My reflection on the process of creating the weblog

In this semester, I learned to established my own weblog in the course of issues in publication and design, I have had gained abundance of knowledge and design principles when writing to an audience in the weblog, I learned to explore the ways in attract the interest of the audiences; learned some professional writing skills and journalistic format of writing in this weblog. When I reflect what I did in this weblog is to done according to the evaluation of the marking evaluation sheet; fulfilled the criteria and try to attain the best outcome in this weblog. Yet, I am aware of the importance of considering the audience I am targeting, when writing to an audience, I learned to question myself what the audiences want to read and expect to see as well as how to make them concentrate in my texts. When writing to an audience, I also reflected about how to write a structure document. Particularly, I learned a lot of writing elements and principles to guide my future writing. I learned how to improve editing, reading and also compose a document. Every each of the blog posts were useful and helped highlight the main ideas of the topic, so it improves readability to the readers as every each of the blog posts are not really 'endless'. 

In the aspects of design, I learned to write on a professional level which a part is guild from the lecturer, I learned to used the 'wrap' image to attain the journalistic  format weblog. This made me realized that when designing in a professional format, I have actually made a lot of mistakes and this weblog practice helped me change that. In addition, I have learned how to be more concise and accurate when designing, for an instance, I learned typography skill in designing such as using a concise text size throughout the page and keep all my blog posts in one page. I also found the professional designing principles that inspiring me, I think everyone should learn these principles and therefore I put quite a lot of design principles links on my weblog sidebar to help public aware what is actually about designs. And also, I did found two other blogs as my personal weblog reference, from their weblogs, I learned a lot of extra design skills that so far I have never known. They used different skills in expressing the tones of their weblogs, such as the fantastic cartoon blog which seems admirable to the public.

In my view on blogging, I expect a higher quality of my work, this weblog has a lot of tasks to complete but it is really worthy as learning to writes a weblog is very important in all areas of future professionalism. In my personal view on blogging, I think weblog is very useful for students who are taking journalism course as this weblog particularly helps in writing a resume or even job sections. Furthermore, blogging skill also put into practise in the working world. In this weblog, I also attained a comment for one of my blog posts, this made me grasp the criticism-understanding about what I wrote is not merely about personal perspective but it is about public perspectives. Lastly, regarding my reflection on the process of creating the weblog, I become more confident in writing weblog and writing to the public audiences as I have had gained a lot of writing strategies and design principles. The tasks that presented in this weblog assignment made me realized that daily communications are indispensable today and there is actually no comparison between a 'newspaper' or 'online' buying as advertisements are the indispensable elements in the society. This weblog have also gave me a sense of real life writing as I did actually learned a lot of technology and public knowledge in this aspect.

Two blogs that are well done

From my little perspective, I found two blogs that are well done are theguardian.com and smh.com. Similary, both of these blogs talk about news, but their only difference is the way they design and share about their stories.


Very interestingly, The Guardian's blog is a blog of more formal style, the two authors Owen, P and McCarthy, T (2013) showed a variety fields of news such as a diversified section of sports, business, travel, world, technology and so on to attract the interest of his blog readers. It provides the 'sort out' links of selection for the readers to easily identify the latest news. Besides, the accurate 'time posted' allows readers to see and understand about when the news are released. From what I aware, he has a short but concise post in every each of his blog post to attract attentions of readers, he described about the main ideas and put the relevant vivid images to emphasize the topic of his post; every each of the images show the most genuine or instant moment of the news happen. In addition, The Guardian's blog has 'Guardian bookshop' as his own mini editorial in published his own books, he got the books of bestsellers for his own, this had significantly attracted many readers to his blog to gain more knowledge and news discovering. In his professional ability, he attracted tones of comments as news discussion from different readers; certainly attracting c0omments isn't a piece of cake, that is why I admired his blog amongst others blogs.



On the contrary, Rocco (2005) is the author of Smh's blog. On the contrary, his blog is a blog of much relaxed when compared to The Guardian's blog. It is actually a publishing blog from The Sydney Morning Herald's newspaper, Smh's blog show a tone of relaxed style, its cartoon style layout may attract a lot of comic readers. Smh's blog expressed his blog in a more relaxed way, he used colorful drawing pictures to display the political figures instead of using their authentic images, at the same time, he is smart in avoiding image rights from publishing their real pictures. From its unique perspective, one of the images is animated, it does stolen the heart of the readers for its likeable. Like The Guardian's blog, they shared a lot of informative news based on reader's interest. Besides, Smg's blog show uncountable achivements since 2005, thus from this aspect, this blog had been attracted millions of readers to read this blog. On his little editorial part, he focused on his rights, he published the 'comments terms and condition' to avoid random comments or spams in his blog.



