CC Photo By Mycaisha (Megan Spurr)

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So after I rallied last week about how people were discussing about buying their domain through wordpress, and I worried about how they would like their format being stuck in the cookie cutter blog setup of wordpress.com – I decided that I wanted to have my own site. The part that took me the longest? Picking out my domain name. Currently my project is MeganSpurr.wordpress.com – and it will remain there for the life of this project, but I do have aspirations of making this a real usable, workable site for me in the future. So I purchased Rollforperception.com. It integrates some of my fun nerdyness that I like (D&D 5e is coming out soon, and I’m certain I will blog about it), but I feel like it’s just an undertone of the site name, so it doesn’t have to be all about gaming.

That said, I did make pages for everything I want on my site, I have uploaded my resume, and have found the folder of photos that I want to upload in a gallery – but after setting that up, I have found that my theme doesn’t default to adding the pages I created to the top of the page where the other defaults are. I still need to play around and see if it is a setting I am missing on this theme, or if I need to start over with a new theme (more likely).

I hope to have this completed by next weekend, and then spend the rest of my time concentrating on adding more blog posts and tweets that are more than just about school work!  Cheers!

I can understand the need to lay out the history of graphic design and how it has changed over the years – but my brain hurt after an hour and a half of people trying to say “The medium is the message” without directly quoting Marshall McLuhan. I absolutely agree with just about every single person on that film, that the style in which you present your (insert name of computer generated content here – ad – post – cover art – article), absolutely changes the way you read it and feel about it.  Seriously, does anyone one take Comic Sans seriously anymore?  Does Papyrus make you feel like an ancient Egyptian is telling you about the sale of vintage jewelry? Me either.

My husband and I went back and forth about the importance of type-face, and why it seems to have resurged as a big deal to a growing group of people these days. I agree that it doesn’t quite matter as much to me as it does other people, but I can see why it would irritate those people who pay attention to spacing. It’s similar to my friends who have been graphic designers for more years than they care to admit – and they would rally and pound on the walls of everyone who used glittery fonts, flashy symbols and the digging man animated gif of ‘under construction’ on their geocities page.

What made me stop and think though was the difference in advertising that was made in the short period of time. Obviously the introduction of Helvetica couldn’t have changed everything single handedly, but the images they used of different hand written fonts, lots of exclamation points, family pictures – all detracting from what it was they were selling; then came DRINK COKE. Direct, to the point. This is more than about the font – this was a way of communicating that changed. The manner in which you convey your message, changes what message is received by the end user. (See? I can say ‘The medium is the message’ too without quoting Marshall McLuhan.)

My final thought though on this film – they could have really cut out the crazy lady who associates Helvetica with big government and war. She brought very little to the table, and left us discussing more about how crazy she was, and less about the importance of the change in communication.

Here is where we argued. I said this isn’t an uncommon practice – but my friend said that “If they like my photo – and they should, because I do use professional grade equipment, and I have training in this field – and I say no to them because I charge a fee for my work, they can search by tags instead and email someone who has a similar photo who is happy to just have their handle (not even real name!), credited. I don’t disagree that having a site to store your photos and share with friends is good, but it’s taking the place of real businesses like Getty images for example. “

I read all the assigned papers on Flickr, but I asked my friend what she thought of the Murray, S (2008) article Digital images, photo-sharing, and our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics, and I think I was finally able to draw the line in the sand where she and I disagree. I see her challenge, that sites like Flickr make her feel like her work is devalued because it’s swimming in a sea of photos where many of them can be had for no monetary value – BUT – I think that it’s a culture shift, not to blame of any single website. My friend feels that if these sites weren’t available, there would be more value on sites where you have to commission your work. Now we move into the realm of “what if”, but this is what we spent an hour texting back and forth on: I think if Flickr and other photo sharing sites went away, people would turn to facebook, twitter, Tmblr, twitpic, etc. and contact the photographer directly for rights to use the work (they do already, just not to the same extent).

Maybe I fall into the realm of enjoying more of the user generated content, because it allows for more people to discover what their passions are without investing much into the field?  Then again, if the world moved into a realm of all open-source coding, then my skills would be devalued and I might be on the other side of the fence with my friend.

I like Ben’s idea about having a press kit request… I am wondering if I could do something similar down the line – WAY down the line – when I think about putting together another choir group. I don’t have the time right now with work and school, but with graduation coming up, I’d love to have an electronic place for people to come to for either requesting performance information, or requesting how to audition!

Comment 2 – http://ainslc.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/planning-stage-2/#comment-15

I love that people are enthusiastic about their websites and want to build a personal page by buying their domain through wordpress, but I worry about how happy they will be with that choice later on. It is outside the scope of this course, but I think maybe a small lesson on what it means to host a site, what a domain is, and what is difference is might be useful for some people! But that said, I liked the timeline, it seemed obtainable and not over reaching – which I am guilty of all the time.

Comment 3 – http://benryoncom495.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/portfolio-vision-and-timeline/#comment-19

I liked the phrase that Ben used – “comprehensive, professional and yet still distinctively personal.” That is exactly what I was looking to do with my website! I like the idea that I want something that is professional and details my previous work accomplishments, what I have done with my career that isn’t easily detailed on a resume, and yet still a house to hold my photography, my audio vocal recordings, and links to my social media sites. I still wonder about the plans to buy the domain with no discussion of hosting though!

