Welcome to Screen Space your podcast about creating usable, accessible, effective, and efficient web, blog, and new media design for the everyday (and non-expert) designer. It is August 3, 2008, and this is Episode 8 of Screen Space: Length, Contrast, Alignment, and Critique. The episode includes a few listeners’ questions, a discussion of the Screen Space Star Rating System, and a rating.

For any new listeners (or in case you forgot), I am Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie, a professor at Georgia State University. I teach and conduct research in areas related to new media, web, and blog design.

Now, let’s dive into the show. I have three listener questions today. The first is from Kristin Schierer in New York State. Kristin, who is redesigning the website I am rating today, asked “how much text would you recommend for 1 page?” This is a great question, so I though I’d answer it here. Ideally, text should be kept to under a screen per webpage. People don’t like to scroll, and any more than a screenfull makes them scroll. However, this may be difficult to work on some sites, and making the users click a zillion times to keep reading a single screen of text in a long document may also annoy them.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Screen Space 8: Length, Contrast, Alignment, and Critique [9:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Digtal media, Screen Space Podcast, Teaching Resources, Visual Design, Colorblind Issues, Color Design, Resources, Screen Space, Writing Issues, Fact of the Day, Web design, Good Design, Usability, Design | No Comments »

Cosmo apparently supports music piracy! Or it is fair use? Thanks to Podcasting News for posting about this Cosmos suggestion of asking friends to burn you a CD of music you’ll like (and returning the favor) because “Having new tunes is ideal, but shelling out the cash to buy said music hurts.” The Podcasting News blog post does an interesting job of discussing this. I’m rather surprised that Cosmo would suggest this, when we all know the music industry has come down recently on people sharing music. However, we do have some fair use to our purchased music.

Of course where music sharing comes in under fair use is an interesting matter. A quick evaluation (+ means falls under fair use, - means it does not)
+ Your sharing does not involve you making money off of it. But trading one mix CD for another could be argued to be “commercial” so do be careful with this.
- Your use is not for comment (not really), criticism, scholarship, education, news reporting, or parody.
+/- The amount of work used is a hard question. While you may only be copying one song off an album, it is still a whole song. Does music count as songs or as albums? Copying a chapter from a book is generally okay, but a song?
+ The work has been published and is in commercial form.
+/- The market value effect is also hard to evaluated. This one can depend. In Cosmo’s case you are clearly copying the work to not pay for it–as it is a “Shameless Money-Saving Trick.” However, often if people like a song off a mix tape they may buy it or the whole album. Thus your use could create additional market for the song. Copying a whole album would more of a “-” in this case, as it is doubtful that someone would buy a whole album they already have. But they may buy additional albums. So it is still a hard call.

However, it looks like overall sharing a CD of songs (from various artists and albums) with a friend arguably falls under fair use. You may want to follow the CD with an offer to buy them the CD of whichever song they like best or something along that line. More “fair use” would be sharing a CD from a single artist, but requesting it back when they have listened enough to see they like it. Other options include using music you have permission to share, such as Creative Commons licensed music and much of the podsafe music. Also, many artists that have not be “found” by huge record labels want you to share their music, as it is the best way to get fans. I know I frequently share my favorite smaller artists with others and know I have developed quite a few fans for these bands, and, as a result, earning them more money then they would have if I had not shared. I also do often buy friend CDs of these bands to support the bands too.

I am a firm supporter of utilizing our fair use when we have it. So, while I do not agree with how Cosmo presented this, and certainly doing it to save money is less “fair” of a use, in general the idea of a mix CD for a friend does seem to fall under fair use.

Of course, I could discuss this forever, as there are so many ins and outs of fair use.

Fair Use, Copyright issues, Copyleft, Copyright | No Comments »

As part of Screen Space (the podcast) #6 I created a nice table with text color and background color contrasts, to illustrate good and bad contrasts. Since this is so helpful I made it a permanent page. However, the link is hidden in my long podcast transcript. So, let me point to it now. Do check it out, the table is very helpful and nicely demonstrates the blurring and vibrating bad color selections can cause.

Resources, Teaching Resources, Screen Space, Good Design, texts, Design | No Comments »

Screen Space (the podcast) #8 will include some listener questions. And I would like more. So, do you have any questions about web, blog, and/or new media design? Perhaps some burning question you had had for years? Or maybe a tiny little one that has come to mind lately? Post your questions here or drop me an email. Then, listen for the answers in Screen Space #8!

Digtal media, Screen Space, Good Design, Web design, Design | No Comments »

In Screen Space (the podcast) #6, I covered tips for designing for colorblind users. In case some of you are not listening to the podcast and not reading the very long transcripts, I wanted to pull out some of the cool tools and repost them in a shorter (and easier to skim and find) blog entry. But, you really should listen to the podcast! It rocks (and I am not biased at all).

There are two particularly cool and helpful tools I have found for checking or choosing the color of your websites for colorblind users. Tools like these can help you to improve the accessibility of your sites. Plus, they are fun to play with.

