Things happen in our day-to-day life. We make mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them. The good thing about most of our day-to-day mistakes is that they are not archived on social media for the entire world to see. On the other hand, brands, including large corporations, celebrities, and influencers don’t get this type of privacy or grace when they post online. If it’s posted and it’s bad, it’s bad — at least until the next bad tweet goes viral. The ProblemLet’s use the accidentally-racially-charged Clorox tweet from 2015 as an example. As you can see in the above tweet, Clorox made an unfortunate “bleach” reference about emojis the same day Apple released a number of racially diverse emojis. If you put two and two together, it seems like Clorox is alluding to the bleaching of the racially diverse emojis. To further understand the consequences and context of the digital communication breakdown, let’s rhetorically analyze the situation. To begin, the context of the tweet was its downfall. Clorox was trying to be relevant by tweeting about the new Apple emojis, probably because the topic was trending. What Clorox failed to realize was what emojis were released and how that may play into the content of their tweet. If only food or transportation emojis were released that day, the outcome would have been different for Clorox. Thus, the context surrounding the tweet was a catalyst for backlash. The audience of Clorox’s tweet was also a reason for the communication breakdown. That’s because the audience — Twitter — pays close attention to things like political correctness and advocating for the marginalized, from what I’ve seen. Twitter is also an audience that likes to pick things to pieces — anything from people (Justine Sacco) to corporations to politicians — in a different way than Facebookers or Instagrammers would do. I wonder how the situation would have differed if the content was posted on a different platform. The author of the post also contributes to the breakdown. Technically the author was an individual person who pressed the “tweet it” button, but all Twitter users see is the Clorox name, the Clorox logo, and a verified check mark. This may have given users more of an incentive to come after the company, both because the Twitter profile isn't an individual person and because the company’s social media professional should know better. However, I hate to argue this perspective because, on the other hand, Twitter users attacked individual Justine Sacco, the PR professional who tweeted an off-the-cuff AIDS joke that ruined her life. Twitter didn’t care that she was an individual instead of a corporation; they just wanted her to pay for her tweet. Moving on, I think that the genre of the content seems like a less important factor but really it’s more important as we look closer. One aspect of the tweet that I haven’t touched on is the fact that the original tweet included a photo of a bottle of Clorox bleach made up entirely of emojis. Because the tweet includes a photo, it’s clear that Clorox was ready for the Apple emojis to drop. They were so ready that they created a detailed graphic. In other words, the bleach emoji tweet wasn’t an off-the-cuff tweet. But even though they prepared for the emoji drop, they obviously didn’t look into what emojis were being release and then analyze their tweet within that context. Ultimately I believe that the purpose of the tweet was to be relevant as best as they could be. It’s got to be hard to run a bleach company’s social media as far as interesting and relevant content goes. I don’t believe Clorox or the Clorox employee was being malicious or racist but that they failed to see any negative connection between their tweet and the emojis. They also probably failed to do their research before tweeting, and it cost them some bad press — although not nearly as bad as Justine Sacco. The SolutionClorox, after realizing its transgression, tweeted a second apology tweet: In my opinion, the humor of their “apology” tweet falls short, although I do think they did the right thing by apologizing in a timely manner to their audience. The first sentence was cheesy. The second sentence offered an explanation of the first tweet’s purpose but still leaves me shaking my head. If I were Clorox, I would have scratched reference to “bleach[ing] away” and the emojis and taken a corporate-serious tone with a problem as serious as racial bleaching. Luckily, they do a corporate-serious apology with their spokeswomen, Rita Gorenberg: “We apologize to the many people who thought our tweet about the new emojis was insensitive. It was never our intention to offend. We did not mean for this to be taken as a specific reference to the diversity emojis – but we should have been more aware of the news around this. The tweet was meant to be light-hearted but it fell flat.” This apology by a Clorox spokeswoman was well done, and I feel a shortened version may have been appropriate on Twitter.