So, this is why I think both of these blogs that really well and I liked it very much. They showed a diffent tones of feelings and layouts in their blog to attract the readers from all over the world. They are the journalists who published the news in the way they are desire, they let us knows what is happening in the world as well as in the latest technology, they let us know about the informations we want to know, so I do think they are the professional or expert writers in blogging.


 
Reference list:
Owen, P and McCarthy, T 2013, Theguardian, Guardian News.
Rocco, 2005, The Sydney Morning Herald, Fairfax Media.
Image source:
smh

New technology affects the way we communicate and design our 'documents'

In this generation, new technology has entirely change our living styles. New technology has obviously dominates our daily lives, affects the way we communicate amongst each other and it does certainly lead changes in the aspects of documents. For an example, when we going to find a service or buy something, we tend to find through 'Gumtree' website as opposed to classified ads in newspapers because online buying is always much consistent, convenient and the way faster than flip through an ad from a newspaper.

Unspecific price

Sometimes, when we flip through newspaper to find the ad we wanting, at the end we cannot find the ads we looking for or even if the ads are exist, it does not always the exact demand that we seeking for. For an instance, when we flip through the newspaper and looking for a piano, most of the time, the ad price tend to disappoint us as it is always 'out of our budget' or 'does not stated clearly'. So in order to get a more specific salary that we are looking for, most people will just find through a website like Gumtree, insert the key words or demands that we are looking for. Therefore, in this aspect, new technology does certainly affect the way we communicate in terms of 'public relation', thus we have had omitted public news and focus on private ad from the new technology. In another aspect, sometimes the 'gumtree' online prices is always much lower than an ad price from newspaper, so this may lead a significant change of lifestyle in human, people will definitely find through the things they looking for through online instead of newspaper since the price is much lower. Besides, when making comparison between these two elements, finding an ad through online does save up a lot of our precious time. When compared looking through 'Gumtree' and newspaper, we will definitely choose to make it online survey because we may get the item in the twinkling of an eye once the items key words are inserted.




As a new form of publishing, new technology affects the design in our documents too. Newspaper and online have their own strategies in attracting pontential buyers. In the newspaper layout, advertisement tend to sort out randomly. For example, you will see random household appliances on a page instead of a consistent classification. On the contrary, we will find a consistent item for what we wanted through an online ad page, once we insert a specific key word of an item, multiple similar items will pop out on screen as an item classification. Thereby, that is the difference layout design between a newspaper layout and an online layout as ad design. In the further details of design, we may notice there is a different of size and boldness of headlines between newspaper ad and online ad. From the aspect of newspaper, we may observe the newspaper ads have more headlines and larger type font on a page as it convey the 'loudness' or 'importance' of the ad. But this may appear as more cluttered when compared to Gumtree online page as more headlines in a page will diffuse the attentions of the reader. 







Multiple classification from news ad



Consistent classfication from online ad





"Technically, electronic viewing is also always much vivid or attractive than a colourless image in the newspaper."
 

Conclusively, in better selection, people tend to choose 'gumtree' online rather than finding an ad through newspaper as online buying offers much more advantages than ads from newspaper. In this circumstance, this is the way that how new technology affects the way we communicate, we are no longer promoting our sales through public relation as new technology had significantly dominates our preference. New technology has also impacts on the insights of every designer and businessman, thus this is the most obvious reason that why and how new technology affects the way we communicate in the society as well as it does greatly influences the way we design our 'documents' to attract attentions.



Image sources:
Newspaper piano ad
newspaper car ad
online car ad

Issues that need to consider when designing web text

Successful sales material are usually depends on how attractive is the design of the texts of web, according to Parker Roger (2003), when considering texts for the web, right format is really vital to be consider. Selecting the texts for the web depends on the issues such as

• The amount of items cost and how much services are used?
• Is the quantity of sales focus on individual item or multiple items which include in services?
• When is the perfect idea in the sales period?
• Are materials mainly targeted at potential buyers or only to those whose are ready to buy?
• The time taken in production as well as how long is the selling long lasting?

Besides, in potential problem areas, generally speaking, try to design the worst case. If you are designing a scene of worst case, you will most probably having more successful than usual rather than merely having the most severe form of reading circumstances. For documents which plan to do with website distribution, this refers to designing for texts that read on screen. In this case, electronically reading is always tougher than reading from paper due to the different perspectives that readers perceived the words. Generally, it is harder to read on screen because reading from paper involves reflected light, hence the words appear clear and obvious as the black letters and white paper gain the different light intensity. So, the amount of contrast is not that strong, so it reduces eye fatigue.



