So A Blog Post… About My Blog?

I found in the readings and the videos that we watched for this post, that I already use SO MUCH of the suggested ideas. Some of the videos creeped me out a little, only because who ever told some of those students to use a sultry voice were wrong to waste it on a video that wasn’t themed toward that. It was interesting. My writing space is not as organized as the ones portrayed in the videos though, nor as clean. As I clearly show here:

I did a lot of writing this weekend that (while not having to do with any of my classes) manifested itself in a mass. But implementing this image into my post is on track with the readings we did as well.

Bernhardt talks a lot about page design. In fact it reminded me of the the design book we read in WRIT374, about how the objects on the page are just as important as the information. In particular, Bernhardt’s section on the visual gestalts. I identify heavily with these, because, although it looks like I can just throw any old blog post together, I spend a lot of time figuring out which graphics to use to help tie to piece together.

Wysocki speaks to me more though. I’m not going to mis-gender the woman author this time, I did not delete the entire post, nor am I speaking about her with an accompanying Dale Cooper gif to distract me from the actual article.

Maybe because I’m working on a few different media projects right now that have me doing weird things at weird hours. But I didn’t realize how many different surfaces my projects were taking up before. When I stop and think about it, it’s rather interesting. I start out with the canvas being my brain and thoughts (not always mutually exclusive). From there is moves to, usually, jotting ideas down on whatever appendage I have that isn’t currently being used. Then, if I develop it enough, it starts to take shape on sticky notes and other miscellaneous papers. I may have never finished a big writing project, but I’ve kept every envelope, every receipt, and every gum wrapper that I’ve brainstormed on. In the event of a film project, I do branch that out into a storyboard type deal; nothing sleek, as I’m not the best artist, but I like to sit down with a set of brush pens and just paint until I’m out of ideas. Rarely are the paintings related to my actual idea. Like the picture to the right. It’s a picture of the road around Hungry Horse Reservoir, when the soil becomes more oxidized and the clay is thicker. My mother ran her last Ultra-Marathon on this road. But I didn’t put it down on paper until I was brainstorming for a project I’m doing in another class.

Once, I’ve gone through all of these different canvases, it finally gets to it’s final form (at least for now) and either ends up as a digital file in my computer or posted to this blog.  I don’t think I’ve ever thought about my canvas the way Wysocki made me think about them (whether or not that was the intended outcome).

I do have a separate notebook for every project I’ve ever done. Starting fresh with a new canvas every time. It’s not cost effective, but it gives me the illusion that my ideas far exceed their actual page count. But as a font geek, I love the section on the fonts. Even just glancing at it, I love fonts. My personal font of choice is Cambria.

But Cambria, unfortunately, doesn’t fit for every application. I wouldn’t use Cambria on a new logo design for West Elm. The brand seems to stick with a Helvetica-esque font and a serif font would not agree with their advertising. It is more and more accepted for papers and the like, but I hope that one day it will overthrown the tyrannical grip that Times New Roman has over the academic and scholarly communities.

As someone who has quite a handle on design I did find the articles helpful in reminders as to how I should be applying certain aspects and how I should better understand my media and its applications. I wouldn’t use techniques I use in short story writing on a film, simply because I can’t manipulate actors the same way I manipulate words. Wysocki essays are the essays that I live for.