Good Design vs. Bad Design- Lauren Zima

Good design can be difficult because much of it is preference-based. I think we see this a lot with magazines and Web sites more than we do with newspapers. Magazines and Web sites are much more niche-marketed, so their design needs to appeal to their readers. Of course, there are also basic news Web sites, which tend to have pretty straight-forward, basic layouts.

Personally, I appreciate simplicity more than anything else. The worst Web sites are like some of the examples Olga showed us in class - completely over done and impossible to navigate. It’s tempting to want to use every feature available, but that’s not a good idea. A visually abrasive design will get rid of an audience faster than anything else.

In terms of good site design, I think the first and most important component, as Olga mentioned, is that from first glance the reader can tell what your site is about. Second in importance is that the site is easy to navigate – that the reader can access the information your site is trying to provide in an easy way.

Flash Journalism - Lauren Zima

I think flash journalism provides so many opportunities to get a reader involved in a story. Studies have shown that the more readers are involved in something, the more information they retain from it. Flash projects will get the reader involved; the reader can click and navigate through them, leading them from one step to the next, and revealing something with each click. The reader is visually stimulated by flash journalism, and this is key.

However, I do feel that there can be too much of a good thing. A site overloaded with flash will turn readers off. Much like there is balance in a solid story, there must be balance of how much of these interactive tools we are using. The brain can be overstimulated as easily as it can be understimulated.

I do think that flash is missing some components that I find interesting, such as video and sound. But, I think it has a lot of capabilities to provide simple and limited amounts of information in an easy fashion. So, depending on your goal in using flash, it can be ideal.

For me good design would consist of a simplistic yet sophisticated design. With these, it's becoming more and more obvious just how much thought it takes in paying attention to how viewers use a site. It can be so easy to think first of ourselves, the colors we like, the way we might piece something together, but aside from everything else, this class has been about to think about the viewers continually until we can pin point every aspect of the site or project that needs changing. Good design is something that is easily accessible and even familiar-looking almost. But good design also needs to offer something that poorly designed pages don't and although the differences aren't so subtle at first, the difference is found in a focused, concentrated effort to serve the viewer first and foremost. 

bad design

Bad Design is everywhere. From Quinton’s new deck, to news pages, to stupid.com, bad design can appear without warning. For me, the hardest part of design is color. Something that would look great on a t-shirt looks horrible in layout. The use of white space, or lack there-of is another issue. I often find myself wondering if people had help in designing their WebPages, and then I run in fear when I found out they have. Bad design is everywhere. We must be vigilant, especially when it comes to our own work.

Good or Bad Design

While we are focused primarily on the journalistic side of convergence journalism, design is also extremely important.  Just as the nut graf hooks a reader into reading the rest of your story, the layout of the website must be pleasing to the reader's eye.  This means it cannot be cluttered,and it must have an easy-to-navigate layout.  When I am surfing the web, I am more inclined to stay on a site if it is simple and symmetrical.  There are many sites out there that just try to do too much.  The result is the site is too difficult to read and not worth the reader's time.  Internet users can easily go to another site to get the information they are looking for, so it is important that the website you want the reader to stay at is pleasing to the eye.

Good web design.

As we know, creating web should be a use-friendly. Think about what the users want to see and what they like when they visit the web site. As a user, of course, I like to see the web site which looks clean and is made to be easy to navigate . Users don't have enough patient to see the bad website. Another is to keep consistent in terms of their design elements which do not make users confused and make sense. And, we don't need to show everything in one page. Make the page simple and let users navigate what they want to see.

Good/Bad Design by Brandon Twichell

While this class may not focus so much on the design aspect of journalism, it still plays an important role to our readers. The eye is a powerful organ in the human body, and the way it focuses and moves about the page can make or break you. Info-graphics and photographs are great focal points as long as there is not a huge clutter of them on a page. This goes for all media platforms, including web, newspapers, ads, and magazines. Symmetry is my personal favorite type of good design to use. Not only is it easy on the eyes, but it also gives the reader a sense of balance and structure.

I know it when I see it-Clearly

by Jake Carah

Although I have never taken any classes in design, I worked as a graphic designer for a screen printing shop when I was a sophomore. I worked on t-shirts, pamphlets and invitations all with the idea in mind to have the design compliment and not obscure the message. Now that I am just a lowly laymen/consumer, I recall the designs and layouts that stuck out in my mind from that time. 

