Marc
Wai
DTC
355
Rationale:
Final Project
I
thought I would start out the with the constraints and adversities I faced from
doing this site because it is still very fresh and apparent. I thought I chose a very good topic, global
hunger but what I did not account for is the amount of information available.
It was almost overwhelming and it made my job harder to sift through
information that would be most effective in driving my audience to the involvement page.
Speaking of audience , I had encountered the
same problem when doing this site in the earlier portion of the semester. In my
first draft I extended the topic to both people in the U.S. and across the
globe, in particular third world countries. This proved to be difficult as I
was jumping from audience to audience without fair warning. In this edit of my
first website I was torn between the two, U.S. or third world countries, I chose
to present the issue of malnutrition in third world countries. Despite having committed I still had doubts of
whether this topic was the right choice or would it have been better targeting a
different audience and having a fresh perspective. With the time constraint I
went ahead with it.
Last
on the list is the layout of the website and this will be obvious when one looks
at the site. As said in a previous comment it is not uniform between the home
page and the rest of the html pages. I did attempt to solve this problem but
there was no quick fix which I knew of that would have allowed me to make it
into what I hoped it would be. To depict what I had intended if everything went
as planned, I had hoped to have centered the text/content on the page to match that of the home page.
For some of the photos and videos I wanted to wrap the edges in text to fill
blank spaces and create uniformity. This vision would have also taken care of
the overall look which is currently looking like a word document.
Transitioning
to content goal I hoped to utilize ethos , pathos and logos throughout my site.
What ethos did
you strive for in your website? How does your website effectively convey that
ethos?
The ethos I strived
for in my website is having a wide target audience and using a concise topic.
In my website I address the less fortunate as a whole and am targeting those
who may be able to spare time or money to help those suffering. I was not
really concerned with directing the attention to one specific country because
that would narrow the audience but rather using the world as my topic of
discussion. Anybody and everybody could find this of interest. I did this by including
global statistics and facts about those suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
Some specific examples are in my "Facts" and "Who" I
discuss whom across continents are affected. These facts and statistics enhance
the credibility of my site because it is information derived from professionals
who spend a great deal of time studying this particular topic.
What logical
or logos-driven elements exist in your website? How do they enhance
your message?
Among the pages I have
included many logos-driven elements to further support my cause. Rather than
posting what I think is going on in the world I have included links to videos
which tell us the suffering others are going through across the globe. I have
also posted up a charts and links to other sites which one could explore for
themselves and also links which I have taken information from . What I was most
excited about is the "possibilities" page. This page stages professional
individuals who have extensively researched global hunger and have taken their
assessments and that of their colleagues and created a plan that could change
the future.
In what ways are you
using pathos to manipulate your audience? What makes those uses
effective?
The pathos or
emotional appeal I was striving for was sympathy and compassion for others. For
my homepage I started off with a photo of ecstatic children whom have just
received water. This photo along with the quote " No one has ever become poor
by giving." sets up for my viewers the ability for them to contribute and
change the life of another. It also is preview of what they should expect from
my website, which is my duty as the creator to inform then and then persuade my
viewers. Throughout my website there are heart breaking facts, news and videos
which are all positioned in hopes that by the time they have surfed through
each tab they are ready to contribute to the cause and explore the
"involvement page".
Much of the elements I included in my
pages are the basics to any website. Some that were important were the presence
of linked videos for ease of access, along with pictures that were also linked
to a website. Examples are in the "About" page, Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook, and LinkedIn, which were all included to expand my audience. To
achieve these elements I put on my website I primarily used Youtube tutorials. I
also used code academy to get the basics of coding down. I had other ideas in
mind for overall presentation that would have elevated the appeal of my site but
there were fine points to coding that are just indecipherable at my level. Overall
this project was a challenge but I think I got the main elements on my website
and am very pleased with the product.
Reflection
A full semester working with Blogger
and Dreamweaver has made me realize how much I dislike coding. Coding I believe
are for the special few who love puzzles and do not mind the long hours of work
with a small reward. With that I am a big fan of Blogger and Wix. This has to
do with the simplicity of both the sites.
Much like you said "those of us who don't work exclusively with the
internet might be happy with Blogger because we don't have to worry about
maintaining it." That is precisely it.
Working with Dreamweaver put me in a
position which caused my content to suffer. I was so concerned with the overall
appearance of the website (which still didn't turn out as planned) that I
forgot content was equally as important. Blogger did what I needed it to do and
more. I have explored other peoples Blogger site and to me it looks immaculate
yet simple. I was more concerned with what the content was and what it had to
offer rather than an elaborate layout. Now I am not saying a beautiful layout from
Dreamweaver is not important, it just does not suit me as one who doesn't work
with coding and websites as often.
So with the little experience I have
had with designing this semester, I think layout is the most important part of
the process. In journalism we are taught the inverted pyramid and I have
applied this to many of my designs. The inverted pyramid for those who do not
know, is putting the most important information first and place the less
interesting or least important content last. So much like a newspaper , the
headline story is first and it is blown up bigger than anything else on the
page, then comes the rest of the stories which are given less room on the page
or even shoved to the edges. Overall everything is spaced properly , the
website should draw the reader down the page and hopefully to the next and
above all it looks pleasing to the eye. If the layout is good then the viewer
can focus on the content.
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