I wish I could say that I’ve made design choices during this class period that I plan on keeping but I’m not quite satisfied. I’m still trying to find the perfect template that flows with a header image I found on Google. I really liked the template that I previously had; I actually thought that it would still be great for this semester as long as I changed my quote and background image. But, we must change our template. The header image that I’ve found is of a person jumping from one cliff to another which in my opinion symbolizes the jump that we have made from being lowly freshmen in August to rising Sophomores. It’s a perfect header, but I need a template that fits perfectly around that one image.
Weekly Artifact
My artifact for this week is Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed is a website famous for its wacky quizzes and funny posts that are usually found being shared on social media sites. On Thursday I was taking a break from studying and was looking at Facebook on my computer. I came across a Buzzfeed article as I usually do, and decided to check it out. About half way through the article, I lightbulb popped up above my head. I realized that this format would be perfect for my website design. Buzzfeed does a great job at creating visual elements intertwined with their text. They like to use gifs, pictures, videos, quizzes, etc to make their audience interested in whatever subject they’re discussing. I immediately closed the Buzzfeed window and went to my website. I rewrote every post so that they would flow with pictures and gifs that I had found on the internet. I still feel uneasy about my site. I think that I may be pushing it on the college audience content, but I think that what I did might pay off big time. I did include a lot of gifs and funny references, but I still think that my message is still there.
Website Influence
When I think of websites that I have used so far in college, all I can remember is The New York Times. We used this website EVERY SINGLE DAY during writing last semester so I believe it’s fair to say that I am accustomed to that website. There wasn’t one particular way that we used The New York Times; we pretty much did everything imaginable. This was my first time to really dive into a website of this magnitude and search for hours until I could find the perfect article. When I was doing all of this research I started to notice a trend. In every article, there was no works cited page. The writers didn’t use parenthetical like we were learning how to do; they used hyperlinks. When an article had a piece of information from another author that would need a citation that would make it to where we could click on a small piece of the text and be sent to the original piece. On our multimodal project this will be key to creating a sleek, hip website that can still maintain credibility. And the whole not getting caught for plagiarism is a plus too!