Introduction

Purpose of the blog
This blog aims to discuss several media issues that is closely related to our real life and also analyse how does it affect us with the design and also the changing of genre from one to another. It also aims to help readers in further understanding the importance of document design. The audience targeted would be blogger, college level student and media professionals.


Phenomenon of blogging
Blogging has become a phenomenon in Malaysia. Most of the people blog, no matter they are youngster or working class or senior citizens, they blog to share their life and story. Generally, blog is a website or a space where people share their thought, share their life story and also discussion on certain topics. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) and are part of a wider network of social media.

Purposes behind blogging community
Generally, the reason why people blog is to share their thoughts on certain issue, to share their everyday life story, to communicate with friends and family through regular posting, to do business by promoting their products online and for some bloggers, a blog is a space for them to express their feeling especially when they are down, in other words, escapism. For them, blogging is definitely not a waste of time, but still, for certain people, it is. For bloggers, they blog for purpose, therefore, it is not a waste of time for them to blog. Through blogging, they gain something in return such as comments, their friends, for business bloggers, they earn by promoting their products on their blog.
Below is a survey done on the purpose of why people blog:

Classification of blogs
There are variety of blogs that served different purpose and they are classifies as below:

By media – Classification of blogs based on media is blogs that uses different media to present. For example, photoblog is blog with photograph, vlog is blog with video and MP3 blog is blog with MP3.

By device – Moblog, blogs that are created using mobile phones and PDAs.

By genre – Blogs are also classified by genre, which is the issue they blog about. For example, entertainment blog, politics blog or personal blog.


Blogging community
A community blog is formed by a group of people that share the same interest. As the number of blogs increase everyday, there are also more and more blogging communities. For example, the project petaling street blog, a blog that collects all the interesting blogs and also Advertlets, Asia prominent blog advertising community.

The Advertlets logo
Sources: http://www.advertlets.com

Designing for online vs print
Online and print are two different genres but they are both example of multimodal text. According to Walsh (2006), multimodal texts are those text that have more than one ‘mode’, so that meaning is communicated through a synchronization of modes. Other than that, there is also different in affordance between online and print. . Affordances means what is made possible by the modes used (Walsh, 2006). For example, print-based text affordance lies in the “telling” in readers just read and accept what is given, on the other hand, the affordances in the website lies in the “communicating” in which readers get to navigate various section through menu bars, windows, frames and links (Walsh, 2006). For web pages, reader concern on the effectiveness of content and also the graphic integrity and legibility of the typography and the visual images (Schriver, 1997).


New forms of media publishing
A good example of new form of media publishing would be video log (vlog). Vlog is a blog that comprises video. Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text and images. More and more people are creating Vlog nowadays in order to share their story through video presentation.

Reference List:

Advertlet, viewed 1 November 2007,
http://www.advertlets.com/

Project Petaling Street, viewed 1 November 2007,
<http://www.petalingstreet.org/blog>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York. Chapter 6, pp.361-441

Walsh, M 2006, “Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No.1,pp. 24-37

The Cultural Context of Designing

When it comes to designing, no matter it is designing for print or web, cultural context is always vital. Graphics are not always obvious and that the order in which people read matters (Schriver, 1997). Designer need to gained insight into the knowledge, beliefs, and concerns of their audience and used what they learned to select symbols that were meaningful for their intended audiences so that readers will understand what the message is.

Readers will interpret meaning based on their past experience, cultural environment and also how well is their understanding on the subject. According to Walsh(2006), levels of meaning, depending on the type of text, can be enhanced by the reader’s background knowledge of the world, of how language works and of how text work as well as the recognition of discourses and ideologies. For example, foreigners will not understand the sign of a mosque, for them it may be something else and for them, it is a totally different meaning but for Malaysian, we understand that mosque is a place for Muslim to conduct their pray. Other than that, colour should also be in consideration when it comes to design. Red colour symbolize lucky for Chinese but it symbolize blood for other races.

Signboard of Mosque

Source: Google Images

Another important aspect to be considered is the context of situation. Halliday agrees with Malinowski in defining “context of situation” as the environment of the text (Halliday, 1985). Besides that, he also quoted Firth(1935) in defining context as the surrounding objects and events in so far as participants have some bearing on what is going on(Halliday, 1985). A designer must take into consideration what is happening and keep themselves updated on what is happening around so that their design matches the context of situation. Every instance of a genre is strongly influenced by the particular context of culture and context of situation in which it occurs. Language users need to be as aware of this as they are of the language they use to perform particular genres (Paltridge, 2000)

Chinese Traditional Culture - papercut
Source: Google Images

The example given above is a chinese traditional culture, paper cutting. Chinese will definitely understand the meaning of the image but other people will not understand because they have no background knowledge on chinese culture.

