow me to go into a slight explanation:



#1: The world's greatest monuments are just outside of your classroom door
#2: Learn how others celebrate cultural traditions or holidays, in this case, Christmas in Germany
#3: You're more aware of what's going on in the world; can see things first hand and thus better understand them, like the Parliamentary system of British government
#4: Part of the TCU mission statement is to act as a "global leader"

And that's what my visual argument is all about Charlie Brown.

Hope you guys had a good semester and have an even better new year! Till next time,

Happy LAST DAY OF CLASS all!

Visual Arguments

Hello all!

Today is a big day for the class, and I mean that in the most unsarcastic way. We have blogs, revisions on projects and rough drafts all due today! It's also the last Thursday class in 2011 EVER. How weird is that? Bring back November!

For my visual argument, I originally had a girl walking around campus seeing "the world" in reflections of things. While I still think the idea is really solid, I was told that there wasn't enough argument in my images, for surely who would argue against studying abroad? While I argue against that [i.e. not everyone I know believes in studying abroad] I do see how it needs to be more argumentative or "in your face!" for lack of a better word.

So I reworked it, took some ideas into consideration and am ready to present them to my peers today. Hopefully, it will be more of an argument because I'm meeting with my model this afternoon to take pictures. Eeeeekkk!

Happy Thursday.

Mike Rosenthal: Photographer Extraordinaire

Hey gang!

I hope you did your Mini #6, because it's due today! For this project, I chose photographer Mike Rosenthal. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, chances are you've already seen some of his work on America's Next Top Model. Recognize the picture on the right as Nicole Fox from cycle 13? Crazy, huh?

The cool thing about Rosenthal is that he before he started work as a professional photographer, he actually started out in the film business, and as one who is currently studying film and hoping to break into the business after graduation, this guy is right up my alley! He studied cinematography [which for those of y'all who don't know, is basically all about light and camera angles] under Russell Carpenter, or the Director of Photography who worked on Titanic, 21, and Charlie's Angles.

His training in cinematography has no doubt helped Rosenthal to master light, but what I really love about Rosenthal more than anything is his ability to compose a photo that both highlights and extenuates the background as well as it's subject. Photography is all about capturing the moment, but Rosenthal is able to turn the moment into more than just a snippet in time; he tells a story.


To check out more of Rosenthal's work, you can check out his website or if you're more interested in getting to know the man behind all the beautiful photographs, you can read his blog.

Happy [get excited that there are only 3 more classes left] Tuesday!

VAs and Thanksgiving Break

Happy Almost Turkey Day All!

It's hard to believe it, but we only have three more classes left of the semester! Shut the front door, WHATT? I know. It seems even more crazy since we haven't had class in about a week, but hey, who's complaining? I hope you all turned in your storyboards and that they turned out well. I had difficulty trying to come up with something to form a visual argument for in an academic setting. But after procrastination on Facebook, I had some inspiration from my profile picture!


As someone who studied abroad I highly recommend to anyone who's even entertaining the idea that they should definitely do it! And isn't studying abroad part of an academic setting? I've just thought about what my visual argument is going to be centered around, Studying Abroad!

The plan is to have a girl walking around campus but we see elements from around the world (like important monuments) incorporated into the photos (mostly in reflections and such) so that it gives off the illusion that TCU and the rest of the world are linked. Huh? Huh?

Yeah that's all I have. I still have a week from when we get back to perfect it and turn it in. Although when it says "image drafts" does that mean we have to have started editing our photos? Because what ever an image draft is, it's due on Tuesday... O.o

Gobble Gobble Gobble!

Regroup and Refresh

Wooh!

As a group, please join me in a collective sigh of relief that the Unit II project is turned in and officially off our minds for a while. While it may be deemed a learning curve success by some, I still prefer to think of it as "The Great Headache of 2011". But for those of you who'd like to revisit my page on the Plus/Minus Debate to weigh in or educate yourself a little bit more on what the problems and solutions are, you can read all about it HERE.