• See what your page looks like to colorblind users: Vischeck offers two tools for web site designers concerned with making their sites usable to those who are color blind. The Vischeck tool stimulates how websites look to people with various types of color blindness and the Daltonize tool is a color blind image correction algorithm.
• Select colors that work for colorblind users: The Color Scheme Generator allows you to select colors schemes and see how they look with 8 different types of color blindness. This is very handy and quite fun to play with.

Color Design, Colorblind Issues, Visual Design, Teaching Resources, Good Design, Resources, Design | No Comments »

In Episode 7 of Screen Space: Design 101 (Four Basic Principles)

Welcome to Screen Space your podcast about web, blog, and new media design for the everyday (and non-expert) designer. It is July 21, 2008, and this is Episode 7 Screen Space: Design 101 (Four Basic Principles). Today I’m giving special welcome for my listeners from around the world. After my last podcast, I started looking at my stats and found I do have plenty of listeners from around the world, including people from Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, the Russian Federation, Bulgaria, and Sweden. Thank you for joining me. If you have any special issue you want to cover, just drop me a line via email or the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

For any new listeners, I am Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie, a professor at Georgia State University. I teach and conduct research in areas related to new media, web, and blog design. In fact, I teach a class on document design, which is directly related to this episode.

Design itself is a funny term, especially when one is discussing web design. The phrase “web design” means many things from all aspects of creating and producing a web site to the actual visual components of it, which better fit the more traditional definition of design. In this episode, I’ll be talking about the visual design of websites.

Like color design, which I briefly covered in the last episode, visual design is a very complex subject and it is one pursued by a variety of experts and artists from graphic designers to photographers, painters, sculptors, and more. Not only are there books on this area, but a huge number of varying degrees. So, this is no small subject, and even a focus on the visual aspects of web design is still a huge area—with numbers books and classes of all types. Since this is such a huge topic, I’m not going to attempt to over it in one podcast, but several. This is just the first one, and as such the most very basic. And what better place to start then with basic design principles?

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Screen Space 7: Design 101 (Four Basic Principles) [17:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Screen Space Podcast, Digtal media, Typography, Visual Design, podcast, Screen Space, Web design, Technology, Good Design, Design | No Comments »

Typography is one of my academic guilty pleasures. Well perhaps not so guilty s it fits nicely into my technical communication work and teaching. This short video is a nice basic introduction (under 2 minutes) to typography. The teacher in me appreciates how is it states that typography is used to communicate. The typography lover in me agrees with John of Machine Memorialis (where I first saw this video) that the best line is “A good typographer…makes the type taste good.”

Teaching Resources, Typography, Resources, Design | 2 Comments »

In Episode 6 of Screen Space: Color Design 101

[Transcript]

Greetings and welcome to episode 6 of Screen Space: Color Design 101. It is Sunday July 6, 2008. For the United States Citizens in my audience (which may be my whole audience, if not let me knew), Happy belated 4th of July. The 4th was actually inspiration for this episode. I was trying to decide which of the many upcoming topics to do. After running in the Peachtree 10k road race (the largest 10k in the nation), I decided that colors were a fitting topic.

As you know by now if you’ve been listening, Screen Space is a podcast for all of you out there who want to make your websites, blogs, and other new media more usable, accessible, effective, and efficient. I, your host, am Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie. I am a professor at Georgia State University where I teach a variety of classes related to this podcast. I also do much of my own research in this area.

Without further ado, let’s talk color. One of the biggest differences between print and new media design is color doesn’t cost any more in new media. You can use millions of colors (but please don’t) and it doesn’t cost you any more then using just black and white. This is not the case with print. Unfortunately the ability to use color without extra cost can lead to some very colorful and very atrocious designs.

Color is a very complex topic, and artists and graphic designers can spend years studying it. However, advanced knowledge is not necessary to use color effectively in your new media. In this episode I’ll cover some of the basics, and in future episodes I’ll cover more material on color. It is a topic I could dedicate the whole podcast too instead of a few episodes because there is so much to know and consider. Today, I’ll focus on some basic, key concepts for color design.

The first principle of color use online is to use color to communicate not decorate. Don’t simply add color because it looks pretty; add it because it makes your site more useable, efficient, and effective. If you do it well you will have a good looking site that communicates clearly. The following principles all provide information on using color to communicate.
Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Screen Space6: Color Design 101 [16:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Digtal media, Color Design, Colorblind Issues, Screen Space Podcast, podcast, Web design, Good Design, Screen Space, Design | 2 Comments »

I am uploading Screen Space episode 6 as I write this. I was delayed further as I had FTP problem when trying to last upload it. Now I am at home, my cable is working, and my ftp is working. Check your iTunes or feeds shortly!

Tech Issues, Screen Space | No Comments »

Screen Space episode 6 has been delayed due to a thunder and lightening storm. Lightening took out our cable, which includes our cable modem and we have not had internet access for a few days. While this is driving me crazy (I rely on the internet more than I thought), it also have prevented me from uploading Screen Space 6. I’m now uploading it from a friend’s house. Sorry for the delay. I’m also, obviously, unable to post or reply to comments and emails for the time being.

News | No Comments »