Power of Memes

Memes can become so specific that they become their own kind of language. As the atheist article shows, they can be used to spread ideas or belief systems. (I think some of those memes are actually making fun of atheists, rather than spreading propaganda, but I see their point.) You can sometimes tell if something will be a meme based on how relatable it is to the average person, especially if it’s usually unsaid. Personally, I think the visual aspect plays a larger role than the text. From meme templates, the image can be used repeatedly while the text is interchangeable. One of my favorite things about memes is when a template becomes very popular, the next viral meme changes the template, and then this becomes it’s own type of meme. It’s such a surprise how detailed and niche memes can become. I’ve seen memes where you needed to have seen 4 or 5 other prior memes to get all the references inside. Memes are also one of the only forms of media that are so easy to be excluded from. When a meme needs specific prior knowledge to understand it, it’s easy to “miss” the meaning of a meme. Often in the comments of popular new memes there are people asking to explain it. Lack of access is such a specific concept found in memes.

Give me consequences!

Interactive games have a pull to them that other games and stories don’t have. Reading a new story or playing a new game is still enjoyable, but making choices and having input into the game helps the player feel as if they created something. Games where the player has real consequences for their actions keep the player invested. We want to feel control over the narrative, because by contributing to the narrative, the game becomes “ours” in a way. Undertale has received lots of praise for this, by remembering the player’s actions even after resetting the save. Bandersnatch is another great example of interactive fiction.
For example, the appeal of VR is to completely immerse the player in the world. Even if you can see everything in clear detail and view a magnificent view, you haven’t contributed anything, or made any real decisions, or felt heard. The term “immersive” can mean visual immersion, or it can mean having to make choices and facing the results of those actions. These aspects are the appeal to interactive fiction.
From the Harvesting Interactive Fiction video, I believe poetry should be included in gaming and storytelling. (Of course I’m saying this, as a creative writing major lol.) I admire games that have lyric descriptions and moving dialogue. When the language is eloquent, but not distracting, poetic wording can be very appealing to readers.
Do you think there can be a middle ground between interactive games and other types of games? Will gaming start to include more interactiveness in the future, due to the player appeal?

Typing In Love

I played the game Type Connection, and thought it was great! I played through a few times and nearly always had a match, but sometimes I picked the fonts that were too similar. I really liked the idea that it was set up as a dating simulator, because thats a funny way to appeal to potential players. I had to pick this game based on the premise alone. My first pair was ITC Century and Futura. It was a fun, simple game that teaches you how to recognize the differences between fonts, and trains the eye to see how they compare to each other. The goal is to find compatible matches that complement each other without being close to identical. The game goes into great detail about the fonts and even explains how some look compared to handwriting.

I thought the game was fun and quick, but for long term study I’m not sure it could complete that task. There are so many fonts that exist that a game can’t teach all the ways they interact. It would be a good basic teaching tool for avoiding fonts that are glaringly different. I do recommend this game as a font compatibility teaching tool, and to play through it a few times.

Canva O’Clock

This was my first time using Canva, and I can go ahead and say it was leaps and bounds easier to use compared to Pages. I admit my design is very simple because I am very new to using it. I didn’t find the templates restricting at all, and found I could venture away from them very easily while keeping a design to follow in mind. Canva is better suited for social media graphics and flyers, rather than a multi page slideshow. I wouldn’t see myself trying to make a large or detailed poster though. It’s good for both professional and casual designs, and has lots of free gifs and graphics to spice up your ideas. Canva Pro has a lot of extra templates and stickers, but I doubt I would get it. My official looking advertisement wasn’t very detailed because I wanted it to look simple, in which a normal instagram post has all the information in the caption. I will very likely use Canva in the future.

I couldn’t break the rules as easily as Pages, which is is more like a free for all. The biggest problem I had using Canva was that any element I used wanted to stay center aligned, and I had to use position tools and the arrow keys to move things around, instead of the classic click and drag. This wasn’t a large inconvenience, but something I noticed compared to other design tools. My rule breaking design has a plant border around the four corners. To break some rules, I didn’t add any books or essay stickers, only plants. I used two glowing fonts and kept everything uncentered. My brain kept wanting to make a second official design, so it’s not as chaotic as it could have been.

Do you see yourself using Canva a lot, in work or school? When would Canva Pro be worth it?

Tactic and Strategy

The idea of tactical type is use font extremely purposefully. The goal is to manipulate the already existing narrative around a “bad” font, running with stereotype and flipping it on it’s head. By stepping away from society’s held beliefs about a typeface, the audience is reintroduced to the type, and the work they are reading. It takes recognizing the author wrote with intention to realize “may be indicative of a tactic, rather than an error,” and doing this “shifts our understanding,” of the writing. (51) Purposefully using a font with baggage is a ploy, something to catch the experienced reader’s eye. Nichols writes that after using a so called bad font, the audience then has to look at the message of the word and see it independently from the font. (52) And that is the goal of all writers, to grab their audience’s attention in some form.