My boss had a saying for his work, "Make it Clearasil!!" more specifically his reference was to a catch-phrase on TV for an acne cream, but he applied it to a rationale that every design must be, "clean clear and under control." While that isn't the actual motto for Clearasil (it's actually used by Clean & Clear) what he was getting at was that no matter what your trying to design, the design itself can't be messy, busy and going in every single direction. While it might work for modern art, most designs have on average less than 10 seconds to convince an observer that what they see is worth looking at or they will move on and the point won't be sold. This takes precision and an eye for detail and balance.

The types of designs on the web that I like the most are seductive yet simple, they have a succinct style and finesse that balances the line between conspicuous and busy to the dull and unattractive. Sites that stand out in my mind are Facebook, MediaStorm and Apple.com. Yet, even these examples while popular and varied in terms of use have a common thread, you know exactly what they do and they look good doing it. This value of sleekness accentuates the site as well as garnering more appeal for the service. 

Bad designs are difficult to look at, it may not look bad but if there is no transition and balance between factors in the design the message won't translate. Whether you have images or colorful fonts and borders, what the audience needs to see is a theme that ties the layout to the content. If these factors are not in tandem, then the purpose of the piece what ever it is, will be lost in the clutter or disregarded. 

Cleanliness is goodliness

By Tara Cavanaugh

It's occurred to me lately that the latest fad in web design is "clean." I work for newsy.com, and we recently unveiled a whole new website that looks a lot like hulu. It's so clean you could eat off of it. I've found that the better websites out there are uncluttered and easy to navigate-- neat, tidy and clean.
The chapters we read for this week reinforced this clean ideal. I like how they spelled out exactly how to create a pristine site-- consistency was a big thing, as were simple pages that were simple to figure out what's going on. The chapters also made some "duh" points: don't provide a link to nothing, and make sure there are no orphan pages. These are things that I think we should all be aware of, but are easily forgotten.
Overall, here's what I'll keep in mind as we create our final projects: less is more, and consistency is key.

Good Design and Bad Design

What I got from this was that consistency is important. A good design needs to be symmetrical, easy on the eye and organized, but consistency stands out to me. Why? Because there are hardly any websites out there that are only one page. They're all linking to other pages with more information. But it would be bad, not to mention jarring, if the design suddenly changed into something completely different after the link was pressed.

This may seem like a basic, not even need mentioning thing, but it really is important to have an idea and stick to it with these things. That's good advice for almost anything, really. One shouldn't go showing off their designing abilities just because they can. It needs to be focused, and it has to be consistent.

good design response - Manu Bhandari

You can do a lot of good designing if you just feel what is there. Is it symmetrical, balanced, not complicated, clear, has good color combination - these factors can all be seen if we just pay some attention to it. One thing that came as important was maintaining the same layout for the linked pages. As was told in class last week, I think it really makes a difference. It makes me stay connected to the main page, reminds me of what am I there for and makes it easier to navigate too.

Good or Bad Design

Design aids in the understanding of the topic for the reader in numerous ways. When I hear the word "design" I think of the layout of a website, the theme of the topic/presentation, colors, format, photos, graphics, and anything else that helps keep the story's focus cohesive. Design helps direct the reader to the other parts of the website, while still maintaining a focus on the central topic. I think that in order to keep a reader interested in your site you have to have originality, multimedia, fun elements, informative information, and communication with the community.
In my opinion, people rather see a graphic that explains statistics than numbers in text that explain the same statistics. They like to gain knowledge without having to concentrate too much, and photos/graphics allow this to happen.

Bad design loses the audiences' attention and causes the company to lose credibility because it seems as if they don't care enough to make their design look appealing. Bad design could also offend people because if the design is not appropriate for the topic that is being covered then your whole story could go discredited.

My favorite news website is The New York Times because their design is appealing and is not crowded. They provide a lot of graphics and links but don't make it confusing to the eye. Their ads are not overpowering and annoying to the reader as well. Their stories also provide a multitude of media from videos, slideshows of pictures, audio bites, and graphics of all sorts. Overall, I think their website is well designed and informative.

