Eighteen Years Apart

Eighteen Years Apart from Casey Staff on Vimeo.

Data Visualization

Pete Res video

Okay, so I smoothed out a lot of things. It's not perfect. But I think I saved us from having to re-shoot Pete! Let me know what you guys think!

Pete Res rough draft from Casey Staff on Vimeo.

Using Flash with "Tell Me a Story"

With this New York Times project, they look at what is at the end of each subway line. The use of the subway map paired with the use of flash with the pop-up screen to show the video, could be useful with our project!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/22/nyregion/20080822_LASTSTOP_FEATURE.html

Color Scheme for Website-lemme know!

What do you guys think of this????

dark grey, greeny blue, white, orangy red, and light blue.

Combining a bunch of pictures...Lens Blog Moment in Time

Here's an example of how a bunch of stories are combined onto one page. I think it's an interesting page that allows for multiple images to be seen and has the viewer become more involved through the interaction.  Moment in Time

-Brittney

Splash Page

http://www.darkstrand.com/

This is kind of like a 2 dimensional map from a street view rather than aerial view, that scrolls through its history in locations in a bold, graphic way. Maybe instead of text we could have a thumbnail or video/.gif clip. It draws your attention and wants you to explore more. It could be a great way to start getting into stories while gaining a little bit of background about the whole magazine.

Tim Burton's MoMA Exhibition Site

I like the feel of this site. The animation that starts is intriguing and adds a little suspense for the content that follows. It's not overly Tim Burton-y but it has enough of the dark, twisted feel that it seems appropriate. I enjoy the movement when you click on other pages, adding to the experience like you are going through a physical space. I think we could have a little more oomph in the opening splash, but we should definitely keep in mind tone and suspense that will make people want to see more content.

Splash Page #2

The Brilliant Line: http://risdmuseum.org/thebrilliantline/

This website has a nice layout once it finally loads. It has an interactive map and a bar beneath the map that leads to links featured within the map. We have discussed using a map and having several different ways to access stories so users can navigate freely without losing all patience. I like the simplicity of this map rather than the appearance of Google Maps that some websites utilize.

Splash Page #1

We're All Fans: http://www.wereallfans.com/

I really enjoy the layout of this website. At first I thought it was a bit too overbearing with the arrival of the music and the images as the website began to load. I could see us using something like this for our website though with natural sounds of rochester such as buses, people talking/laughing, jazz music, etc as our images pile up on one another as done with this website.

I like the menu on the right side. Our names could be displayed on one side and when you click the link it could make the page more specific to the work of each photographer and the natural sounds or even interviews could be heard distantly in the background as the page loads. There could also be an extra sidebar where our stories can be listed as links, guiding viewers to a separate page.

When the thumbnails located in the center of the webpage are clicked, they are highlighted, enlarged and a link is provided at the bottom showing where the content originated from.

We're All Fans also has a place for people to post their "musical DNA". Users can post a photo of themselves and then select artists they enjoy listening to share with other users.

Everyone should take the opportunity to look at this website! It is simple, layered, yet provides a lot of information without overwhelming users with one main home page.

Splash Page Thoughts

After our meeting on Monday with the New Media students, I've been thinking about the splash page for the online magazine. If we wanted to do something simple it could just be one of our photographs displayed large. Perhaps there is a way that each time a viewer went to the page, a different photograph could show? That way all of our work gets play time and it offers some visual variety.

Do we still want to do a map? Is that still an option? I think if there is time we should try for the map because that includes the interactivity and gives the viewer somewhat of an idea of how the magazine is focused. It also helps to tie in all of our work to a place/area.
-Brittney

Interactivity Ideas

3 Interactivity Ideas: Eighteen Years Apart

1) Tell Your Story: Viewers will be given the chance to tell their own story. A link or an upload module could be placed on the main page that features the story "Eighteen Years Apart", where viewers can upload their own content whether through video, text, audio, or photographs.

2) Review Extra Material: A link could guide viewers to view extra content such as interviews, journal entries, scans, poems, etc.

3) Interactive Journal: This idea would replace #2 rather than be included with it. The interactive journal would be constructed with Flash and would be a journal on a table. When you click it, it opens a table of contents and allows the user to pick through various types of content. The pages would flip when a subject was selected and it would open up to a page revealing the content. Nothing too complicated!

Links to examples from the word press proposal

Here are some links from our discussion on monday
flickr slide show example
word press theme
example of other site made with word press
word press theme 2

Second Story Idea

http://lifefilevideos.com/oth_video.html

I want to do simple stories such as this one for my second project. Perhaps focus on veterans or get stories indiscriminately based on their interest??

