Reflections

When I first decided to enroll into this course, I did not expect that I will be taught about what goes behind the publication industry and the theories that made all the advancements possible in only my first semester into the program.

Prior to this subject, I have always been intrigued about how all the reading materials I've been collecting and consuming all these years found its way in our hands and on our computer screens. I was really enlightened after reading the works of Kress and van Leeuwen, Stephen Bernhardt, Maureen Walsh and a few other theoretical readings that I had to go through in this subject.

I was rather delighted when given the task to write a series of blog posts regarding the current issues in publication and design because as tech enthusiast, this assignment gave me an opportunity to work closely with my passion for technology and my interest in modern and contemporary publishing.

What I hope to achieve when I started to work on this assignment was to further expand my knowledge and understanding in publication, and really have a grasp about the issues that surround it with the help of my lecturer, classmates and all the required readings. Ending this assignment on a satisfactory note, I believe I did just that.

E-mail: Doing it right, the right way.

Despite all the rapid technological advancements in the world of computing for the past 40 years or so, e-mails are still as important and relevant as they can be. Having recent emergence of new information and communications devices that still revolves around it underlines this fact. E-mails to this day are still the go-to tool of communication between parties in business, students with their lecturers and families that are geographically apart.

Like any other medium, e-mail does come with its own inherited complications. Even among professionals, writing an e-mail always posed these questions; will the intended recipient get the true meaning and tone of the message? Are the information relayed across sufficient enough for the whole meaning of the message to be comprehended?

According to New York publisher Will Schwalbe (The Media Report, 2007), bad e-mails are not always about the content but more importantly how vague it can be. Vague e-mailing is when it takes several emails to get the real message across when it can be done in one single e-mail.

Also, the problems with e-mails are not only on the shoulders of the senders. Professor Kristin Byron of Syracuse University (The Media Report, 2007) said that people often misjudge the emotions of e-mails because they are overconfident with their perception of a particular e-mail even when there are few communicational cues in it. Byron further adds that training staff in how to effectively use email is simply overlooked by companies and organizations despite the fact that inappropriate, or sloppy email correspondence can have a negative impact on a company's image or cost them dearly financially.

Since e-mails are also regarded as a publication genre thanks to the popularity of e-mail newsletters, this issue also touches the aspects of ethical publishing. In this context, ethical publishing should be considered at all times when writing an e-mail to ensure that there are no distortions in the communication process. What is more important is the choice of language and words used to diplomatically convey the meaning effectively. Proper capitalization and paragraphing helps greatly to add an understanding dynamics in e-mails. Even the use of emoticons are allowed to explicitly suggest the tone and expression of a sentence or a paragraph in an email, according to its inventor Professor Scott Fahlman (The Media Report, 2007). Even then, Fahlman quickly emphasized that with e-mails today, photos can be attached and videos can be embedded along with the message which effectively replaced the use of emoticons if not compliment it. This makes e-mail a medium of multimodality simply because it culminates more than one mode in a text. (Walsh, 2006)

Truth be told, writing an e-mail is fundamentally no different than writing a letter with only its respective medium being the thing that sets both processes apart. In both instances however, properly disciplined writing ethics must be practiced for the sake of effective and efficient communication as it will not only save time and energy, it may save lives as well.

References:

1. The Media Report (2007), Emotions and email etiquette (transcript), online, retrieved 11 June 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm

2. Walsh, M. (2006),” ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library).

Innovation: Using Social Networking Tools To Help Print Publications

The past decade has seen a radical climate change in the publication industry. The emergence of social networking sites, blogs and microblogs have changed the way news and information are disseminated. It gets deeper and greater than that however. People nowadays rely less on publications that offer news and information they require on a daily basis. The introduction of microblogging services like Twitter made it possible for everyone to get news and information directly from the source itself. It did not take long for the publication world to realize the direction this new public reliance on the internet will take them and the whole world into. News corporations and magazine publishers embraced the functionality of social networking tools and this resulted in the presence of these companies and their publications on Facebook and Twitter primarily.

This does not however mean that publishers have taken a drastic move by focusing solely on the information technology platform and completely abandoning the print publishing world. Seeing it as more of a promotional tool rather than a doom spell for print publication, publishers are actively utilizing social networking sites to further push their product to the masses and keeping the whole process fresh and innovative. Julie Hochheiser, the senior web editor for the Hearst Teen Network, which includes Seventeen magzine's online content will gladly testify to the power of social media. The clever use of Twitter has driven 170 paid subscribers to subscribe to Seventeen magazine in just 24 hours. (Sivek, 2010)

Source. PBS.org, 2010

The key in building a good product relies importantly on the audiences feedback. And this is exactly what Sunset magazine is doing with Facebook according to its editor-in-chief, Katie Tamony.

"We have 11,500 fans (on Facebook), so we can come to them not just with content, but also with some marketing ideas."

This small group of generally younger readers and fans posts about 500 "interactions" weekly to Sunset's fan page, and offers real-time feedback to questions and offers presented by the staff (Sivek 2010). Tamony further adds that since Sunset is all about enjoying life and pleasurable things, using social media is like having an event or a party going on all the time.

These are just a couple of examples of how social networking tools can be used to not only promote content, but to also generate real-time feedback from their respective audiences. In the competitive world of publication today, constant innovations from publishers are vital to ensure that they stay on top of their game.

