Part 1: Word Portrait
On each of the slides below, the name of the font appears at the top, followed by two words that seem to go with it. At the bottom of each slide appears a word that does not seem to fit.
Reflections:
When I first started this activity, it was going pretty quickly. I simply chose a font available in Microsoft Office 2013, and just typed the first two words that came into my head. For the word that did not fit the font, I just tried to think of a word that is typically associated with a very different feeling that the first two.
As I got further into the excercise, it started to take longer, and longer to come up with words that I have not used. I feel like I got the point after around five or six of these; making twelve felt like torture. It is obvious that fonts can help convey more meaning than words themselves. This effect is proportional to how unconventional a font is; the further a font is from looking like Times New Roman, the more it stands out.
Where it would have been easier to simply use the fonts available in blogger, it does not offer very many. Also, when I tried to upload the PowerPoint I created to Google Drive, most of the fonts did not translate.
Part 2: Comparison of Competing Organizations Websites
For this task, I chose to compare the "our party" sites for both the GOP and the Democrats. The links can be found below:
Also, a zoomed out side-by side comparison appears below: (Dems on the left, GOP on the right)
The two sites do have very similar grid structures. Both have the typical header area with a few tabs up top, and then two columns underneath. In fact, both of the sites column seem to come close to following the rule of thirds, where the left column takes up about two-thirds of the width, and then the right column takes up the remaining third. Not only are the columns practically the same, but the content in them is as well. Both have text describing the purpose or goals of their party on the left, and then a few other graphics or frames that appear on every page on their site on the right. They also both have a footer area, which is again typical of many websites.
There are some other themes in common as well. Both use a lot of "patriotic" colors (red, white, and blue), but the democrats have only a few shades of blue, where the GOP uses both reds and blue. Also, on both of their homepages, they have a headline slideshow, and one of the slides has a picture of Barack Obama. Of course, where the democrats have him smiling, the republicans show him holding his head as if he were in pain. In addition, some of the tabs that appear on the website header are very similar as well.
Reflections:
Of course, there are several possibilities here. Are these things common because they are common to all websites? Or are these two competing organizations copying off of each other? As soon as one posts something, does the other act quickly to create a response? Does neither want to take a risk of being to creative and as a result alienating some potential recruits?
Hi Ben,
ReplyDeleteYou're the first student I've seen thus far in this class who put each font on a separate template with varying backgrounds. Though I've never heard the exercise be described as "torture" (lol) I have heard many times from my former students that the exercise was fun but difficult to write the opposite of the font in one descriptive word. Thanks for articulating what issues you had with uploading the different fonts... I'm not sure why that happened, but my suggestion for future reference would be to take screenshots of each and embed them into your blog. That may have required a bit more work on your end, but I'm sure it was frustrating to complete the exercise more than once just to keep the formatting.
For your second exercise, I've seen a few of the party-website comparisons over the 8 semesters I've taught this class, and it seems some things never change... I suppose you could use that phrase to apply to lots of aspects of politics, but back to the exercise... I liked the questions you posed at the bottom of your post -- they certainly get you thinking about how the two influence each other's design choices... Something worth keeping an eye on in the future I suppose (particularly during election time!)
Nicely done!
prof h