Sepet- The movie
Source: Google Images

Sepet is a well known movie in Malaysia as it involved relationship between two differenr races. For Malaysian, we definitely know what is the movie about and we know what makes it so special but for others such as foreigners, this is just another normal poster for them.

References List:

Halliday, 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Context of Situation, Chapter 1, pp.3-14.

Paltridge, B 2000, Making Sense of Discourse Analysis: Genre Analysis, Antipodean Educational Enterprise, Gold Coast.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York. Chapter 6, pp.361-441

Walsh, M 2006, Textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No.1,pp. 24-37

Web Television

Web television is television distributed through the internet. Web television is considered a form of multimodality text in which it incorporates spoken language, moving images and also incorporates music and sound (Walsh, 2006). In addition, a changed from television to web television is considered a genre change. According to Paltridge(2006), when he quoted Martin(1984:25), genre is a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture.

Today - with the increase internet connection speeds, advances in technology, the increase of total number of people online, and the decrease in connection costs, it has become a culture for people to go online and internet has become an essential need in everyone’s life. In addition, it has become increasingly common to find traditional television content accessible freely and legally over the Internet. In addition to this, new Internet-only television content has appeared which is not distributed via cable, satellite, or terrestrial systems. Internet television utilizes the connections of the Internet to deliver video from a source to a target device. Some of the ways in which Internet delivered television is used include:

• Showing a channel 'live' (like regular TV), or allow the viewer to select a show to watch on demand ("Video-on-Demand" or VOD).
  
• Viewing anything from low budget, home camcorder productions to expensive professional productions
  
• Interactive advertising

Other than that, through web television, viewers get to go from page to page through hyperlink which they will not get by watching television. It is an example of affordance, which is what is made possible by the mode used (Walsh, 2006). Affordances in the website lies in the “communicating” in which readers get to navigate various section through menu bars, windows, frames and links Through hyperlink, readers can get more info because they get to jump from link to link, gaining different information.

As mentioned above, web television allow viewer to select a show to watch on demand. For example, web television website such as Televisioninternet provides variety of shows for viewers to choose based on their preference. They classified their programmes as kids show, special event, home and fashion, sports channel, music tv and more. Youtube also provide drama series such as Korea, Japan and Taiwan drama which allows users to watch anytime they want and also get to choose the episode they want to watch

Japan Drama Series-One Litres of Tears episode 4
Source: youtube

References List:

Paltridge, B 2000, Making Sense of Discourse Analysis: Genre Analysis, Antipodean Educational Enterprise, Gold Coast.

Tan,K,H, 2007, Watching TV on the web, Tech Central, The Star, viewed 29 October 2007,http://startechcentral.com/reviews/story.asp?file=/2007/7/12/prodit/18236970&sec=reviews&new=1&cat=3&rid=1056

Walsh, M 2006, “Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No.1,pp. 24-37

Web Advertising

As the internet devours ever greater chunks of the advertising cake each year, more and more advertisers prefer to advertise their product or services as well as public service announcements using internet as internet services provides a cutting edge marketing platform for advertisers. As compared to print advertising, web advertising is able to reach out to more users and also readers. For example, Video is a powerful tool for communicating product information as it is capable to promote new product lines, conduct demonstrations and more. Podcasts allow you to reach out to consumers with tremendous frequency and cost effectiveness. Blogs generate tremendous amounts of traffic: Target your ads based on keywords, to secure an extensive, relevant audience.

Web pages are more akin to print editorial pages than print advertising pages in their complexity and sequentiality. Web ads, however, can be compared to television commercials: Web ads are brief, five-second spots, compared to the thirty-second spots that appear, for example, on the network news. There are severe limitations on story length and complexity, so being clear and persuasive (or at least mighty intriguing) is critical so that readers will not get bored while reading the advertisement and at the same time get the message across.
There are several types of web advertisements and are classified as below:

• Banner ads:horizontal
  
• Sidebar ads (aka skyscraper ads): vertical and scrollable, two to three times higher click-through rate than banners
  
• Pop-up and pop-under ads: annoying to close, but far higher click-through; higher cost for advertiser
  
• Floating ads: even more intrusive than pop-ups—they have sound and motion, and produce still-higher click-through numbers
  
• Unicast ads: a television-like commercial with the advantage of clickability to the sponsor’s site
  
• Other than that, web advertising is more towards the form of multimodal and hypertext.

