Multimodal Design: Academic Musings (Part Two)

‘Jumping, skipping and surfing’ is how Schriver (1997) describes the reading process online. Walsh (2006) says that online readers are involved in a ‘recursive, interactive process’ engaging with fragmented sections of information via multi-directional reading paths.

Readers also have high expectations of what information a website will contain. Walsh uses http://www.wolf.org/wolves/index.asp as a case study to assess how a typical person ‘reads an internet site’ and asks how they gain meaning.

Kress (in Snyder, 1997) also acknowledges the ‘non-linear, rhizomic organization of [online] content’ versus traditional text book reading. He concludes that electronic documents are ‘[a] resource…not read but used’.

What does this mean in practice? Online readers will scan, jump around and pick up the selective information they desire ‘blurring the line between reader and writer’. Document designers are therefore challenged with orchestrating complex multimodal, multimedia textual production into useful, bite-sized information chunks that do not disappoint in content.

Multimodal Design: Academic Musings (Part One)

Theorists tend to agree that a world ‘on the visual space of the screen…will have far reaching repercussions’ in terms of how readers obtain meaning and understanding and which will require ‘a new form of representation, [a] new theory’ (Kress in Snyder, 1997). Walsh (2006) also considers ‘the context of changed literary practices’ in her article titled ‘The Textual Shift’ and explains that ‘reading [in a multimodal environment] involves a different process than the reading of words’. Schriver (1997) agrees, and in context of multimodal communication indicates that document designers need to resist what Johnson (1994) calls ‘romancing the hypertext.’

So, the convergence of technology into multimodal websites means designers will need to ‘understand the semiotic potential of each mode.’ Got it? OK, put more simply the internet brings words, pictures, audio and video together into a new medium of communication. People ‘read’ this medium differently (ie, to a text book) and new theories of understanding are therefore needed. Part two to follow…

Best Blog Design: Practical Musings

A good starting point is Jakob Nielson’s website: http://www.useit.com/. He reminds us that online readers will scan text quickly (and in an ‘F-shape’ pattern) and therefore a webpage should use:

• Concise and scannable text to improve usability
• Effective headings, sub-headings and bullet points
• Easy-to-understand, commonly used language to aid ‘findability’
• Information-carrying text to lead titles and headings to aid searches
• The inverted pyramid and hypertext theories of writing style (most important points first)

Parker (1990) also offers online design advice such as making content 'bite-sized', restricting text to one column and using plenty of white space around the page. Nielson also discusses the top ten mistakes that are made with web-pages such as legibility and failure to tell readers what to expect when they click on a link. I hope this blog doesn’t break any of the rules!

Separately, websites that win awards are good inspiration. There’s nothing wrong with emulating the best-in-class webpage designs. Try this one: http://silentbits.com/2006/06/22/top-20-weblog-designs/

Modal Musings: An Introduction

Gunther Kress refers to the ‘deep shift taking place in…media and modes of representation’ (Snyder 1997, p. 58). This shift, towards digital media, throws up all manner of issues for our consideration, for example:

• the convergence of various modes of media
• the impact on (and future of) printed media
• the changing face and demands of media audiences
• new media genres such as blogs and how they are used

I have created this blog primarily to consider, discuss and comment upon issues facing the media industry, such as those above. Writing a blog requires some thought. In addition to creating the blog and fussing over design details (more on that later) the content should be planned with the intended audience firmly in mind. I hope my musings prove useful to persons who share my interest in ‘all things media’.