A blogger who wishes to share more of his views on some of the issues in publication and design with hopes of fellow mates commenting and discussing here to allow all of us to learn more.
This note of reflection marks the end of this subject in my course. In the event of participating in this subject, I have to admit that I was nothing near to knowing any issues in publication and design. However, after a thorough guide from our lecturer and fellow course mates, I am now pleased to say that I am a student that graduated in this communication subject as I am certain that I have understood the subject almost to perfection.
One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned is the understanding of the shift in modes and how hard it is to transfer information from one media to another. Also, I have learned that when reaching out to different audience with different purposes and contexts, different genres is needed. Lastly, my favourite part of all would be learning about print alone would be too dull and that pictures alone would be too broad; picture with a narration would make everything clearer and guided for the audience. Hence, based on the theories that I have learned, I am proud to say that I have finished my blog with the essence of issues in publication and design.
As found in the article The Power of Photography, the War Photo Limited Gallery is a dedicated art gallery that keeps exclusive war photography in the city of Dubrovnik. This unique photography gallery portrays close up war pictures that illustrates the inches of details of people suffering from losing lives and assets. But why these remorseful pictures? Is it really necessary to keep alive a filled with war photography gallery in a city that suffered from a dark history of war less than two decades ago? Goddard from the article certainly says yes as these pictures allows the public to get a little more details and closer touch with those whose lives were affected through the war.
Also in the article, it was stated that a picture would mean more than words. Editors of newspapers and news television can choose what they want to show the public and what not and also add in what they think would be interesting to gain more viewers’ attentions. However, as a man who was in the presence of the war and takes up-close pictures of the scene, Goddard would be able to show the world what exactly happened, in-depth details of the arena. According to Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006), a visual component of a text is independent, organized and structured, while images are open to a variety of meanings, ‘a floating chain of signifieds’. This means that every word that is printed on a newspaper of a war can at most bring fear to the readers but not give them a sight of the pain felt which a simple picture of a dead army would do. Another few authors who agree to the strength of photography are Burgess, Enzle and Morry (2000) where they stated that pictures taken are used to measure internal processes, self-representations and understanding of the social world.
An example of how a newspaper article versus a picture of a war is shown below:
a) The New York TImes reporters telling the world what they think about the war:
The question of this article is, how sure are the reporters on how the people were killed in the war?
b) A picture showing a pile of people bombed to death in Vietnamese war,
This picture on the other hand shows the true pain on how people were killed.
Ethically, I would say that it is quite cruel for Dubrovnik to have this war filled photo gallery. Yet, I would not deny the fact that these pictures are lessons that mankind has to learn from and not repeat the suffering that is caused through a war. Hence, the power of photography is clearly very strong where it serves its purpose of capturing moments that are meant to be remembered forever whether it is a sweet memory or a disastrous event.
References:
Burgess, M, Enzle, ME & Morry, M 2000, “The social psychological power of photography: can the image-freezing machine make something of nothing?”, European Journal of Social Psychology, no. 30, pp. 613-630.
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, Reading images, Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication
According to Schwalbe from the article, Emoticons and email ettiquette, an email is not just an email. Instead, it acts as a symbol of how people treat one another where if one is being unclear, annoying and demanding in an email, he or she is not just portraying it in an email, but representing their own attitudes. Twenty years ago, a manager who wants to send a message to his or her employees will have to write memos, leave the memos on their desks or write sticky notes and paste them on their monitors or workplace dividers. However, where technology has improved, email, according to Ducheneaut and Bellotti (2001) has became more of a habitat that an application used in a computer. Also, they assumed that the use of email is definitely overloaded but yet depends on the role of each users and the nature of one’s workplace.