But now that we've had a little time away from our pages and let ourselves "refresh" (huh? huh? get it?!) let's "regroup" (it's was all preplanned!) and start thinking about Unit III: the visual argument. From what I understood the assignment to be in class, we're basically designing an ad campaign that spans over 4 pictures. Hmmm. An Ad for an academic setting. Oh no, excuse me, a "visual argument" for an academic setting. That's going to be a tough one to come up with. But I'm confident after being shown some examples I'll be able to put my little brain to work and come up with something remarkable. I mean, I always do, don't I?

Happy Wednesday (which happens to be my favorite day of the week) all!

Reconsiliation

Ok... truce.

Dreamweaver and I got over our little squabble. I still think it was being uncooperative for no reason, but let's try and put it all behind us, shall we? The good new is that I have figured out how to attach a downloadable document (check!), I have all my links to both the two tier and third tier pages (check!), I figured out how to link the top image/picture back to the home page (check!) and got my images to show up on the remote (check!).

Now comes the part that counts, and that means putting all the research into understandable, navigable and clearly marked and organized web pages without being too redundant, wordy, or boring. Piece o'cake, right? But I digress, thanks to all who gave me feedback today. It was a good feeling to know my image works well. Huh? Huh?


And the best part of course, is that I made it myself. Hello photoshop, I'm never going to escape you, am I? Well gang, best of luck completing your projects. If it makes you feel better, I will most likely be screaming at my computer tomorrow night till we turn it in.

Happy Writing!

Website Woes

So I thought this morning that Dreamweaver would be a little more willing to work with me. I was wrong. Very very wrong. It seems that for some unknown reason, pictures that I've put on my site don't want to show up when I sync the local to the remote server. I can't seem to figure out which exact property it is that I need to change in the css to fix the alignment of my footer and I can't seem to figure out how to get the css to change everything on all of my pages even though technically, it's already supposed to do that.

I guess what I'm saying here is that the more time I spend on this project, the more frustrated I become. When I started this class, I knew in the back of my mind that at some point, we were going to be working with websites, and I'm not going to lie, I've been absolutely dreading it from day one. I hate working websites. Absolutely hate all the designing and linking and creating, it's just not for me. But I'm trying. You may be winning right now Dreamweaver but the fact that I despise you makes me want to beat you all the more. So I'm going to go do some re-reading. I'm going to try and figure out how exactly to get to my third tier page from my second, how to attach that document to the site and how to get my pictures to show up on the site online. But mostly, I'm going to win.

Those were my cheesy words of the day. Happy Tuesday all; let's just keep winning.

Friends OFF

For the first time all semester, I see blogging as taking a break from something I really really don't want to do. Right now Dreamweaver and I aren't friends. We've reached the impasse and I've declared us in 'Friends Off Mode' until tomorrow morning. I just refuse to put up with his nit picky ways and he refuses to cooperate. What else can I do?

I decided for the purpose of the Rough Draft being due tomorrow to get all of my technical elements into place. You know, making sure all the links are connected and pictures are up instead of the actual content of the website. Now I know what you're thinking, "if content is king, why aren't you putting any on your site?" Well dear people who read my bog (if such people out there even exist) I shall tell you why!

To me, gathering research and writing is the easy part. Heck, I didn't get an 'A' in Propaganda Analysis for nothing! While I may not be the best persuasive writer or formulate the best argument, I am much more confident if the writing portion of this assignment than I am with the technical design part. Thus, I want to get everything set down in stone now so that if I have a problem with anything (like I currently am, ahem don't you dare say anything Dreamweaver!) I can fix it tomorrow and have that part of the assignment safely tucked away and have two more days to do a little more research and complete the important part, the WRITING.

As of right now, I'm going to bed. I hope when I wake up tomorrow that Dreamweaver and I can be friends again. I really want this relationship to work. I'd say it's me and not him, but I think we all know I'd be lying...

Until tomorrow!

That's Too Much!