Overall I hope this Clorox case study serves an example of what-not-to-do for companies. It’s important not to isolate yourself into a bubble, away from the world and the news of current events. Brands, this example is one of the reasons that it’s extremely important to be cautious when scheduling posts or press releases to go out at the later date — you never know what the surrounding context will be on that date. Although sometimes we wish we could bleach away our day-to-day mistakes, it’s better to learn and grow from them, both as companies and as individuals. Read more about the Clorox/emoji blunder here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/09/clorox-tweet-twitter-emojis-apple-update/25541671/ https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/clorox-emoji-tweet/index.html
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The LogoMy Hamlet performance logo design is one of clarity and simplicity but it is also one that draws attention. Its large crown and the large word “Hamlet” equally draw you in to learn more about what the logo is for — that’s when a reader zeros in on the smaller text along the bottom “Nashville Shakespeare Festival.” Even though NSF puts on the festival, judging by the way Denise talked about NSF in the introductory video shown in class, I think she would rather a logo focus on/emphasize the performance/play/artwork, Hamlet for example, than on who puts on the festival, which is why “Hamlet” is much larger than “Nashville Shakespeare Festival” in the logo design (organization, emphasis). To further explain my logo, I used a monochromatic, red-only color scheme to be recognizable. I also implemented the royalty-free large crown as a symbol of the plot (and of power) of Hamlet, and, in having a symbol as part of the logo, we can use that icon elsewhere in the website as a stand-alone icon. I think both the center alignment and one-color-only choice for my logo make it bold and attention-grabbing while keeping it clean and classic. The Site LayoutMy site layout mockup is meant to match the logo’s clarity and simplicity. The home page doesn’t use lots of bells and whistles to communicate. It allows the reader to focus on the content by complementing it. For example, my home page displays an attention-grabbing contrast — the lights and darks in the background photo and the lights and darks in the text color contrast — that I don’t think is distracting but instead reflects the moods of Hamlet as a play.
I chose to do something a bit more unique with the alignment of my nav bar, originally because the colored lights in the background photo were interfering with the nav bar text, which I originally had placed at the top of the page. When I moved the nav bar to the bottom, I found that it gave the site a refreshing, out of the ordinary look. It also allows viewers to first immerse themselves in the content before given the option to change pages. (I think readers would get used to the placement of the nav bar as they navigated the site as long as we keep its alignment the same on every page.) Finally, within my nav bar, I thought we could organize our content into broader categories so we don’t have 11 different items in the nav bar. Instead, we can consolidate some of our categories into larger ones and create a drop-down menu that appears upon hover. Leave a comment below if you any have questions or comments!
Creating an introductory website from scratch is an accomplishment (and I think everyone in class should given themselves some credit for knowing what a tag is and what CSS is for!). Overall I am proud of my individual website, specifically for its simplicity and intentionality. Let’s dive into my website building process, before, during, and after. Purpose I wanted to create a website with a purpose similar to my personal website, which I created with Wix, but from scratch. However, my personal website only displays photos, videos, and a blog, so I wanted this website to include other services I can provide Belmont students, specifically Belmont artists. Before Prior to this class, my experience with HTML and CSS was minimal, but I did have some experience. Because of that, I had an idea of the general, basic capabilities of what a beginner could design, and I envisioned my introductory website accordingly. I kept my vision simple design-wise, not only to stick to the basics of coding, but also to let my work (photographs, videos, etc.) speak for itself. Below is a sketch of my envisioned design: The Process Because I started working on my website before we did our HTML and CSS tutorial and tutorial exercises in class, I started my website completely from scratch. My design process was based on trial and error which I both love and hate. When I needed to figure out how to do something, I used Google, W3Schools, random websites, and random YouTube videos. A couple things I found most helpful and satisfying to create with the use of the Internet were the nav bar and the process of linking pages to one another. I think because I had already created a website from scratch before (via a children’s coding book) and envisioned a simple design for this site, I was able to carry out my vision well. However, if I had no coding experience, I would’ve been much more imaginative and inspired to create a website with all of the bells and whistles of a professional site. Another important part of my process was streamlining it. At first, I would change each little element of the site until I liked it, but then I realized it was better to create/design/format the home page to my liking, then copy/paste all of that code onto the other pages. This made my workflow much faster. All I had to do was change paragraph text, add unordered lists as needed, and change the file names of photos. This is a tip I would give to new HTML/CSS coders. If I knew all the CSS and HTML code in the world, I think my site would still be a similar layout to my site — simple, clean — but I would include rolling slideshows on my pages, among other little things that make the site look more professional, such as various hover features. After To analyze my final website, let’s examine the modes I used to communicate with viewers, specifically