My data is going to be mined in either location, but I think the concept of micro blogging on my blog is pretty amusing, and something that I have already looked to incorporate!  (Currently I have a widget that shows my feed at the bottom of my blog page – scroll down!) but, I am looking for a way to integrate it into my meganspurr.wordpress.com.

Set up a blog on wordpress.com under the same username (Meganspurr.wordpress.com) – 4.February.2012

Update the about me page – 5.February.2012

Set up the separate pages on WordPress (Resume, blog, about me, gallery and multimedia) – 10.February.2012

Update Resume and post bulletin points about work experience on resume page – 11.February.2012

Update Gallery with select photography and other files, and link appropriately to different host sites as needed (flikr, youtube, etc) – 12.February.2012

Update Multimedia page with Soundslides presentations, and small paragraph explaining the purpose of each. 13.February.2012

Blog weekly about… anything that I want to be associated with me in a public environment – Every Friday

For this project to feel like a success for me, I want this to be a site that not only can I put on my resume as a point of reference of my collected works, but also as a place I can send my friends and family for a place to get updates on me, links to events i’m attending / performing at, etc. I would call this project a success if it is my homepage and used for my dashboard online after this class is over!

The first portfolio website I came across, gave me a nice idea in that I like being able to group some of my pages together under specific topics.  For example, I am looking for a gallery page, as well as a multimedia page, which I like howTylerhere keeps these under the heading Selected Work. On the down side for his site, that I do not think I will come across as necessary on mine, he has split frames because his list of works is so long, that you have to scroll.  It looks awful, and I feel like it’s a throwback to Geocities.  (SorryTyler).

http://jpedroribeiro.com/

I am a big fan of this portfolio.  I like the look of the website (I know dark background is tough for folks, but I look at dull white portfolios day in and day out, I like variety!), and I really like down in the bottom left of the page he has a script that runs through random examples of work from his portfolio. The specific pages at the top of his site are clean and have the data you would expect, but I find it interesting that his home page is just his latest blog post, rather than the list of posts. I think that might be less than ideal, if only because if you post more than once in a day, people may not think to check your previous feed to see what else there is.

http://seattleandrew.com/

This was the site that actually inspired me to make an online portfolio to begin with prior to this class. Andrew does not have much of a professional blog, but more of a space to put his personal thoughts and updates that one normally would find on facebook. This site is more than just a online CV, this is is home base – which I like.  He has links to his resume and professional accomplishments; he has his personal blog here, photography, and even links to his xbox account. I feel like if you are going to make a presence online, you should do it and go all in. If someone googles you, they are going to find this information anyways, so why not put it all together for your ease, and so that everyone gets the ideal picture of you?  (Plus I love his graphic design here as well. The mouse-over color graphics are a nice touch!)

Do you think the blogging campaign (for lack of a better way to describe his online presence in 2004) run by Howard Dean would have been something that would have been as successful as say, Obama’s campaign was 4 years later, if it had been implemented by a front runner, rather than a long shot like Howard Dean?

In terms of the last campaign, if the tables were turned, and the grass roots, social media campaign was run by John McCain instead of Barack Obama, would it have been as successful? Was it contingent on a roots movement of Democrats, or would it have worked in that setting with a Republican front-runner?

And, away from the political campaigns, I have a meta question: What do you think about internet celebrities who have an image online, that they don’t really try to ‘craft’ or ‘hone’ an image online? For example, read the tweets by Tycho Brahe (quoted in the I Tweet paper), or maybe Felicia Day or even Nathan Fillion and Wil Wheaton. These are all quite nerdly and very successful celebrities in their own right. Are we falling for a meta ‘My image, is that I have no image’?

Reading the (above mentioned) paper was fascinating to take an external view on how this was really a ground breaking change in the realm of political campaigns, but it was tempered by first, knowing how (not very) successful Howard Dean’s campaign ultimately was, and also how successful a similar strategy was when applied in the very next campaign by a front runner. So the Barack Obama campaign was so amazing because of the way he was out in the media, but digitally rather than the oldskool media style of his opponents. What I am curious about though, is lets say that Sarah Palin and John McCain had taken and applied this technique more with their campaign – would it have been as successful as Barack Obama? It occurs to me that the Howard Dean blog was amazing because it was really the first of it’s kind, and it paved the way for the social media and grassroots campaign that Barack Obama ran online.

My next thought along the same vein, is that we are never going to see the same phenomena. Moving forward, every candidate worth their salt is going to run a social media campaign, especially utilizing blogs that not only make them present in the online communities, but it also gives them a human personality. So Now we expect these campaigns, and both sides will be running them. Now we get to sit back, and wait to see what the next revolution will be in technology and see how the candidates of the day will run with it.

When reading the I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience article (Marwick, A. and boyd, d. (2011), I was playing devils advocate in my head for most of the paper. I fully believe that many people that I follow have well crafted presence’s online that shape who I think they are, but there are a few individuals that I was willing to bet did not fit the mold that they were suggesting. I was all set to write most of my post about Penny-arcadeand the co-authors online, until I saw one of them actually quoted in the paper. (I won’t lie, I really did LOL). “

Several highly followed users did not mention trying to build and maintain audience or feigned unawareness:

TychoBrahe: Honestly, I have no idea who reads them. Hopefully a very small group of very
forgiving people!

Now, if you come back with the idea that his crafted image is that he doesn’t have a crafted image, you’re getting to Meta for me.  :P