In the article, Byron stated that emails are vulnerable as people may misperceive the message that is sent. For instance, if a boss sends a mail to praise one of the employee that his or her sales quota but also added carbon copies of this mail to all the others who are not achieving their sales target, what is the boss really trying to do? To really praise that particular employee or to indirectly imply pressure on the rest of the employees? In addition, the formality of the emails being sent may also differ. Schwalbe in the article stated that people who does not address one as Dear Sir/Madam could be offensive and intrusive. For example as stated above, if one of the employee who did not achieved the sales target were to reply this boss without addressing the boss appropriately, this person could be leading himself or herself to deep trouble. According to Oxford University Press (2009), a formal email would be used when sending to a senior in workplace, someone that is not very close or someone whom is of high authority while informal mails are mostly used when sending to friends or to colleagues of similar ranking in work.
An example of formal email and an informal email:
a) Formal email with proper address (eg: senior manager sending email to employee)
b) Informal email with layman English terms (eg: sending email to a friend)
In my opinion, I find that formality is of utmost importance. Even when emailing a friend, we should address our friends, i.e. Dear Ryan/John as this does not only portrays professionalism but basic respect for another human being. Just like how people used to send letters back in the days, at the beginning a formal letter, one will definitely see the address, Dear Sir/Madam.
References:
Ducheneaut, N & Bellotti, V 2001, ‘Email as habitat; An exploration of embedded personal information management’, Xerox PARC, USA.
Oxford University Press 2009, Levels of formality in email writing, Business Result Advanced.
Based on the article, The Fallacy of the ‘Print is Dead’ Meme, Martin Langeveld, a former newspaper publisher and current consultant, used to believe that ‘Print is still King’ and that print-based media, for example, the newspaper is never going to perish. However, as time passes he began to realise that the death of print is becoming noisy. Langeveld does not deny that the reliance of people on print will decrease and on the other hand believes the amount of digital and online audience for newspaper would be gradually increasing. Also, he stresses that newspaper firms should understand this shift and redesign their firms from print to digital newspaper enterprises.
According to Walsh (2006), print based text is systematic and sequential where readers mostly follows the path while multimodal texts are non-sequential, giving readers more choice and opportunities to interact. Does this mean that print should be replaced by multimodal texts? The answer would be not possible. This is because texts and prints are interrelated modes where picture could mean a thousand words and words alone cannot show a clear view picture. Hence, the idea of having a digital newspaper enterprise is not surprising. One clear advantage that digital newspaper would bring to the audience is latest news updates. For instance, printed newspaper will only be able to describe a football game that was played today in tomorrows’ paper but digital will bring us live updates. In addition, Noci (1999) stated that the advantage of hypertext is that it allows readers to get a clearer reproduction thinking style instead of just the way of saying it in words. Also, he agreed to digital publishing of newspapers, books and publishing as to publish a printed job would require time, cost and the usage of paper.
Below are the difference between a live update on a football game
a) Live updates that shows details of a football match
This picture shows the details of a live football match, from minutes of a goal is scored to the number of cards shown.
b) Newspaper article by reporter on a football match
This picture shows what has happened in a football game YESTERDAY which could have been acquired through live updates as shown above.
Another man who agrees to prints’ survival is Hwang (cited in Stone, 2004), Samsung’s Chief Executive Officer, where he stated that no matter how digital technology advances, the printed newspapers will not perish. Instead, he is certain that the newspapers will adapt to the shifts in technology. In my opinion, I agree with Hwang and Langevald that printed newspapers will not lose its existence as it can adapt to the ever-changing technology. Although more and more gadgets are coming into innovated, having a hardcopy of a newspaper with a cup of coffee in the morning can never be replaced.
References:
Noci, DJ 1999, Digital Publishing: Electronic Books, Journals and Newspapers on the Internet, Digital Publishing and Education Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford.
Stone, P 2004, “How Newspapers Are Already Taking Advantage of the Digital Revolution. It’s Not Just the Internet But Mobile, Too”, Stone & Associates Media Solutions, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://www.astonesthrow.ch/analysis_chip.htm
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, p.24-37