In contrast between texts on web and on paper, another issue that need to consider when designing texts for web is 'partial page view'. We have to consider about the difference between reading onscreen and reading from paper is the limited texts that can be view on screen. When reading texts on a printed page, readers can scan through the whole page, but electronically reading only allow to scroll through a page which appear as skimming; only focus on the main points. However, web reading usually appear as partial reading of a page, this lead readers hard to read the main ideas of what the text is mentioning. In addition, reading from web also makes reader hard to scroll up the page from the bottom of the page, so experts of web distribution or publications may need to consider this issue when designing a web while writing contents. A messy or random brochure will mess up the whole proposal of web distribution.



Therefore, when planning a proposal, we have to focus about the sale possibility which range from a lost sale to high selling as it, of course, we definitely try our best to aim for the best quality proposals for the possibility. Still, the main factors or issues that need to consider when designing texts of web include:

• Type font - Avoid use of irregular type font as design, try to use the consistent type font when writing the texts of web. For example, use of the same thickness and size for the character.
• Leading - Avoid the leading issues, try to use a good leading to maintain the tidiness of the texts and this may increase readability for web texts.
• Subheading - Avoid using overly cluttered or small size type font for subheading, this may lead readers hard to locate the theme of the contexts in web texts. For an instance, try to use type font like 'Verdana' or 'Arial' for subheading to increase the tidiness and concentration of the reader when focusing the topic of the content.
• Margines - Avoid crowded texts, keep more white space in a page; more spaces can keep readers reading clear what they are reading.
• Headers and footers - Errors in headers and footers may lead readers hard to spot which part or chapter they are looking, try to write out the topic in headers and footers to let readers know which page they are reading. Make sure the headers and footers are obvious and informative to deliver the total page numbers to the readers.

In conclusion, Parker had discussed factors above are the critical issues that need to consider when designing texts for web, we have to be very clear and concise in what we planning in a proposal or doing a web distribution, because marketing strategies is a very importact factor in web designing such as color photographs elements. Color photograph is a headache issue that we need to consider too as it could be very expensive if printed in a large amount. All these problems give us challenge on marketing that actually did not demand such big amounts of copies, therefore


'we have to aware and conscious about what we are doing while designing texts for web'



References list:
Parker, R 2003, Designing documents for web distribution, looking good in print, chapter 14, 5th edition, Scottsdale, Ariz : Paraglyph Press, pp.265-293
image source:
Magazine Print document

Web Visit Channel Distribution

six important factors in good document design

So, there are six important factors in improve document design. The principles of design are very important to apply it into a document regardless of topics or audience; the six factors are balance, consistency, proportion, sequence, white space and typography.


Firstly, 'balance' is the most vital factor influence in good document design, balance refers to image weight on a whole page document especially the long document. The tactic of the balance is to have

• Big weight instead of small
• Dark weight instead of light
• Color weight instead of colorless
• Special shapes instead of common shapes like rectangular or triangle

Secondly, 'consistency' defined a style of similarity. The elements that require in a good document is to have

• Lines - keep lines in a neat and consistent way throughout a page of document
• Typefaces - Use the same sizes and same type fonts for both headings and contents. 
• Indents - Keep the indent consistency for every paragraphs, quotes and table of contents. 

Subsequently, 'proportion' means the size and how we put words and images throughout a page, a good proportions may help readers to read words while reading texts, the way is to

• Placing the consistent amount of space for heading
• Every design should be in appropriate size and image to guild readers read through the texts

Next, 'sequence' is the arrangement of design for the sake of readers can read easily and smoothly in a document. Readers normally start reading at the upper left corner and stop reading at the bottom right corner. In the reading process, good document design put help readers spot the important points easily.  

The last two factor is 'white space', there are few elements of white space which affecting good document design, they are heading areas, column as well as web pages.

• Heading areas - white space offers the background, readers need a lot of white space between texts of the heading to identified the heading compared to other texts in the content. 
• Margins - margins offers a boundary for the texts and images to keep a document tidy.
• Columns - Between two columns of texts, white space should be reserve in an appropriate amount. Too wide or too narrow space will caused imbalance in the balance and proportion of the page.

Lastly, 'Typography' refers to the font type, it may increase the design of a page.Basically, we are using serif or san serif to maintain the readability. In addition, we may use 'script' font as a gallant font for the purpose of invitation card. A beautiful 'script' font may attract the interest of the readers to the function.