Contributor page

I was just looking at the multimedia that won CPOY last year, this is an interesting way to do a contributor page Apart from War

Interactive Web Ideas Part II

Perhaps I could also have two stories, on of Raj and one of her daughter, side-by-side, when you click on one image an audio slideshow will open to the full screen to illustrate Raj or her daughter.

When you hover over the image, it will turn into motion (5 sec loupe), not a video portrait but natural moments (less Marie Clair/ Hogwarts and more Getty Multimedia).

Interactive Web Ideas

For my story on Raj, I was considering a quiz "how much do you know about Sikhism" to challenge the viewer's ideas about the religion. After 9/11, several Sikhs were killed because of the stereotypes circling from the cultural norms in dress such as the turban. It is important to break stereotypes and learn about the fundamental concepts and beliefs of Sikhism.

One fun interactive quiz I found:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/geobee/today.html#/start

A couple good things about this quiz:

1. the background changes from question to question

2. it gives you a structured amount of time for each question

3. it's short and sweet

Obviously, it was made for children, but I'm sure we can find a way to appeal to a broader audience.

New Media Design Wizards

Steve Mancini------sam3253

Holly Dzimides----hkd3175

Nate Korinchak----nak9955

Looking at Work

I think sometimes what is hard for us as students is not only find things to shoot, but to find a variety of photographers' work to look at. Looking at work is honestly one of my favorite things to do, to see new ideas compositionally and content wise, and to get excited about photography all over again.

Michael Conti sent me this nice google reader compilation page of many photographer's blogs, including a few people in our class ( I think Chris, Brittney, and I are on there). you can link to it HERE

Be prepared to be bombarded by photo goodness- all by young photographers like us!

Who knows, it may give you some inspiration on your current project(s).

My Chosen Websites (Sarah)

Websites that I showed in Class the other day:

Overview: I tried finding three different blogs that rely on three totally different layouts for different (often non-photo purposes), and had both strengths and weaknesses.

Mark Ecko's Personal Portfolio

What I really enjoyed about Marc Ecko's portfolio site was the interactive front page, where you can scroll without clicking, not only up and down, but really in all directions to see all the different links on his site. The design is clean and memorable, and there are other simpler options to view the same pages in the "gallery" site. I think this would interpret well on ipad to move the ipad around and have the app respond accordingly, showing much interactivity.

Section Seven Portfolio Site (Click "Old Site" Link at Bottom of Page)

The Section Seven page is colorful (which I like), and, most importantly to me at least, has each designers page in a neatly segmented format, which I think is a good possibility for our app, to have each project and all of it's seperate interactive components in segmented pages.

Burn Magazine

Burn has a ridiculously simple format of posting their multimedia presentations and photo essays, with some interactivity that allows for comments, organization, and a forum. Nothing groundbreaking here, but I think it's a good example of a photo site that works well and is easy to look at for long periods of time.

Thoughts on imagery in magazines

In reference to Brittney’s post below, I wanted to give my insights about the class on Monday when we visited the library and looked at different magazines.  I was really interested in the way the magazine used imagery for the stories they where publishing.  Magazines like COLORS and GOOD used the imagery throughout the story to help complement the text.  I read an issue of COLORS that was about aids and they used clever ways of showing facts without showing info-graphics.  They explained how sleeping with someone without a condom could lead to an STD because they might have slept with 2-3 other people unprotected then they might have slept with another 2-3 people, and so on.  After 4-5 pages of explaining that, they filled a whole page with images to show the scale. 

As for a typeface or logo I liked, I really enjoyed the GOOD logo.  It was simple and bold.  I think for 585 Magazine, we need a font that shows both numbers and letters boldly.  I think having 585 like GOOD would be effective.  But is it pushing the bar?  Our designer can figure this out!

Chris Langer - Week 5

Mediastorm - http://www.mediastorm.com

One of the reasons why I picked this website for this blog was the social media is integrated so well into the site.  I really like seeing the content on the website then scrolling down and seeing a wide majority of sharing your ideas.  You can comment on it, share it, repost it, and see more information about the project.  I think this is really effective for sharing stories.  Social media is essential for us to get started.  It is the easiest and quickest way to get visitors on the website.  

