Design

This week’s readings and videos were pretty cool. Some of the stuff, I have already been introduced to. Last semester I had technical writing and we went over the usage of different fonts, and how they can help or hinder your work. The readings helped in re-established those ideas for me. I have to admit that one of the biggest things I was informed of is how with computers today, you are not required to double space after a period. I was taught to actually type with a typewriter and it was required to double space at the end of every sentence. I know it is goofy, but being 39 now, and looking back at how much I have been using a computer, I wonder how many extra keystrokes I have accumulated over the years. We also went over how the use colors and very little wording can create some of the most vibrant movie posters. I had to laugh when I saw the picture of the ‘paper-clip’ office assistant on the old version of Word (Multiple Media of Texts). I can’t count how many times I noticed that little ‘tap-tap’ on the screen.

                The readings definitely show that for all the stuff I have learned about writing, punctuation and text format, the rules are more or less obsolete. There are general rules that still exist, but again, it really depends on the audience. I still have a hard time writing technical reports where I am not indenting every paragraph, or eliminate underlining titles and such. It seems that a lot of the basic rules had a main purpose at one time, but our language and text has changed so much that these rules are so easily seen as flexible.

                I did enjoy reading the ‘Cracked Guide to Fonts’ cartoon page on what defines each text and what it says about the writer. I typically use Calibri, so I guess I fall along the lines of “just too lazy to change the font.”

                The Ted talks were very interesting. (I posted my Discussion post based on one of them). When Robinson said he met that fire fighter and was told he was throwing his life away, I had a flash back of when I was in high school. We had a DeVry Tech school rep come to my school. We went around and told him our plans out of high school. When I told him was wanted to join the Air Force he just said the same thing, “That’s fine if you want to throw your life away.”

                Seth Godin made a lot of valid points about the ‘not my job’ attitude. Some of the stuff I had to laugh about, but when he talked about the medicine and warnings for the dog, I did laugh but for different reasons. Do we live in such a ‘sue happy’ society that the most ridiculous things have to be spelled out to prevent stupid things from happening? He did talk about how charts and visualizations are over used. Power-point is a great tool, but typically it is over used so that the audience isn’t really paying attention to the speaker. Just like everything we use for rhetoric, just use it in a way that it is productive.

                The health based video wasn’t at all shocking. My wife works for the county health department and says that medical stuff is done that way on purpose to ensure a small handful of people will get tons of money. I did think it was cool that Goetz stated how the medical field uses the fear of God to get people to go to the doctor, after-all, it’s not about people feeling better, it’s all about the almighty dollar.

                Since one of our main senses is ‘vision’ it makes sense that layout is a major component to effective work. It will be interesting to see how much of this design stays important or if society just gets to the point, that nobody really cares. I personally see it being a valued tool, because people like things that look nice.