The other day in class, someone asked a good question about our web pages: How much text is too much? The websites that we're designing are dealing with some complex issues. Okay, so maybe the whole plus/minus debate isn't really complex, but in order to make my site a compelling argument, I'm going to have to prove that I've done the research and am a credible source to talk about this issue. And if I have any hope of making enough noise to get the attention of the administration, I'm going to need a lot of proof.

And here's where we encounter our catch 22! To make a reasonable case, you need to have a lot of proof to backup your claim, but more proof means more words, which means you're going to lose your readers. If you think about it, how much of the text do you actually read on a particular web page? Probably not very much. In today's modern day computer driven society, people prefer to skim. Thus, to win over the most people for your argument, you have to really think about the best way to effectively get the most out of a small amount of text while still sounding credible. Woo! That should be easy. But no pressure or anything guys, it's not like we're out to change TCU...

Happy Halloween!

Spice Up Your Page

Something about Dreamweaver that bothers me (probably because I'm not very good at understanding how exactly the program works) is that because we're all designing pages through the same program, they all have a certain "look" to them that I'm not exactly fond of. Sure I can change the color of my background, add pictures, and change the font, but what's going to set my page apart stylistically from someone else in the class?


Don't worry guys, I have a solution! Ta-da, stylized background patterns! Through a simple google search, I found this great blog that linked me to many different websites where you can download different patterns (most of which for free, but some require payment of crediting the creator) to add some pizazz to your site. Just make sure that when you download the background you put it in your 'local' folder with the rest of your site's files, otherwise Dreamweaver will freak out when it can't find it which will cause you to freak out and we want to avoid that at all costs. Moral of the post, add some splash and try not to freak out.

Take that Dreamweaver templates!

Research! Research! Research!

Hello gang!

As our Unit II project comes to a close, I'm sure most of y'all already have most, if not all, of your research on your reform, so I'm not sure how helpful this post will be. But if, you're more like me and still searching for way to get just a little bit more information, than I might have a way to help. Depending on how much research you're doing through TCU's resources will depend on what exactly your reform entails, but a great way to get information about events or occurrences on TCU's campus is the using the TCU 360 site.

I know for my specific reform, how the student population feels about the heated +/- debate is not exactly anything new and I'm positive I've read articles about this topic in the Skiff. Well through 360's website, I can type in "plus minus system" into the search and pull up EVERY Skiff article written about the +/- system within the past six years. That means I can pull up documents about the system before it was implemented as well as after, and that's incredibly helpful!

Happy research!

Baby, You're a Dreamweaver

I'd like to take this time to dedicate a very big thank you to Prof. Murray for taking the time in class this last Thursday to walk us through setting up our site definitions (also known as the .ste file), showing us how to create pages, and explaining a few basic Dreamweaver properties.


That being said, the biggest headache about this project thus far is the fact that it all revolves around being able to use Dreamweaver properly. And unfortunately, if one doesn't really understand the logistics of Dreamweaver, this project feels like an incredible weighty and insurmountable task. Sometimes I just want to scream at the computer that I am not computer science literate and that making a webpage shouldn't be this hard! In fact, I believe it there should be a program that's a sort of web-scrapbook that allows you to create your page via a sort of drag and drop system we all come to expect since Apple's design team conditioned us to think that way. And if you're saying that a program out there DOES exist and it's called Dreamweaver then I disagree! While Dreamweaver is somewhat user friendly, you really do have to an understanding of how the internet reads webpages and how the coding of said program works to fully comprehend how to design a page.

Oi, guess it looks like it's back to the user's manual for me...

The Good, the Bad and the Unit II Project

If there's one thing I've learned more than anything else in college, it's that taste is subjective. It's hard to define what is 'good' and what is 'bad' when everyone defines those two things just a little bit differently. Good and bad food, music, movies, clothing, the list goes on and on for ways that people can disagree. Web page design is no different, but I hope y'all can appreciate if not agree with the choices that I've made.

Climate Wisconsin is one of the coolest and most innovative websites I've seen with a .org ending. It's basically a website designed to show how the change in climate is effecting the Wisconsin area, but the way in which the information is presented is anything but boring! It's based heavily on image and video interface which draws in today's culture for constant stimulation. Every square that you click on is linked to a video about that topic as well as a plentiful amount of research that has been done about this topic through local Universities. I found the site to be very user friendly, engaging and interesting. Overall, an ace in one!