Reportage by Getty - http://www.reportage-bygettyimages.com/

I came across this website a year ago and wanted to bring it back up again for this class.  I really enjoyed seeing all of the Getty photographers work in one place.  It also has a very simple design and simple navigation.  I am also a big fan of the scrolling horizontal gallery on each page to see the pictures.  I am usually not a fan of horizontal scrolling but like how it is used in this website.  I think this website helps show the power of simple navigation and emphasis on the imagery.

Field Trip to the Library

Today we traveled to the library where CIAS librarian Kari Horowitz who pulled together a collection of magazine from all over. We saw tiny rectangular flip book styled books from Visionaire to larger poster sized magazines from Manipulator.

Things that we liked about the older magazines were their use of negative/ white space and how important a role photographs played over ads. Flair gave us the idea of moving from one page to the next by combining cut-outs from pages to be a part of the next page.

Somethings to think about were how do we move from a tactile action of flipping through the physical pages to an iPad? Maybe shaking the iPad would shuffle our projects?

Magazines We Looked At:
Visionaire
Look
Life
Flair
Colors
Manipulator
Good
Harpers
Dazed and Confused

-Brittney

Blogging and social networking

A friend sent me the link to illobook which is creating a social network using blogs, I wonder if we could do something like this? I spoke today about using the interactivity component to try and create or strengthen the community, especially the community that you all want to reach which is other students and programs, What do you think?

Tear It Down

Tear It Down is an organization created by Amnesty International to remove detainees from Guantanamo Bay. The website creates a tone very well with the photos, design and audio. It is easy to navigate, but there isn't a lot of content, only tons of links to do other things related to the website. The tone and the design are great, so something to consider to frame our content.

Adventure Country

I thought this was a fun take on an interactive map. It's almost all extras and not a lot of content, but it's fun and makes the viewer stay longer. There are a lot of silly business cards, but I was thinking we could do a special thanks page with a map like this and include business cards of places we're working with or where the blog posts are in Rochester. It also uses audio as a background while interacting with the site.

CNN NewsPulse and POSI+TIVE Magazine

       I looked at CNN NewsPulse first and found that while the site didn't look visually interest or pretty for that matter; I did like the "show me" column. It broke down the different topics that people would want to use to refine a search as well as helps to remove stories that the viewer doesn't want to see/read. The images that combined with the story are a nice way to break up all the text and white space. Similarly to what Kelly said of 1000 Words website I find that CNN too is very simple. I think it's clean organization and easy navigation are it's positive.

    Next came the opposite to CNN, POSI+TIVE Magazine. The pros of this website are it's color scheme, the combination of photos, text, and video on one page, and it's modular design. The grey and white colors aren't to over bearing on the eye and don't over-power photographs. The ability to have three different types of communication/journalistics mediums is a big plus. The viewer can have a wide array of things to view, which I believe is important to have as not only a way to broadcast our projects but to also keep viewers coming back to the site.
  
   I do and don't like the modular design. I think it's a unique and creative way to organize a page and to keep things organized but with POSI+TIVE Magazine you have to scroll for what seems like a long time. I scrolled all the way to the bottom but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to do that.

-Brittney

Video Portrait has made the big time

Marie Claire Cover

Top Three Sites from Class

Reportage by Getty
The opening page is engaging and dynamic. The graphics and how the images are highlighted when you roll over them with the mouse are really good and we liked the way you roll over the multimedia stories and they become animated.
Burn Magazine has an active blog and forums which we may want to use. There is a sense of community being built through this site with the comment sections and other interactive areas. It's simplicity highlights the stories and photographs
Highrise has a great interactive opening page and awesome use of sound on the opening page.  The playful display engages the viewer. It's harder to navigate through the stories.

Others work we liked
NY Times Debt Trap
Has a great design using interactive text.  Several options for the story index
Live Love Hope different ways to approach the story, beautiful, simple design and interface

Waterlife + Blur Magazine

Water Life:
http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

We have already discussed this website a little bit during class. I like the high amount of interactivity offered. At first when I began looking through it, I thought it was a bit disorganized and too overwhelming with all of the content given. However, there are three different ways to access the facts. There is a large mosaic-like symbol that the website opens with that allows you to select facts by random. Then there is a sidebar that divides the facts up by category and a bar along the bottom that serves the same purpose. As complex as this layout seems, I actually find it to be pretty simple. At first, I was expecting to get lost easily. But it did not take long for me to realize that the website is a lot smaller than it appears at first glance. The music that plays in sync with Water Life sets a nice mood. I feel as though I am plugged into something more than just a website.

