Weekly reflection for October 25, 2019

[younga20]

Sunday night Layne and I worked on an Idea for the Peak. We created a wireframe for the page, and took inspiration from The Cut. We came up with several ideas for the names of categories, but Layne has those notes so I will let her touch on that.

We thought that "The Peak" should be emphasized and thought of a graphic with the outline of the logo behind the words.

Peak_Idea.pdf

[chambersa20]

Today Professor Barry and I met to discuss some of the issues I found with Shenandoah's WordPress structure. One of my concerns was that the older issues linked to an outdated and incomplete 'About' page that was different from the 'About' page of the current issue. It turns out, it was a very quick fix just by copying and pasting the text! Also, we talked about possibly separating the masthead from the 'About' section. Presumably, we would link to the masthead page in the menu bar? Or, could there be a way to incorporate it into the header of an issue?

[gsella20]

This week I explored the Github board projects more and kept working on creating a markdown document describing some best practices for using it. Here is a link to the site I created using Dillinger : https://dillinger.io

[myersl20]

My task this week was to research other literary magazine websites and see how they incorporate their newsletter into the site. I looked at the Paris Review, The New Yorker, Little Fiction, and Bodega to see a range of ideas from different types and sizes of magazines. I especially like Little Fiction's set-up because it is very straightforward and simplistic, but also engages with the user and let's them know when the sign-up is complete. I like the added "Done!" page and think it is actually pretty reassuring, because sometimes when I subscribe or sign-up to things online, the page just disappears and I don't know if anything actually happened. Along with the "Done!" page, we should incorporate the newsletter into our menu and add a box pop-up when the user hovers over the button. We should mimic Paris Review and The New Yorker in this respect. They have a short informational blurb about what you're actually signing up for and then an input box for the email. Short and sweet. Adding the newsletter to the site should super simple and only add to the wonderful content Shenandoah provides.

[connerf20]

At the beginning of the term, I wrote down all of my homework for the month in my planner putting it on the exact days that I planned to do it. I only planned the first month because I decided I'd see how things go the first month then adjust my schedule according the changes that needed to be made. This just resulted in me forgetting completely to do some things, like these weekly reflections. So, here is my reflection of October.

Because of the 'social media' project we were assigned to do in my other Shenandoah literary class, this month I have been paying more attention to the literary content that I am consuming on social media and just the social media accounts that I find attractive in general. I've recognized that personally, I am attracted to posts that are more complex than before in a number of ways. When I first got on instagram, I was like 14 years old and just wanted to look at photos of my friends but I now use instagram as a way to consume news and find artists who interest and inspire me and keep up to date on my favorite instagram influencers and the cool outdoor adventures that they are going on. I realized I actually spend the most amount of time reading the posts that I really care about even if they have really long captions. One influencer in particular I follow always posts extremely long captions and I almost always read the entire thing because it is really full of content that I am interested in. I think that instagram and especially social media is becoming increasingly more content heavy (as in more depth in captions and longer video footage can be posted) which is something that could definitely be made use of by Shenandoah. I don't think that that is the kind of content that everyone necessarily would be interested in, but I think dedicated readers of Shenandoah would definitely take the time to read a long caption, or even a longer excerpt on a graphic, not just one sentence. The other thing that I've been thinking a lot about with the way that the 'brand' of Shenandoah translates to social media is the colors. I love color more than anything and my design class has taught me to think about them differently, but I think expanding to using colors that are not included in the four logo colors would make the social media more appealing. For example, the Sewanee Review has really cool use of color on their instagram page. Not necessarily in the instagram posts where consistency is more appealing but I think in the instagram stories more colors would make them more interesting, even if it was just color in the tiny images that are the cover photo for the stories saved on the page, like the Sewanee Review's. Also, I was looking at the Sewanee Review's website as well and they have a footer that is extremely similar to the one we are sort of mimicking a little bit from the paris review with a scene spread across the bottom with a blank sky where words can go. That makes me SO excited to see our new footer in action. I also think that sticking to just the black and white 'Shenandoah' across the top of the page will make the art from the current issue really pop on the screen without competing with the bold colors of the logo, which will still exist on the page.

When I met with Jeff I was really excited to get a project. I feel like in class we've dreamed up a lot of really cool ideas and done a ton of brainstorming, so I was so excited to get to put it into action and try one of the ideas out. My assignment was to re-design the footer and try to think about what the code to do that would be. Redesigning the footer was so much fun and figuring out the code was even more fun! I was unsure about one component -- extending the sky and making sure that the logo buttons for the social media buttons and for the Washington and Lee logo were on top of the blue sky not behind it. The solution that Jeff explained in class was really interesting to me -- rather than create a new version of the logo that has a larger sky and replace that jpeg with the current one, we would actually format this using CSS. I understand on an extremely basic level the difference in HTML and CSS -- HTML is pretty much the structure and CSS is the formatting of that structure -- the color and style, ect.

Designing the footer was exciting for a number of reasons. I don't necessarily know that I'll become a web designer, but it was so satisfying to recognize the simplicity of it and the importance of design in the function of the website. In my design class, we've been talking about speculative design and how design at the most basic level solves problems -- sometimes that are aesthetic and often times that are function. Redesigning this footer was definitely problem solving the issue of the logo detracting attention from the art work of the issue. I think that I like problem-solving design because being 'put in a box' and limited to the restraints of that singular problem forces me to be more creative and have to think outside of that box. I find it far more challenging in my design assignments to design something with only simple guidelines when I have the world as my oyster and can create anything. I suppose this is the process of becoming a better designer and learning how to design things that exist for more than just my use or for the use of a class.

After plans to apply for a fellowship fell through, I recently started working on networking for branding and marketing jobs. This morning I met with Molly Steele in the career development office to discuss my options in the places where I would like to live. After describing to her a little bit of what I enjoy most and which classes I've found the most interesting, Molly actually asked if I would be interested in publishing. I've never thought of it as an option before, but book arts has always fascinated me and I am taking a book design class in the winter. This past weekend I visited a gallery in Richmond to see a large format photo show for my large format photography class. The small, niche gallery also functions as a publishing house for photo books. I asked the attendant so many questions about how they select which books to publish and how many they publish. Her answers were absolutely fascinating. Not surprisingly she said that they do not make money on the books at all but they think it is still a very valuable practice. They publish approximately one book a year. She explained that the books extend the reach of the gallery to across the globes because the geographical barriers that come with a gallery are no problem for a book. This made me think a lot about how Shenandoah is no longer in print but that the internet does a pretty good job of surpassing geographical barriers too. I sort of feel like eventually there has to be a push back on everything being so digital. It might be after my generation is gone from cancer from screens, but it might be sooner than that. But maybe I am just hopeful because I love books and print so much.

[connerf20]

Here is the footer without white boxes behind the buttons.