Design -Jennifer Elston

 Design is an important aspect to any form of media.  The story may be rich and compelling, but without good design, few readers will be drawn in to it.  When I think of design, I think of the layout presentation, the colors/font used, number and placement of images and text and accessibility.   Design is every bit as important as a compelling lead because it is needed to draw the eye of the consumer.  When an organization changes and modernizes their site or publication, it can be difficult for the consumer to adapt.  For instance, when facebook recently changed the site's design again, there were many groups made to get the old version back.  Companies should keep this in mind when making changes to avoid losing customers (especially paying customers).

My favorite news site is BBC (in fact, it is my home page).  This is because I like the design elements of this site.  The consumer can choose the colors, font, and stories that are easily accessible to them.  The design is modern, yet not showy or obnoxious.  It is obviously a news  site, but is craftily made so that every generation can find the site accessible. 

Design Chris Vlahos

Presentation is critical in any business, especially journalism. As a consumer of journalism I pay attention to how a reporter presents him/her self to the public, how a website looks and how newspapers are designed. A good-looking design is part of a strong and credible presentation. Usually in journalism, the term design refers to newspaper layout or the display of a website when you visit it. This design is critical in grabbing the reader’s attention. The same way it is important to write attention-grabbing headlines, it is also important to create newspapers and websites that are appealing to the eye. When I peruse websites or open up a newspaper I don’t plan to read the website or newspaper cover to cover. Instead, I am looking for headlines that catch my eye or interesting photos and page layout. I frequently use espn.com and recently it changed its entire webpage layout. At first I had a difficult time getting used to the changes, but now I like the sites organization and use of video to aid in the presentation of content.

Good/Bad Design By: Lindsey Weygandt

A web design that is easy to navigate and contains consistent framework is a key element of good design. It is necessary that the available information is clear and informs the viewer of the destination of the attached link, how to get there, and what to expect. It is important to maintain a consistent theme from page to page. A web design will grab viewers if it has a visually appealing focal point, proper alignment, and high contrast. Some mistakes of bad web design include: clutter, sideways navigation scroll bars, junky advertising, and improper use of animation. The format of a website can determine if the creator will be successful in reaching the targeted audience.

Flash - Manu Bhandari's response

Definitely Flash journalism helps the news industry in the web a lot. Not only to news, it can help in the overall storytelling aspect, as McAdams pointed out. When times change, so do various other things. And we need to be ready to embrace that. This offers a lot of opportunities for people like us, who are just beginning our career in news. We need to learn these new forms of story telling, master it. This is where our survival lies. Flash has given us a good way to tell stories on the web, the medium which is getting more and more popular by the day, and will soon be the primary source of information everywhere.

Advantages with Flash by Brandon Twichell

I really enjoyed learning about the Flash application last week. It has unlimited capabilities for the web, and can be done in many different forms. One of my favorite forms is Soundslides. With a mix of photos and appropriate audio, the viewer almost gets the sense of what the event was like if he or she was there. Rollover info graphics are another great form of Flash journalism. They act as both bells and whistles for the website as well as important mediums of information. Info graphics are definitely useful for visual learners, such as myself.

Journalism and Flash Projects

Flash can be such a valuable instrument with regards to journalism and the public's understanding of an event that could be told with chronologically. When thinking about this post, I thought of graphs that newspapers have printed in the past when there's been school shootings on high school and college campuses. An interactive graphic made with flash can provide step-by-step conditions of the events that would be fitting to tell with the graphic rather than write in a print story. The Times-Picayune published an interactive graphic that told the step-by-step advancement of Hurricane Katrina on the New Orleans communities. The graphic offers a legend, telling readers what stands for a breach, flooded land, a comprised levee and levees. Readers can click forward and back through the scenes of the event as as they do, the time and date is consistent with where the reader is in the graphic. This timeline of events is a great resource to recall online rather than reading through one or a few articles to determine what happened when. 

Flash Journalism

By J.T. Burns

I have to admit that the world of flash journalism is extremely exciting for me.  With so many people simply getting their news by sitting in front of a computer, it becomes very difficult to grab their attention by a simple print story in the newspaper.  Flash lets journalists communicate with readers in a more creative way.  Interactive graphics, audio slideshows, and other flash-based tools allow journalists to better tell stories.  The article mentioned the contrast between a print story about an earthquake in India and an audio slideshow showing the emotions on the faces of the victims.  This is just one example of how flash journalism is enhancing both the reader's and journalist's experience.