Blur Magazine:
http://www.blur-magazine.com/

I have never been introduced to Blur Magazine until I looked at the list of links posted by the class. I enjoyed downloading the free magazine and scrolling through it with Acrobat. However, at that moment I wished I had owned an iPad. I enjoy the variation of subjects and photographs that the magazine offers. The interviews are much more powerful in this format because photographs can be looked at while you take in the text off to the side. The design is sleek and subtle, supporting the images well without distracting the eye. I found a link on one of the pages of the magazine that said “More about wet plate technology”. I was a bit disappointed and surprised to find that it led to a page on Wikipedia. I enjoyed looking through all of the photography on my computer screen rather than viewing it as a hard copy. I could control the brightness of my screen when I wanted to read the text and I did not have to worry about glare from surrounding lights. It was easy to scroll through the magazine with the arrow keys, horizontally and/or vertically. The magazine felt as though it had more than one voice with all of the interviews included in each issue. The links to blur’s Facebook and Twitter were included nicely on the last page with a note: “Let’s keep in touch!”. Overall, I enjoyed going through an issue of Blur. I made it through an entire one in about 25 minutes!

Highrise and 1000 Words

These are the sites from class:

http://highrise.nfb.ca/prologue/index.php

http://www.1000wordsmag.com/

Highrise is innovative and exciting. It's interactive and organizes it's points through a crafty highrise building on the left side of the screen. That said, it's a little confusing and the fact that you can't direct yourself around the site is downright annoying. When relating it to what we can use it for, the creativity it something unachievable for us but still something that we should keep in mind. I like that it's fun to navigate and to spend time on.

On the other side, 1000 Words is very simple, maybe too simple. BUT it's clean, organized and easy to navigate. A blog and list of links are the only interactive features.

iPad App

Over winter break I was sitting down watching World News and saw this commerical for their iPad App. It plays upon the interactivity between the information being shared and the viewers role. While I don't think we'll be able to build a three dimensional globe, it's an interesting way to view news.

To a certain extent I think being able to choose what news a person wants to see can lead to a problem longer term. News will become more subjective than objective and people will only hear about what they want to hear rather seeing/hearing everything.

Here's the link to watch the commerical for the application.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HmOn7BbkQA

Here's some background information:

ABC News has today released an iPad app, using an interactive three-dimensional globe on which news stories appear. This is the second iPad app to be released by the Disney/ABC Television Group, with its ABC Player app proving to be a huge success, with over 928,000 downloads and 5.9 million episodes started in just over three months.

Users can spin the ABC News globe to find the stories that they want to read, and can then define what stories they want to have on their globe, from politics, health, entertainment, and more. ABC News' library of archival footage, "This Month In History", will also be available as an option for users to explore. Users can set up their own globe to include stories from Good Morning America, World News with Diane Sawyer, Nightline, 20/20, and This Week. Stories can also be selected to be read later, or shared with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Steve Jobs will also be very happy to hear that the ABCNEWS.com website is now optimized in HTML5 and is available on the iPad with all features, including video.

The app is available now as a free download from the Apple iPad App Store.

Source: ABC

-Brittney

Zone Zero

http://www.zonezero.com/zz/

This site allows for forums and multiple means of communication. It has the option to view it in English or Spanish, and you can also share the site on social media sites such as facebook and twitter.

The home page starts off with the current issue, and there are links to the podcast. Started in 1994 by Pedro Meyer, this site is a good example of a web site working on multiple means of communication, embracing the digital age.

Lens Culture; Photography and Shared Territories

http://www.lensculture.com/

This web site is visually stimulating and easy to navigate. It's vague, open-ended name "Lens Culture" leaves the web sight open to various photographic and artistic art forms. The buttons on the top of the page make it easy to go from archives to interviews to blogs. They also open their sight up to "photobooks" and lend links to other sights. Their button to "submissions" is also beneficial in garnering more participation from viewers. Additionally, they have a link to profiles of their photographers and a link to audio interviews, encouraging the viewer to continue to actively learn more about the process as well.

Pros: Easy Navigation, open-ended means of expression, interactivity.

Cons: Perhaps too open-ended, but regardless a good example of what is possible.

Focal Point f/8

http://www.f8.com/

This web site focuses on the geography of stories, keeping interactivity at the forefront. While the main page is misleadingly plain, if you click on "the Devil's Caldron" the web site offers much more content in several different ways.

Pros: This site lends itself well to archiving and content.

Cons: The site is visually conflicting and not as engaging as it could be. If it was simpler in layout and design, it would be much easier to navigate.