Therefore, a lot of documents like business letters and common letters need these skills to attract attentions from readers. Extra design features such as in the aid of graphic, written hints, white space and typography elements may improve a document design. Design characteristics may improve good document design in a few ways:

• Design attract attention from readers to specific topics and make the readers remember the main ideas or emphasis. 
• Design may enhance the reading interest from readers because the continuous typing front may increase the numbness on readers, eye-catching headings and excellent format may make the readers concentrate on the information they read. 
• Design also generate a document which show images that readers eager to view, for example, a law firm may want to display a solid and serious image with its documents, on the contrary, a video advertising company may select a stylish and dramatic image. The similarity is both images may increase the design features in a document. 

References list:

Reep, C 2006, Technical writing, document design, chap 6, 6th edition,Pearson, New York, pp.133-172.

Images source:

Balance

Typography

What sorts of things should a writer consider before putting 'pen to paper'?

When we write something, it is very important to know why are we putting 'pen to paper' and what informations deliver to the readers. Many people do not know how to write in a proper way as linguistic is a sort of giftedness that not everyone possess it. There are sorts of things like problem-solving, thinking and learning is needed for a writer consider before write something. In encountering these problems, before we begin to write, we have to question ourselves:

• Why do we write out such main idea on the paper?
• What tactics we use to inspire readers? 
• What tactics we use to make our writing skills perfect?
• What is the importance of the specific knowledge that we write?
• What is the importance of the definition that we write convey to the readers?
• How we elaborate the ideas in writing?
• Are there any sources that we can use to spot 'excellent' writing as references?
• What is the templates of the documents to create a maximum effectiveness?
• How does the attractiveness of the documents influence on readers?

Language is the building block of life, we began to communicate since the age we are able to talk, so all of us have a sense of tactic knowledge in the field of communication; this sense of tactic knowledge operating in our unconscious mind. However, it is very vital for us to have confidence in our innate writing before putting pen to paper, but still, expanding knowledge of writing principles is indispensable. Therefore, in order to improve our educational capital, we need to keep moving on the track of communication in a fast pace, the succession is rely on the ability we communicate. Faigley (1986, p.38) mentioned the secrets of the writing power in a society:

'Language is power, take it as read.'



On the contrary, speaking and writing are both different things. Someone can speak fluently but that does not mean he or she can writes properly as we usually talk more than write or vice versa; someone can write better than speak if that person not often practise to speak. This theory is analysed by William Safire (1992, pp.133), he draws a conclusion that the spoken language and written language are imbalance norm as the tune we whistle is not the orchestra's score. So, to practise ourselves to write in an excellent form of writing, we have to digest the whole sentences prior to writing, thinking all sorts of perspectives and then build three arguments and compared to each other. We have to know who is the audience, putting extra attention in writing minor details is basically wasting of time, good punctuation marks help readers to identified the main points of the writing and excellent masterpiece of writing is most probably done by those who are good in reading.

References list:

Putnis, et. al 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, writing to communicate, Chapter 7, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp.223-263.
Safire, W., & Safir, L. (Eds.). (1992). Good advice on writing. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. 

Image resource: Good Writing

New technology is use in the city to monitor drivers

The urban of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is going to implant a recognition technology towards licence plate, the purpose is to monitor drivers, this new technology system is going to replace the old duties of polices on street to tighten parking rules. The technology is able to scan liscese plates while drivers are driving on the urban streets and even monitor how long a car parked at a parking area within the permitted time. Mayor Ron Yuryevich (2012) mentioned it is ithe first time the Western Australian's local government implemented the technology, and even, it will notice the driver if their car is driven by others, yet at the same time, it will show a GPS position and keep track the car liscence plate and then they return for their next drive in the condition the car has not drive away. Mayor claimed that this technology will be implement for the next three months.



(User: Araluen - ABC Contribute)

Indeed, new technology has affects the way we communicate particularly among polices, communication is reduce gradually in the society and replaced by the advanced non-communicative technology. In this case, both traffic rules and the system will be more efficient and at the same time significantly reduce the cost in the urban. Actually, this technology do not raise benefits, but it will definitely aware public to know that the government has this technology to peek them over the streets if they break the traffic rules.

In my opinion, new technology is an extremely important tool in the latest society, especially monitor public drivers driving on roads or any streets. Every parking slot has its own specific time to allow the vehicles park at there, thereby overtime parking may cause full parking, restricting others vehicles from parking and even it is very unjust. Besides, polices have too many duties to go, this technology may ease their burden from writing traffic bills and even save up much of the police car fuel for government. And still, the most important is this technology may arise the public concern in traffic rules.



references list:

Yuryevich, M 2012, City to use new technology to monitor drivers, ABC Goldfields, Kalgoorie, 
image source: ABC local stories