Flash Boom Blog by Jake Carah

I could tell what I think about the in class procedure for flash that we did in lab last week, but it wouldn't have that wow factor. Sure I could tell you how I thought the user-friendly design of all adobe products seem to be inviting me to mess around and fiddle with stuff to make it look cool or dare I say sexy. I'm sure that I would just rail on and on about how useful it is to compress a lot of info into an interactive graphic but that to me just wouldn't convey the awesome that is Flash.

No, I want to type about the new wave. The "Awesome Journalism" if you will. The journalism they don't tell you about in the world of dying print. Flash, what an awesome name for a design program. Honestly, it feels as though ever since I told my friends and family I wanted to go to school for journalism I would be bombarded by negative guffaws about why I would not have a job when I graduated or even such comments as "Journalism, what Journalism, don't you know that doesn't exist anymore." Well to the nay-sayers and pontificators of pablum of the contrary, Journalism is Alive and I believe Flash is the template of the revival. Seriously, what is more futuristic than interactive text? What is more healthy for the planet than something that won't be thrown away or pollute the earth and not tear down forests?

The limits of flash are only the limitations of skill on behalf of the designer/journalists and the possibilities to provide stunning arrays of content to audiences. These avenues are just beginning to be explored in all sorts of remarkable ways. Yet, to clarify, I don't think Flash should replace a solid nut graph, or to use Flash as the major template for a piece. However, it can accentuate and involve the audience more than just simple text and for that I see Flash is for Journalism what 3D plat-forming was for Video games, a simply awesome development.

Flash -Jen Elston

Adobe Flash makes content viewed on the web much more entertaining and accessible.  This allows for rich content and application, and adds an element of interactivity.  Flash has many possible advantages on the web.   The addition of flash elements on a web page allow the readers to understand information a lot easier - sometimes even a Q&A that helps the viewers understand the content.  Visual elements are simplified with Flash.  For example, all of the plot markers for a cemetery can be sprawled out with numbers.  The viewer can roll over the area and get more information about the person buried there, depending on the content there.  Anything from the name, DOB and DOD, to a link for more information could be available.  As a consumer of the news, I enjoy Flash applications because they are so interactive and accessible to me.

Flash journalism

Using flash for presentations seems to be very user-friendly. Most of parts of them are visual-driven contents so that it is convenient for users. Even though flash has a potential, it is difficulty to use it because there are so many details requested to create a good visual presentation by flash.
For the web presentation, using flash enhance different media format to be integrated to improve the way of communicating between viewers and reporters or between viewers and viewers.

Advantage of Flash

The main advantage of Flash on the web will be its interactivity. It is always going to be more engaging and interesting to a reader if he can interact with the information instead of merely reading it. For the most part, people retain information better by action than by just reading. This is Flash's big advantage, it can draw the reader in and keep the reader there. That is its advantage over the traditional paragraph. It allows for something to do instead of just something to read.

Flash By: Lindsey Weygandt

Flash Journalism is an effective because it allows the viewer to interact with the information available. It permits the viewer to take in as much information as he or she chooses. Flash is a convenient form of multimedia journalism because the captions help to accessorize a story by detailing a relevant image. The automated graphics also create a sense of curiosity for the audience. As soon as one caption pops up on the screen the viewer wants to know what other information the image has to offer. I believe that Flash is a very useful tool that journalists should utilize in order to enhance a multimedia story.

Flash response

I was not sure if I was going to like working with Flash because I was afraid that it was going to be difficult to learn at first. But I was able to work with it without any problems because it had similar interfaces and menus as Dreamweaver. I think that Flash journalism is really intriguing and I think it helps the reader a lot with understanding the smaller details of the story. For example, in class when we working on the map, I could see how the blurbs on the map would aid in the understanding of the caves.
I think this would be an advantage to the web because it provides a visual and textual information on the subject that you are reporting on. Plus, the flash programming would work well with the web because its at a high pace rate. When there is limited space on your website and you need to relay certain information but have limited amount of room, flash journalism is perfect.