Week 9: Design

I've never put much thought into the design aspect of social media and blogging.  I'm a person that often struggles to get technology to cooperate with me, so the thought of designing an entire social media page or blog on my own (without any templates) is intimidating (and possibly a bit terrifying). 

As an early high school student, I used social media platforms like Xanga and MySpace.  As far as I can remember, both could be customized, but only by choosing a template with pre-set color schemes and fonts.  I remember that Xanga allowed for a song to be connected with each post while MySpace allowed users to choose a background photo or design, but the ability to customize these pages was limited.  I never had a problem with this and I never really thought about web design as something limited until I read Kristin L. Arola's article, "The Design of Web 2.0:  The Rise of the Template, the Fall of Design."  The article certainly got me thinking:  What are we losing by allowing templates to take over?  What can we learn or what can we teach through design?

As with Arola, I also consider myself to be "technologically stubborn" (4).  However, she also describes her feelings after she learned how to compose using Photoshop and HTML:  "I felt powerful creating my own designs, and for the first time ever I felt technologically literate" (4).  This is something I still don't think I've grasped.  Under Arola's definition, I am part of the "Net Generation," a student born between 1982 and 2000 (5).  Despite this, I've never seen myself as truly "technologically literate" and I try to simplify tasks that involve technology as much as possible.  I recognize that there is one major problem with this mindset - in avoiding and simplifying technology, I'm contributing to my lack of knowledge and understanding on the topic.  I think that Arola is right in saying that really experimenting with and learning design helps us become more technologically literate for ourselves and for the students we teach on a daily basis.

If something goes wrong with the computer in my classroom, I often turn to my students and ask them for help.  I think this is because I see them as more technologically literate than I am, even though we are all part of the same "Net Generation."  Arola talks about her role as an instructor and states that another benefit to learning design is clear when it comes to our students and the classroom experience.  She writes the following about learning new design capabilities:  "If I was to do any service to my web design students, I needed to learn (X)HTML and CSS" (4).  This translates to my classroom experience, as well.  Using technology is paramount to a student's success in college; if they see me simplifying and avoiding technology, perhaps they too will pick up on this and will become "technologically stubborn."

Design also contributes to an understanding of rhetorical strategy.  When discussing multimodal composing and assignments created with the use of technology, we as instructors are always wanting to know why students chose a specific program or platform (like Instagram, video, audio, etc.) to create their project as opposed to another.  Getting students to understand their own decision-making processes and rhetorical strategies helps them better convey their messages and communicate with their chosen audience.  Templates don't leave much room for student to consider rhetorical strategies, so design certainly contributes to a student's overall understanding of carefully choosing colors, fonts, and images to fully and efficiently communicate their message in the best way possible. 

I like the analogy Arola mentions when she writes, "Just because I can drive a car doesn't mean I can fix one" (5).  I use social media on a daily basis, but I wouldn't know the first thing about designing my page without the use of a template.  I'm hoping my experiences with Adobe Dreamweaver and the webtext design project will help me learn more about this process as a whole.

This is a screenshot of my photography website.  Since I had no previous knowledge of web design, I used a Wix template to create this website.  The layout, font, and colors were chosen for me, but I had some freedom in rearranging the order of the pages and the way images and text appeared on each page.  The web address is also long and clunky:  klafolle.wix.com/lsphotography.