Greater Expectations: The Layered Meanings of Print and Web Style

Greater Expectations: The Layered Meanings of Print and Web Style Casey McArdle Ball State University Indiana College English Association Conference October 23, 2009

In early 2002, the Association of American Colleges and Universities released the report “Greater Expectations.” The 60 page report addressed their vision for higher education as the number of students attending college increases. In late 2002, the AAC&U created a website to act as a digital representation of the original report. This website has been updated numerous times, the most recently in May of 2007 – while the print version has not been updated since its original publication date.

Communication … the generic process of translating information from one domain to one or more domains through a medium. A domain can be the mental world of a person, the computational domain of a computer, the economic domain of a market, and so on. Each medium (voice, images, etc) to some degree structures the information as it is translated. (Reality Prime)

Jakob Nielsen, a PhD. in human-computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen: print style “is based on letting the eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at information objects and using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and explain each other.” (Nielsen) Print Style: sense of materiality use of senses for interaction

Ida Engholm, an Associate Professor at the Center for Design and Research in Denmark, elaborates on the development of web style : “As technology became more advanced, and website producers gained better control over what appeared in the users’ browsers, the design no longer was a reflection of or an adjustment to technology, but was able to move onto a higher level and concentrate on more abstract requirements such as user-friendliness and appropriate communication.” (198) Web Style : utilize the medium functional and rhetorical

Tim O’Reilly & Web 2.0 (2005) Web 1.0 Web 2.0 DoubleClick Google AdSense Ofoto Flickr Akamai BitTorrent mp3.com Napster Britannica Online Wikipedia personal websites blogging evite upcoming.org and EVDB domain name speculation search engine optimization page views cost per click screen scraping web services publishing participation content management systems wikis directories (taxonomy) tagging (“folksonomy”) stickiness syndication

Web 2.0 “ The central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence” (O’Reilly). The development and creation of websites that utilize the nature of the web as a means to communicate via online constructs set in place and/or created by the designer to utilize such constructs. Essentially : for the web by the web.

Print Version of a Web 1.0 Webpage

Actual Web Page

Methodology : page by page analysis made notes critical to the points trying to be made by GE went through each web link recorded which sidebars were used and where was each main point properly transferred?

Examples of GE Print: Pages 2 & 3

Print Version Web Version

Briefing Papers – Online Bibliography

Audience

Results :
both styles are poorly used
Improvement :
utilize the medium better
make sure web and print accurately represent one another
Future Research :
compare and contrast web pages that offer two versions of itself; one in java or Flash, the other in html
develop a ranking system for translation to determine accuracy of media transferred into the digital realm

Works Cited AAC&U. “Greater Expectations.” Washington, DC: (2007). Digirhet.org. “Teaching Digital Rhetoric: Community, Critical Engagement, and Application.” Pedagogy 6 (2006): 231-259. Engholm, Ida. “Digital style history: the development of graphic design on the Internet.” Digital Creativity. Vol. 13, No. 4 (2002): 193-211. Hyers, Suzanne. AAC&U Director, Annual Meeting and Marketing. Personal Interview. 30 May 2007. Jewitt, Carey. “Multimodality, ‘Reading’, and Writing for the 21 st Century.” Discourse . Vol. 26, No. 3 September (2005): 315-331. Miller, Ross. AAC&U Director of Programs. Personal Interview. 1 June 2007. Misek, Marla. “Enhancing the Way Publisher’s Publish and Readers Read.” EContent . November (2002): 52-53. Nielson, Jakob. “Differences Between Print Design and Web Design.” 24 Jan 1999. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>. ---, “Jakob Nielson Biography.” 11 June 2007. <http://www.useit.com/jakob/>. O’Connor, Noreen. AAC&U Associate Director of Web Communications. Personal Interview. 29 May 2007. O’Reilly, Tim. What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software . 2005 O’Reilly Network. 10 June 2009. <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>. Ranieri, Paul, PhD. Ball State Professor of English. Personal Interview. 1 June 2007. Reality Prime. “Glossary of Virtual Worlds.” 2003. 23 May 2007. < http://www.realityprime.com/gloss.php >

Figures Cited
http://www.greaterexpectations.org/
http://dotnet.org.za/blogs/codingsanity/communication_6FE2BEA8.jpg
http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/visual-communication_id2482951_size435.jpg
http://www.greaterexpectations.org/
http://www.scrollinondubs.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/escher_sketch.jpg
http://www.communitymx.com/content/source/C1035/traverse_three_col_450.jpg
http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~pmeerw/BG/NY/pictures/Public_Library_Reading_Room.jpg
http://www.undergrad.engineering.utoronto.ca/Assets/ECF/ecfpcphoto.JPG

Greater Expectations: The Layered Meanings of Print and Web Style

by Casey McArdle on Oct 23, 2009

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