Multimodal texts are those texts that have more than one ‘mode’, so that meaning is communicated through a synchronization of modes. They may be incorporate spoken or written language, still or moving images or may be produced on paper or electronic screen and may incorporate music and sound(Walsh, 2006). Advertisements with video or flash will be more attractive than the one on print.

Public Announcement of Anas Underground- anti aneroxia community

Source: Youtube Video

Sony Laptop Advertisement
Source: Youtube video

References List:

Walsh, M 2006, “Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No.1,pp. 24-37

Web Advertising, scientist.com, viewed 29 October 2007,
< http://www.the-scientist.com/about/advertising/webadvertising/>

White, A,W. 2007, Typography and Web Advertising: Making Every Opportunity Count, Digital Web Magazine, viewed 29 October 2007,
< http://www.digital-web.com/articles/typography_and_web_advertising/>

Is smaller better? Tabloid vs Broadsheet

As the wave of converting broadsheet newspaper into tabloid newspaper is getting in trend now, which one will readers preferred more? How do publisher respond to it?

The answer is of course that this varies from newspaper to newspaper as broadsheet are associated with serious news coverage while tabloid with more trivial content. Some readers would expect a detailed and clear news story with good document design to serve their reading interest while detailed and lengthy news stories are mostly found in broadsheet newspaper.

However, readers nowadays would prefer tabloid newspaper, especially youngster and working class readers. It is because tabloid newspaper is half the size of broadsheet newspaper and it is easier to carry. Other than that, the design of tabloid newspaper is more interesting as compared to broadsheet newspaper, in contained more visual images and readers will get engaged with the design. According to Reep (2006), readers do not only read the printed words on the page, they also read the visual presentation of the text.
The News Straits Times used to be in broadsheet but now it is in tabloid style. When it comes to design, it is easier to design for a tabloid than for a broadsheet newspaper as the there is less items in a page and therefore it is effortless to design.

However, composition is still an essential aspect to be considered because it relates the representational and interactive meanings of the images to each other through three interrelated systems which are information value, salience and framing (Kress, 2006). No matter tabloid or broadsheet, composition of layout needs to be considered as readers interpret meaning through the three interrelated systems.

Other than that, tabloid newspaper is more to a multimodality text. According to Walsh (2006), multimodal texts are those texts that have more than one ‘mode’, so that meaning is communicated through a synchronization of modes. They may be incorporate spoken or written language, still or moving images. Tabloid will be more preferable because it consist of more picture as compared to broadsheet newspaper because reader make meaning from a written text, but the responses are evoked by the effect of visual codes such as colour, framing, line angle, perspective and vectors, in other word ‘visual grammar’(Kress & van Leeuwen,1996)

Example of multimodality text
Source:http://images.google.com.my

References List:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London, chapter 6: ‘The meaning of composition’

Is Smaller Better? Tabloid vs Newspaper, El Sol de Texas, viewed 30 October 2007,<http://www.elsoldetexas.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=8>


Reep, D, 2006, ‘Document Design’, Technical Writing, chapter 6, pp. 133-172.


Walsh, M 2006, “Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No.1,pp. 24-37

Reflection

The process of creating a weblog is quite challenging but yet it gives blogger an opportunity to really look into an issue and learn how to analyse it. Searching for articles and journal to backup the issue is a must because it gives credibility to the issue. In order to establish reading interest among readers, the design of the blog must be simple and nice. Blogger have to carefully choose what kind of design template that favours readers, what colour to use and also how to arrange the elements so that it will not look messy. According to Nielsen(2000), there are three main guideline for writing for the web which are :

• Be succinct – write no more than 50 percent of the text you would have used to cover the same material in a print publication
  
• Write for scannability – don’t require users to read long continous blocks of text;instead, use short paragraphs, subheadings, and bulleted lists.
  
• Use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages.

Other than that, providing an accurate readings or article and also citations is important too. A wrong citation or when the original author is not being acknowledged by the bloggers is a serious offence of plagiarism. In addition, bloggers must be ethical in discussion to avoid defamation and copyright infringements.

Last but not least, language used in writing is vital. Bloggers must always bear in mind that the language use must be standard in order to make it readable by other races, and be sensitive about other cultures and norms when giving opinions or critique

Reference:

Nielsen, J, 2000, Designing Web Usability, Content Design, Chapter 3, pp.99-160