the linguistic, spatial, and visual modes. Linguistic — I think the tone of my website is professional yet still “me.” While I don’t use any “lol”s, I do use a lighter tone in my copy. My hope is that that language doesn’t come across as distracting or unprofessional but welcoming, casual, and personable. Also, I wouldn’t want to sound stiff, especially because my target audience is Belmont students. Spatial — The spatial mode is one of the most important modes of a website in my opinion. Clutter is an element that can overwhelm a viewer instantly, many times causing the viewer to leave the site. I know this from experience. Thus, in my website I paid special attention to space, the spatial mode, and proximity. I added a bit of extra space between paragraph lines and between my photos and words, giving readers a sense of breathing room in between modes and ideas. I can just imagine someone viewing my site and sighing happily… at least I hope that’s what you did… One affordance of my spatial work (and challenge of my technical work!) was that I really couldn’t figure out how to space out/center align my nav bar, and I think this may leave the observational viewer a bit disappointed. In addition to proximity, another design strategy that falls into the spatial mode category is alignment. Alignment is important for how elements are displayed on the page. I center aligned all images and text on my website for a straight forward look. I think it can be cool to mess around with alignment — it can be an unexpected place to get creative — but I didn’t want to detract from my images and text with out-of-the-ordinary alignment. Is my alignment too boring? What are your suggestions to improving this part of my site? Visual — The visual mode is a mode that I wanted to capture in my website via my images. These are images that I took and I chose these to display my creativity and eye for framing, colors, etc., especially because one of my competencies/“services” is photography. The goal of including these photos was to sell the viewer on myself as a creative, and the goal of including very few photos was to keep the reader wanting more, perhaps directing them to my other website or to my Instagram to see more of my work. Whenever I become obsessed with a photographer, graphic designer, or creative in general, I always check their website but then move over to their Instagram (or vice versa) to see more. Another part of the visual mode that I considered while designing was color. Personally I love monochrome, especially for websites, because it can be hard for non-designers to choose color schemes with a purpose. But I also think color is very important in catching a viewer’s eye, like we talked about in our analyses of Shakespeare archives. So, I decided to compromise and meet in the middle: my background color, nav bar, and text are all in monochrome colors, but I added my pops of color with the images I chose. Generally I would describe the colors I use in my photos as muted and soft but not desaturated. My hope is that the colors add warmth and invite viewers into the website’s pages, and ultimately persuade viewers to #hireme.
Shakespeare on the Road and its website are a change-inducing phenomenon. It’s a compilation of archives of 14 different Shakespeare festivals that took place in the summer of 2014 (context). The team, a group of four Shakespeare fans who are professors, authors, and adventurers (author), traveled over 10,000 miles, mostly by road, in only two months to watch the productions and to interview actors. To archive their work, the team created this website to showcase the multimedia items, such as documentaries, podcasts, and case studies, that they created from their journey (purpose, genre). I believe that the team wanted to create the website for people who were a part of these 14 festivals, people who are interested in Shakespeare in the modern age, and for their colleagues, friends, and family to see all of the work they did in two months (audience). I think Shakespeare on the Road is awesome and that it would be a rewarding experience to tackle a project as big as theirs — Shakespeare related or not. Now, let’s look at how the team executes the website itself. Is it easy to navigate? Inviting? Does it makes sense for its genre and the work it’s displaying? While I love Shakespeare on the Road itself, I feel the website needs some work. Starting from top to bottom, I’m not sure that the “Shakespeare on the Road” opening page works, partly because of the font choice (I would describe it as modern and basic, as in I’ve seen it everywhere), and partly because I think the opening page could benefit from a horizontal photo in the background. They were probably going for a bold and commanding look by putting emphasis on the words only, but that doesn’t fit with what the website is used for. Next, I would argue that the map that immediately follows the opening page should not be what comes immediately after the website title. After just opening the website and seeing its title, I still don’t know what Shakespeare on the Road is — and maybe they can get away with not explaining what SOTR at the beginning because they assume their audience already knows, but I still think it’s worth putting the description directly after the opening. I think the map is cool, but there’s a lot of information on there that a website viewer is overloaded with, especially right after the four bold words on the front page. As you continue scrolling, you come to a grid that takes you to different parts of the website. Not to be a hater, but I don’t think this works either. (I tried to include a screenshot of this grid in this blog post, but I had a hard time with it because of their website.) It’s hard for me to understand the differences between the categories “Thought for the day” and “Notes from the road”, for example. The organization of the grid showcases how the team organized their content -- by each type of media (photos, podcasts, notes, interviews) instead of by festival...why? Keep scrolling further and you’ll find yourself having trouble reading the font, but more specifically the proximity of the characters in the font, that they chose. You could say it looks clean but it’s not functional. In this font, they start chunking out parts of the websites in that weird font that no one can read. Plus, do you think anyone would click on these? Go scroll through the entire first page and let me know what you think about this in a comment! Finally, if you click the nav bar at the very top of the page, you will get confused and overloaded with the amount of rectangles and the volume of words used when really one or two would suffice. For example, while one of the categories is “About”, another one is entitled “Actors tell us why one of the lines they’ll be speaking this summer means so much to them” when, in my opinion, they could’ve shortened that to “Actor interviews.” After my analysis of Shakespeare on the Road’s rhetorical situation and its website design, I have learned things to do and things not to do when creating our Hamlet archive:
Dos:
We Google people. We Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter search them. Once you recognize that you investigate others upon meeting them, when mad at them, and perhaps when it’s been a while, you may gain a new perspective on your online presence. What does my profile say about me? How will strangers react to this? How will my friends react to this? Future employers? My grandma? All are important considerations when curating an online presence. Using my own online habits as a lens for my own online presence, I like to check up on myself on occasion and imagine how others react to my posts and profile. Examining three sectors of my online presence, we are going to dive into how my curation of content portrays my identity online. Instagram (profile and posts) Purpose First, my Instagram account is my most public social media account that I update most often. It’s most public because anyone can view it. You can say my website is similar in this way, but I don’t update my website nearly as much as I update my Instagram. Time I spend curating an Instagram feed that is “me” is time well spent. It gives strangers a visual view of who I am and it gives friends a refresher of who I am in square photos and short captions. I view my feed as an online expression of my identity and values in a visual form. First Glance Before I get into what I think my feed portrays about me and what real strangers have said about my Instagram, take a look at my feed yourself. What does my Instagram feed say about me? Now that you’ve generated some ideas, here’s what strangers had to say: Stranger 1 in the JAAC - “Ooh, molly_jpg. Like jpeg. That’s cool. So you like photos. And color.” Stranger 2 - “You seem fun, put together, and like you do fun things and are well travelled.” Stranger 1 - “Well travelled? That’s a phrase?” When I asked two of my friends the same question, they described both my feed and me as a person as authentic, honest, vulnerable, and “personal hygiene” (I don’t know either). One commented that she loves my focus on communication (you’ll have to check out my COM highlight on @molly_jpg to know what she’s talking about!). My Curation Strategy I think my curation strategy and feed alike say similar things about what I value and who I am. My Instagram is polished — I put my best self forward. I post colorful, quality photos — I love photos and am a bit of a photographer myself. I also found that my feed has many photos of city life and that while maybe half of my photos have a human subject, many do not, implying that I enjoy spending time, doing things, and going places alone. My Instagram feed is a conscious curation, unlike my Twitter feed, because I analyze how my posts fit with one another and what they say about me. I use it as a place to display me and my work. Instagram (stories and highlights) Purpose I view Instagram stories as a whole other beast than an Instagram feed. My stories are meant to be fun, imperfect, more interactive, and less serious than anything I post “for real.” There is far less pressure to create an amazing post, partly because there’s a lack of analytics for the viewer, e.g. no likes, and partly because stories only last for 24 hours (unless, of course, you add your story to a highlight). Stories are also a way for me to display more of myself than I feel like I can in a post. For example, I wouldn’t post a website I created or an article I worked on as an Instagram post because it doesn’t fit with my Instagram feed visually. Instead, I can share those parts of myself on my Instagram story, and, more specifically for this example, my Instagram highlight called “WORK!” COM! Another important story highlight is my COM! highlight, which is a collection of “good com” and “poor com” as I call it. I showcase everything from funny texts to typos to road signs. I got so into this highlight and the idea of good/poor com that I had to start another account just for com. With all that being said, I think my Instagram stories and highlights humanize me more than my posts do, giving me a more well-rounded presence on Instagram. For my last online profile, I had to choose Twitter, a social media I pay little mind to when deciding what to post. My Twitter feed is the place I would not want an employer to see — not because it’s inappropriate or mean but because it’s…just dumb. I mean that in the nicest way to myself. See tweets below: An entirely random collection of thoughts, jokes, conversations, and my favorite sitcom lines, my Twitter feed displays the messiest part of my brain and life — the part that can’t decide if it should create content or repost it, be funny or be political (or both at the same time), commend people or hate them, or spend all of my 140 characters in every tweet gushing about Kate McKinnon rapping in Hungarian. My tweets are generally trivial and not contributory to a larger conversation. My tweets are my talking to myself. But I am thankful that I found a place online to display this part of me.
In my head I think my lack of conscious curation on Twitter is only witnessed by my mom and my friend Lily. In reality, there are more people reading my tweets, judging me, laughing with and/or at me, and yet (I hope!) they understand my feed because it’s Twitter, not Instagram. |
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