References:

1. Sivek, S. C., (2010), How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build voice, online, retrieved 10 June 2010, from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/03/how-magazines-use-social-media-to-boost-pass-along-build-voice075.html

2. Seventeen Magazine Twitter Update (2010), online, retrieved 10 June 2010, from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/17%20tweet%20with%20pic.jpg

iPad: New Media Ecosystem & Multimodality, Audience Expectations

When Walsh (2006) elaborated about how multimodal texts convey meanings of documents through a synchronization of modes, the resulting of these culmination of modes often find its way in a new type of medium or genre as we are familiar with and experience on a day-to-day basis today. In short, Walsh's elaboration was an academic view of the function of computers and a number of other electronic devices today that serves the principles of multimodality.

Source: Everyeye.co.uk, 2010

When Steve Jobs announced Apple's much-anticipated tablet computer, the iPad, the masses believe that the company was merely doing the next logical step; taking mobile computing to another level. With it's size, dimension, great screen display and performance, it presented exciting new avenues to discover for the future of e-books.

iPad came about after the arrival of Amazon's new e-book reader platform, the Kindle series that comprises of Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Up to that point, Kindle was considered to be the main choice amongst all e-readers in the market. However, the monochromatic display of Kindle proves to be a bore and does not garner more interest in people to pick up e-books as their preferred reading material format.

Since the acceptance of e-books as a publication genre and e-book readers as a household technology, all there was to e-books are only the transition of texts from traditional book into the e-reader format which is quite redundantly, only displays text and nothing else apart from Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader which came closest to being what iPad has become. With iPad however, it became possible for the entire content of the book from front to back cover to be transported into a device that offers stunningly rich visual display. The e-book experience does not stop there because with iPad's multitouch screen and multi-axis accelerometer technology that helps determine the landscape or portrait orientation of the device, e-books are able to be as interactive as they can be. Have a look at the video below of an iPad application for Alice In Wonderland and be amaze at the wonder of adding basic laws of physics into multimodality.

Source: Youtube, 2010

One of the most important feature that came along with the announcement of the iPad is rather inevitable. Being known for their well-documented App Store, Apple launched their own store of e-books called iBooks which users can easily download e-books to their iPads with a simple click. iPad is the best attempt at emulating the traditional book experience and pushes it even more. You can change iBooks on iPad to suit the way you read by turning iPad to portrait mode to view a single page or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape mode. (Apple, 2010)

Source: Indesignsecrets, 2010

With iPad and iBooks at the forefront of the e-book revolution, the future looks certainly bright for the publication industry if everyone embrace it and work together for the benefit of our future generation.

References:

1. Walsh, M. (2006),” ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library).

2. Apple iPad (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.everyeye.co.uk/wp content/uploads/2010/03/apple_ipad.jpg

3. Ad For The Alice In Wonderland iPad App (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_gniS4d5Pw

4. iBooks: A novel way to buy and read books (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html

5. iBooks (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://indesignsecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ibooks.jpg

E-book: New media Ecosystem, Audience Perception, Genre

Even in the modern world today, books are still considered the primary source of information and knowledge for most people. But it has become increasingly difficult to preserve books in its healthy state and also adding to the fact that the production of books is taking a lot from mother nature despite replantation initiatives. Books also takes up a lot of storage space which will result in consumers spending more of their hard-earned money on storage solution materials. However in 1970's Michael Hart had a thought. A digital copy of the Declaration of Independence was the birth of what is known now as an e-book, the digital equivalent to the traditional printed books (Sedycias, R., 2008).

When e-books first came about, it only attracted a specific group specializing in niche things. The convenience of e-books made it very popular almost instantly amongst avid readers who prefers to have their entire library stored digitally. This is also thanks to Adobe and their PDF format which became the most popular file format for e-books even to this very day. E-books were gaining such prominent momentum that it caused a scare to publishers like how MP3 terrified record labels and recording artistes, and just as terrifying as pirated movies were to film makers. Publishers and authors opposed this idea of a new publication genre for the same reason as any other document that has been digitized over the past decade or two. Digital formats are easily shared amongst consumers that the fear of major reduction in book sales are inevitable. This also directly affect authors and presented them with a dilemma. The property of e-books presents a prospect of world-wide distribution that is fast and efficient but at the same time, authors would not be able to receive the royalty they deserve from the sales of their books as e-book encourages peer-to-peer sharing. This is not to say that the same problem does not occur with traditional books, but the e-book format means that the publishing world has another thing to worry about.

The popularity of e-books paved way of a new technological device known as the e-book reader or e-reader. Bernhardt (1986) said that the physical fact of the text requires visual apprehension. Which means that a text can be seen, must be seen, in a process that is entirely different from the perception of speech. The e-book reader presents just that as it attempts to emulate the tangible feeling of reading a book. The emergence of an array of e-reader manufacturers with their ever-evolving products persuaded a lot of traditional book lovers to adopt the e-book genre.

Source: Orionwell, 2008

The publishing industry eventually embraced the arrival of e-books. Realizing and finding a way that it will benefit them more than it will hurt them, the e-book genre has been rapidly evolving since day one and presenting a wonderful world of possibilities to readers all over the world.

References:

1. Sedycias, R. (2008), The History and Popularity of E-books, online, retrieved 4 June 2010, from http://www.articlesbase.com/ebooks-articles/the-history-and-popularity-of-ebooks-481506.html

2. Bernhardt, S. A. (1986), Seeing the text, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78, National Council of Teachers of English

3. E-Books Popularity On The Rise, television program, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 18 March 2009.

4. Sony's Latest E-Book Reader, online, retrieved 4 June 2010, from http://orionwell.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/sony-laytest-ebook-reader.jpg