MM2A03
New Media Design and
Social Network Strategies
Robert Hamilton
McMaster University
New-media design vocabularies
and techniques.
 New-media design has evolved from a diverse range of
art and design practices. It’s most obvious precursors
are print and motion (film and television) graphics. Print
graphics combine words and static images to produce
books, magazines, newspapers, posters, stationary,
packaging, maps, charts, environmental signage,
business cards, badges, logos, etc. Motion graphics
combine words, images, sound, movement and narrative
to make film titles, cinematic effects for film, music
videos and animated sequences for the web, television,
interactive kiosks and mobile devices.
New Media graphic design
 New media graphic design also owes a debt to product
design, sound design, fine art, and performance art.
Product design explores how people touch, hold, move
and touch objects. The interactive nature of new media
means designers need to determine ways for people to
open, close, or move objects on screen, and indeed how
those screen actions can be triggered by using
keyboards, smart pens or sensor networks in the
environment.
 Fine-arts question and reflect on prevailing conventions,
so are useful in pointing the way to possible new
processes that open up the designer’s imagination.
Terms
 Layout: is concerned with how words and images are
organized. Invisible “grids” are normally used as the
underlying framework to give a page or whole book
coherence. Grids both divide and unite the page. They are
used to break the page down into blocks of of text or image
while arranging these blocks into a system.
 The graphic designer’s job is to lead the user’s eye through a
layout.
 Tables: are are rows and columns used to constrain words,
images or videos so they appear in the same place regardless
of which browser is installed on the computer.
 CSS: offers an additional level of control over typographic
elements.
Navigation
 Diagrams, charts, graphs and maps belong to an area of
graphics known as information design, which aims to make
large quantities of complex information sets accessible and
navigable.
 Images: Graphic designers use images to communicate their
message in an instantaneous and evocative way. Illustration
was traditionally drawn by hand using pen and paper.
Illustrations still use paper but many incorporate screenbased work too – drawing and collage with the mouse or using
a graphics tablet and stylus, such as a Wacom – in pursuit of
their own recognizable style. They also use photography,
video, film or 3d modeling.
Colour
 Colour is an essential tool. Designers use colour to
distinguish between choices – for example, subway
routes; to “colour code” or categorize sets of
information such as products in catalogues; and to guide
people, for example through green “nothing to Declare”
signs at Customs.
 Colour theory seeks to to analyze colour through the
colour wheel, complimentary colours, colour harmonies,
saturation, temperature and spatial effects.
 Storyboards are used to visualize an unfolding series of
images for motion graphics, film or video.
Details
 Aspects such as continuity, sound and movement can all
contribute to the overall impact of a project.
 Narrative: stories have always been an important
element of design and the new media continues this
tradition. In both the old and new media, the story
(content) and the telling of the story (expression) are
referred to as the “narrative.”
 Design is the art of association: the creation of
metaphors or analogies that drive the design concept.
 Prototyping: the first version of a design solution.
Useability
 Useability is a term describing the ease with which the user
of a product can understand how it works and how to get it to
perform. Jacob Nielsen (www.useit.com) is particularly well
known for his contribution on this subject.
 Please see page 79: Designing Effective Websites.
 The Design Process invariably begins with when a designer or
design studio is contacted by a client to create a new
product, a website, a video, etc. It’s a business arrangement,
sometimes complex – please read pages 80 – 85. On page 90
there is a diagram of the typical strategies/stages and
responsibilities in building a medium to large-scale
commercial website.
The creative process
 Some designers advocate creative techniques such as
brainstorming associations, enjoying the range of ideas
that come up; and not worrying about producing the the
obvious clichés – they should be got out into the open
quickly and dismissed. Many designers sketch ideas or
use Wacom sketch tablets to explore ideas.
 These images are printed out and presented to the
client on presentation boards or similar. Powerpoint
presentations are also popular.
 The design process typically involves a lengthy
negotiation with the client.