Now for those of you who prefer your websites to be a little more flashy and complicated, BokicaBo, a website by Serbian fashion designer Bojana Borak is for you. The website is laid out in a image next to image style which allows you to scroll back and forth and side to side to shift between all the different styles and images. Be careful of where your mouse takes you though, as this site has a tendency to steer you off course if you're not prepared!


Alright, I'm going to pull a fast one and say that I absolutely hate TCU's webpage. It may look nice and flashy, but I can't tell you how many minutes of my life I have wasted trying to find information from that directory! The search on the site will get you absolutely nowhere and as far as the actual information on the page goes (if you ever find the page you're looking for) prepare to be disappointed! Chances are, any of the information you were looking for is not going to be there. And beware of the talking guy in the polo that pops up unexpectedly!


And last but not least, you have the absolute worst website I've ever come across, I'm not even sure what it's called or what the main purpose is! I think it was designed to sell products, but it's not in English so I have no idea what it's trying to persuade me to do. For all I know, it could be links of funny videos. All the images are on top of one another, clicking on one image just takes you to another cluster mess of images which helps very little if at all. There's even a search bar, if you knew what you were looking for, but by the looks of it, anyone who visited this website would have no idea. Everything about this website get's lost in translation and not in a good way.

A Little Web Design 101

As we roll into Unit II, aka Hypertext, I decided to focus my web article on the most basic rules and element of web design. You can read the whole article for yourself here, or you can read the following summarized bullet points:

• There are many things you can't control that can affect the way your design appears on another's screen. A few of these include: the web browser, color depth of the monitor, and your operating system.
• A website's design is not completely contingent on your personal tastes, but on that of your AUDIENCE
• Remember to optimize everything you put on your page so that it will load quickly.
• Organizing and compartmentalizing your files is key to adding links and multiple pages to your site
• The use of various color combinations for your website can lead your audience to believe various things (like red is bad for financial websites but blue or gray is fine)
• Not everybody has the same fancy font as you! Keep it simple, and everyone will see it.

Seems easy enough, no? I haven't yet decided what topic I want to cover for this unit, but I'm leaning towards either the rules and regulations on how Scholarship funds are distributed to the student body or Why the health center has yet to expand. Any thoughts?

Happy Wednesday!

Last Call

As the big day gets closer and closer, I'm starting to feel more confident about my design. That begin said, I'm extremely glad we had the time in class to peer review our design project and ask any last minutes questions that we might have had because I would have missed some key elements. Today, I found out that:

a.) Our 500 word paper has to have a similar design to match our poster. Say what? I don't remember reading that in the instructions (which YES, I have read over many many times, thank you very much). I'm so glad I asked if we're turning in a hard copy because now I know I need to design my paper!

b.) Some parts of the metaphor I wanted to use didn't work for some people, but it's totally cool because I have a backup plan! I find it fascinating to see just how differently people think. A concept that made total sense to me didn't make sense to someone else, but it did to another person. This project forces you to think about all those people who don't see the point you're trying to make and find another way to make them understand.

c.) As it turns out, I do have enough text on my poster, but I need to add more information about Africa specifically.

d.) Turning a picture of a person into a silhouette totally counts as an original image as long as I'm the person who took the picture, which I was!

e.) Apparently, I am good at creating slogans. This will certainly come in handy when I'm working at my PR firm in New York. But, oh wait a minute, I'm not a graphic design or Ad/PR major nor does this reflect anything that I want to do with my life. Oh well, I guess since this is a writing class, I'm sure it's a skill that I will undoubtedly use in the near future. But is this really a writing class? Someone please remind me what creating an image has to do with writing again because I don't get it.

That's all gang! Best of luck on your projects, the one's I saw today had some truly great ideas!