Personally, I love this idea. Anything that challenges society’s beliefs and stereotypes is interesting in itself. Using bad typefaces as a form of satire is especially hilarious. Besides comedy, to which there are many opportunities to use bad typefaces, works that use these fonts will stand out first to the reader and have that advantage. It’s a good thing to use these fonts, because it can decontruct our held beliefs of them.

Question: Can you list a form of media that uses very strange typeface? What was your reaction to it?

Times Old Roman

Personally, I don’t dislike Times New Roman. Before this class, I had never analyzed the intricacies of fonts: their rounded edges, their thin lines, or sharp edges. TNR gets the job done, is recognized on an academic level, and I had never questioned why that was. I had never imagined there was something TNR had done differently compared to other fonts, but instead an inherent weight of academic standard built into it. I’ve never had a problem using it, but it does get tiring, I admit. Times New Roman sometimes feels like slipping into a worn pair of shoes, but other times it can feel like a straight jacket. It feels as though, in school work specifically, there is no reason to use other fonts, so why waste the time examining them or trying them out. So many fonts exist in the world, all made by someone experimenting with typeface, putting effort into making something new. I would prefer there be several standard fonts approved by academics. It’s a shame to only stick to one when hundreds of different fonts exists.

For my mini analysis and proposal I decided to write in the font Lora. The appeal was somewhat the lovely name, but I felt myself drawn to its slight differences to TNR. The font is slightly bigger and more open, the o is wider, and there’s a stronger curve in letters like m or n. I have always liked the font Cambria, despite it not scoring very highly on Buttrick’s scale. Lora felt larger and clear, easy to read.

Question: Is there a point to have a traditional font? Does it give status or prestige to TNR?

Nasty Poster! Gross!

I broke several sins for this poster, number four: bulky borders and boxes, six: centering everything, nine: busy backgrounds, ten: tacky type emphasis, and eleven: bad bullets. I tried to make the poster low quality and chaotic. The background is the same image of a deer at half opacity, half the head cut off in the image. I used a large white border with a shadow underneath for the description of CWD. All of my fonts and sizes are different for each text section, and most text is centered aligned. I was most proud that the bullet points are left aligned while the text is centered, not to mention the text color makes those sections unreadable. You can’t tell which bullet point goes with which line, or even what each point says. This poster was hilarious to make. The biggest problems for this poster is its readability, varying space between sections, and busy background. For added grossness, I left in the text box symbols and red underline for misspelled words.

Question, do you have a favorite out of date graphic design technique? Such as an ugly font, or color combination?

Falling From The Sky

I am fairly proud of my memoir book cover. The art is actually something I drew a long time ago and technically isn’t of myself, but I figured it was a good choice because it’s still something I’ve made. I chose this piece of art out of others I’ve done because it was only line work, and would look best on a white background. When starting the cover, I knew I wanted it to be simple and not distracting. I decided to go with a black and white artwork, and used color sparingly. I was only going to make my name be blue at first, but decided to add color to the word sky in order to draw attention to the title. I wanted the art to be the focal point, so I centered it and had text on either side. Choosing what the text actually said was the most difficult part, and I still think my quote is cheesy. The choices I made for this project were to make the design seem serious. I used the Pages program, but as a result the image is somewhat blurry, so I may choose a different program next time.

A question to ask the class: do you think you’ll ever try to write any of the memoir?

Rules and when to break them

Don’t break the rules of design out of ignorance. Learn the
rules. Then break the rules if you have a reason to.

Pg. 7, White Space is Not Your Enemy

One of the most useful things I have learned as a writer is learning the basics. As simple as it seems, learning the fundamentals of any new skill or hobby is an effective way to get started. Everyone would prefer to succeed at every new aspect of life automatically, but it’s not realistic. When I first began writing poetry, I believed you could slap the name “poem” onto anything you had written and that qualified it as a fully created poem. I gave no thought to planning a piece of writing, of reviewing my own work, or comparing my work to successful authors. To quote V. S. Pritichett on writing memoir, “It’s all in the art, you get no credit for living.” Doing the bare minimum, believing you have an inner genius without practice or discipline, isn’t going to set you apart from other creators. The fundamentals of design and writing show you what others have created and give you a chance to avoid simple mistakes.

It’s after we learn the rules and get our footing, in both writing and design, that we understand how to break the rules with purpose. Breaking the rules and forging your own path is crucial, but it takes time and understanding.

On a base level, it’s true that technology has democratized design. Anyone can create a holiday card on their computer with little to no graphic design experience, to varying degrees of success. However, more people given access to technology and learning new skills is not a bad thing. Everyone starts somewhere when learning something new. And sometimes, a bad example is the best teacher. A plethora of crappy business cards or band posters uploaded to the internet create a buzzing web of chaos, and with time, someone with basic knowledge can sift through and find good examples and inspiration. It doesn’t matter how wide spread graphic design has become, because the skill level of the individual will stand for itself.