For this week, we were tasked with joining a new social network that we hadn't been a part of already, so we can explore and discover something new. I had initially been planning on doing Pinterest, but then got an email invitation from a friend for a new one: Thingser!
My email that greeted me earlier this week.
This is a new social network that is in the invitation-stage (hint hint) that seems very much like Tumblr and Pinterest. When you first start, Thingser asks you Categories (topics) you are interested in -- which you can go back and edit -- and those will be the collections of posts that you can view in your dashboard.
You can also invite your friends to the service, and follow their collections of posts they've pinned or created themselves.
Category dash list
You can search by category or by search phrases:
Create a post
Interestingly, the way to create a new post is in the top dashboard. It allows you to select the category and type of post without an additional dialog box.
This week, the class learned about how to create websites using free builders and hosts such as Wix and Weebly. Of course, these are only two of hundreds of sites and services that offer free (and / or cheap) website design and hosting services. If you're interested in finding a good match for what you have in mind, I suggest what our teacher did: having us actually trying the different services and see which felt better.
Weebly
Of the two options, I chose to play around with Weebly first and make a quick site as a fan of Lucas Arts, a game company.
When first using the drag-and-drop style of website building and design, it can take some getting used to: seeing how the template and design responds to the elements you put in. But if you haven't learned to build a website by writing HTML or CSS, this is a much easier and accessible form of getting your content onto the internet how you would like it.
The above screenshot is to illustrate the toolbar and dashboard of Weebly, which frames the content I was building for a Lucas Arts fansite.
Both the left toolbar and top dashboard-bar give you lots of options for control of your design and content; and it handles all the HTML and CSS for you! You also have a lot of options from themes and designs to choose from (or can import your own), as seen below.
I haven't had much experience with Weebly except for the tinkering this week, so I don't completely know the ins-and-outs, or little oddities and bugs that others have found. I know there is definitely the issue of a balance between too-much control of the drag-and-drop and too-little control for the users, but Weebly seems to have balanced the two fairly well.
I am Alexander Kramer, a Communications major from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. I am also pursuing a minor with Internet Studies: eCommerce. This means I can get in front of a group and talk for a bit, and also have experience building and running websites, such as a music store based on Amazon's data, as well as look like bookstores. (In this blog series I will be using more behind-the-scenes HTML and CSS tricks to do some things that might make you chuckle -- if you find them).
Apart from that, I have also been the lead developer for my school's Humans vs. Zombies Club, which needs to track hundreds of players during the week-long games.
This blog is written for my COMM 350 class, Emerging Communication Technologies (taught by Professor Jason LindProf. Lind), which will help hone my skills in various technologies. The class will cover creating blogs, free hosting websites, personal branding, recording podcasts, and familiarity with professional-level, Adobe Suite programs such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Dreamweaver.
If you read along, perhaps you'll pick up some cool tricks that you can use in your profession as well!
In high school I was introduced to weblogging in another tech class. That summer after graduation, I then started a review blog where I would put my thoughts on games, movies, and music. And because I was putting more effort and consistency into it back then (and was a reporter), I also landed some pretty cool interviews with bands, photographers, poets, artists, a game developer, and was even let into a little circle to get some interview for a fanmade Halo shortfilm!
I can say from first-hand experience that if you write consistently, have a lot of material that people can go back to read, and make interesting content, people will find and read you. I haven't touched my main blog Seattle Whispers in almost two years, and yet it keeps pulling consistent numbers each month (well, not as consistent to when I was at peak updates, or in the middle of the Halo series, but still).
Personal Branding
Early in this quarter, Prof. Lind asked us to think about what sort of jobs, hobbies, and activities interest us and investigate: wade through Google Images for inspiration, hunt for businesses and logos that are in your industry of interest or focus, and also just sketch around by hand.
All of this is to slowly build up and prepare a logo for ourselves to use on business cards and a website, but in the meantime we got to play around with sketches, and using Photoshop (see below) to come up with some cool things.
One part of the personal branding assignment was to find an already established company, use their logo, and design a business card for yourself as if you worked for them. I picked Starbucks, brandished my own title for the company, and had so much fun with the card-making I couldn't keep it to just one.
I actually prefer the second of the images--just something about the half-hidden logo that makes the card eye-catching and sticks with you. I also made three social media logo buttons to hint to whoever sees the business card that I have a profile on Facebook [ f ], Twitter [ t ], and Tumblr [ t ]. All three were drawn rather than recoloring already-made buttons. I also realized after the assignment was finalized that I forgot to do a LinkedIn button [ in ].
Photoshop
For years I have used a free, open-source image editor called GIMP. It's essentially a free Photoshop, and has many of the same features, but of course lately it doesn't quite compare with the level of quality that Photoshop has the potential for. I'm excited to take this class, because I get to work with these professional-level tools, and have time to tinker and learn by doing and making mistakes. As part of a way to learn Photoshop, Prof. Lind had us look up tutorials and recreate them with other images.
The two tutorials I followed allowed me to create the composite image below, with the top image from one tutorial [1], and the bottom image another [2].
As an added bonus for sticking with this long introduction post, I give you a cool look at how a professional artist uses Photoshop for their work.
This is French comic artist, Gilles Roussel, also known as Boulet (his website is Bouletcorp). In the video below he gives a step-by-step process of his work, from inking to working with digitally painting the work, and even a little explanation of perspective and reflections. However, he is French, and so this video is in French.
HELP: To understand it a little more (as the auto-generated captions look a little glitchy), click on the "gear" in the lower right of the video frame, and change the "Subtitles/CC" to "French (auto-generated)." The menu will close, so go back into the "Settings" and now in the "Subtitles/CC" you can open "Translate captions" and select your language of choice. In that same menu you can also select "Options" to fine-tune the captions' attributes (like font size) to better fit the embedded version.
I hope this has been an interesting read, and that you follow along in the future!
Thanks,
--Alexander