Getting Money, Making Grades

Alright gang, it’s time to talk about a little something that’s been on my mind ever since this project was assigned. Care to take a guess as to what I’m referring to? I’ll give you a hint; it has to do with money and grades. That’s right, I’m talking about the “Whoever gets the most donations to their donation center will receive an automatic ‘A’ for this project” clause.

While I understand that the point of that is to provoke a little competition among the group, I find it an ethical dilemma. Theoretically, if I play by these rules, my poster can look pretty terrible, and my paper can be poorly written, but if I get mommy and daddy to donate a large sum of money for my project, then I automatically get an ‘A’, no questions asked. Any one else see a problem with this?

I’m going to be completely honest with you and say, the chances of me getting the largest sum of monetary donations are very slim. I’ve known from the beginning that the fate of my grade relies in the work that I put into it, and you know what, there’s a good chance that I could get an ‘A’ on this project without raising any money! I’m sure that all of you are putting legitimate work into this project and if you get an ‘A’, you've earned it. That being said, I find the clause moot, unethical and problematic that the contingency of our grade somewhat depends on how much money we earn.

Sometimes, You Need to Take a Step Back

As we draw closer and closer to the Unit I project being due (also known as Thursday, what??) I find myself starting to doubt my original design. Well not exactly doubt per say, but really starting to question the placement of my photos. I guess that’s a good thing because it means I’m paying attention and really trying to interact with my audience, but I also happen to think that sometimes, your gut reaction is the best. You know that little innate truthful voice inside of you that knows when something feels right and will work, but when you ask it why, it hasn’t the faintest idea? Well 9 times out of 10, that voice is right. And you know how if you over think things they always turn out worse? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this project. STOP OVER THINKING BRAIN.

On the plus side though, I did really like that fact that mini project #2 was all about working with the same sort of techniques that we’re going to need to use to ‘adjust’ our photos for the Unit I project. It was a really big foot in the door/realization that I needed to start working on my photos. Adding filters and changing the ‘look’ of a photo can be monumental to it’s appearance and can change how we feel about it. Take the example we did with color the other day in class. Change one small property and BOOM, you change the whole meaning of the photo.

What's In a Color?

Last class we talked about the importance of color. It's amazing that something we can't physically touch, hear or taste has such a profound impact on our emotions. A lot of the time, we can't even really explain why we have such a strong feeling towards one particular color or another; it's just a gut reaction, it feels right.

I recently read a book by Maggie Nelson called, Bluets, that is all about the color blue. She mentions several times throughout the novel that when people found out what she was writing, they would ask what there was to possibly write about, but if you think about it, the inspiration is everywhere! When we're sad or depressed, we're blue. Joni Mitchell had a blue album and Picasso had a blue period with his work.

Colors are everywhere and the feelings we associate with them are in a constant limbo depending on the shade, intensity, and placement of said color. It's crazy to think about how much we subconsiously care and think about something so small.

Operation: Fighting World Hunger

Alright Multimedia crew, we finally have our NGO: Operation USA! Woo-hoo, feel the excitement in the air!! Now I don’t know about any of y’all, but I know very little about this organization so I’ve decided to dedicate this blog post to finding out more information about OpUSA (as seen abbreviated around the web). I’m sure some of this info will come in handy for the Unit I project.

The organization got its start in 1979 when the Vietnamese Boat People were fleeting their war-torn country and Richard Walden (now the current CEO) and Llewellyn Werner decided to donate their time and funds to helping the refuges. While it’s true that OpUSA does airlift food to countries fighting starvation, they also offer many other types of aid including medical supplies, other relief supplies, and they even help with reconstruction of certain areas and clef pallet surgeries for children. So far, they’ve helped to give aid to over 99 countries!

Since they are an NGO, they receive no government aid and all of the money they receive relies on private donations. This means that OpUSA and more importantly, the refuges struggling in the Horn of Africa truly do need our contributions! With their home base located in Los Angeles, OpUSA has had several celebrity affiliations (including Frank Sinatra) and corporate donations, but the future of an organization like this depends on the generosity of the American people! I hope this project will be a success so that we can make a difference in some of these people’s lives and that OpUSA continues to give aid to those around the world who truly need it.

You Dropped Food on the Floor

I’m glad we were given the opportunity in class to talk about our ideas for our project with the people around us. My idea is to create a tree with the branches portion a sort of “choose your own ending” with everything eventually leading to DONATE. I think this type of graphic chart will both entice people to a.) Stop and interact with the board to really see what the cause is all about and b.) Hopefully donate! This is an example similar to what I had in mind that I saw at a hostel in Europe last fall:

I do have a few issues/concerns about how I’m going to include my images, but I think I’m going to either place them within the chart itself or make them kind of like the leaves on the tree. That way, I can have some fun with masking layers and coloring to make them look more “leaf” like. I’ve also thought about hanging certain items from the tree that are representative of the NGO or the African country that we choose to represent the fruit of the tree. Is this too much? Any thoughts are appreciated!

NGOs: Non-Grocery Operated

Alright gang. Now, I’m not sure how y’all are feeling about this project, but the deeper I seem to be searching for NGOs, the harder it is to find an ACTUAL NGO that accepts food donations. Call me crazy, but I definitely don’t think it should be this hard! If these organizations are out there, I certainly haven’t had any luck finding them. I did however find several NGOs dealing specifically in African countries, such as Twaweza Project and Kenyans for Kenya, but even these organizations don’t seem to be accepting food. As we said in class, putting food in a box and sending it oversees isn’t that complicated; it is however crazy expensive!

When I studied abroad in London, I received two packages from my parents through out my stay. Both where tiny, weighing less than 10 pounds each and both cost over forty dollars to send. Can you imagine the cost of sending giant boxes of food certainly weighing more than 10 pounds to Africa? Yikes! Too me, it just doesn’t seem worth it. All the money that’s being spent on packaging could have been used to support this cause!

The smarter, more efficient and ideal plan would be to raise solely monetary donations for a single NGO. We can certainly make sure that they have a staff of people on the ground in the countries that are being aided and that the money we’re sending IS being spent on food, but the mandatory prerequisite for this assignment that food donations must be excepted seems a bit lofty and unrealistic for the kind of modern society we live in today.

Can We Fix It?

Before I begin writing, I want to preface this post with saying I'm merely playing the devil's advocate; questioning your beliefs to find out just how strongly you truly stand behind them will in turn fuel your passion. I'm assuming that most people in this class were aware that there was a famine in East Africa (and if you didn't, I guess you do now, huh?) but like myself get a little lost in the politics and the details to truly grasp what's really happening. And in the respect, I'm thankful for this project for giving me the opportunity to be slightly more connected to the world as a global citizen. That being said, I do have to question the project itself.

In doing some very initial research, I have found that our government is already involved, and once more is quoted as being, "the largest single contributor to relief in the Horn of Africa." After spending millions and millions of dollars on helping out another country in the name of humanity, my question for you is this: with the ongoing economic crisis this country has faced in the past three years and our ever growing and seemingly limitless debt, why are we spending the millions of dollars on another country's welfare? Surely, there are other developed countries out there that can afford to help out as well? Great Britain? Australia? France? Germany? What about them?

Don't get me wrong, I don't starve and I don't think anyone else should. It's above all, a basic human decency that we owe to these people who can't help themselves and we should help them. But why is it that everyone looks to the United States for help for their problems? This isn't the first time there have been starving people in the world, and you know what, it's not going to be the last. What did people do before America was a superpower? What are they going to do when we CAN'T help them?

Sometimes, the best way to go about fixing a problem is to just get in there and get your hands dirty. In these situations, sometimes it's best to not involve the government. Maybe we shouldn't rely on our government to always provide the solution. And maybe the problems of the rest of the world shouldn't have to weigh on the United States shoulders. Enter this project. We're not the government, yet we're trying to do some good for these poor people. That being said, you can have the best intentions but not get anywhere without the power of influence. Do you guys think that we're really going to make an impact in this famine's future? Do we have any power or influence without the government? Or is it really just a catch 22?

Photo Cred: danielberhane.wordpress.com