Social Network:
Word of Mouth Goes World of Mouth
 Word of Mouth helps to cut through “information
indigestion”
 Broadcast TV: “one program to millions but can’t do the
opposite of bringing millions of shows to each person,
but the Internet can. Increasingly, the mass market is
turning into a mass of niches.”
 Blog: expression as an individual but participating online
with a potentially large online social set.
Who cares what you’re doing?
 Are the life events that people report in social networks
inconsequential? Does anyone care? Yes – perhaps not
specifically to every entry, but the conglomeration of
updates gives the opportunity for others to stay abreast
of their friends activities via casual observation. The
updates, the tweets become the fabric of being up-todate. There is a constant need or driving force to want
the most recent news or updates.
Foreign friends are not forgotten
 Social media can keep us globally connected. Friends are able
to keep in contact much more than previously. Casually
checking friend’s updates or updating one’s own can lead to
new social opportunities.
 Search Engines: Social media cannot replace search engines.
However, social media can offer associations and personal
taste. For example, it is difficult to search through social
network previous updates from oneself or others. Further,
Facebook has allowed the option of not listing one’s page
with a search engine. Social media was not invented to
compete with Google. Google has been addressing semantics
for some time. Social media however can address popularity
of an idea, for example through ‘upvotes’ as in Reddit.
We no longer search for the news
– it finds us.
 In The USA, data from the Newspaper Association of America
stated the advertising revenue from 2008 declined 18.1%
Classifieds fell 30% and online advertising sales fell 3. People
are increasingly turning away from newspapers.
 But it’s not that news was becoming less popular – people
were turning to other sources. An American TV show Saturday
Night Live produced skits parodying Sarah Palin – more than
50 million viewers accessed the skits online. Consequentially
viewership for SNL increased dramatically. The American
public are increasingly turning to online sources for their
favourite TV shows. Hulu, YouTube and torrents are popular. A
popular news-skewering web-based project is Auto-Tune the
News.
Newspapers and Magazines are
diminished in power.
 In the social network era, small talk is somewhat more
specific: people have often read each other status
updates and already have a sense of what’s new. Social
networks allow for quicker and more profound
connections between individuals.
 We have shifted from a world where the information
and news was held by a few and distributed to millions,
to a world where the information is held by millions and
distributed to a few (niche markets). This is part of the
remediation of the print media. PC Magazine for
example moved all publications online, PCMag and
ceased the print version.
Newspapers online…
 While it’s relatively simple to publish the same material
available in print to the Internet, generating profits has
proven to be challenging.
 In it’s news feed, Google continues to link to newspaper
stories for free. In 2009 Associated Press requested
Google to stop this practice but by doing so they saw
their traffic significantly drop.
 New York Times will be implementing a subscription
service – something that is being closely monitored by
other newspapers. Will people pay for their news?
Wikipedia
 Because Wikipedia has a diverse and extraordinary large
contributing user base, the nature of it’s accuracy can
be quite high.
 Wikipedia proves the value of collaboration on a global
basis. The output of many minds can result in a clarity
of purpose and innovation.
 The lesson to be learned is that if collaboration among
strangers across the Internet can result in something as
useful as Wikipedia, think about how collaborations
among colleagues can transform business.
Dancing Matt.
 One company that was able to leverage an overnight
sensation was the chewing gum brand “Stride”
(Cadbury)
 Matthew “Matt” Harding had a particularly unusual
dance. Quitting a job as a game developer, he went on a
long vacation and danced at each locale. He recorded
15 dance scenes in exotic locations. It became viral on
YouTube and Stride Gum offered to sponsor his travels.
 All in all he traveled to 42 countries. Matt’s two most
popular videos have been seen over 33 million times.
Finally…
 The Financial Times of London reports that 92% of people say
they trust word of mouth from friends, associates and
colleagues when it comes to making a consumer decision. 75%
say they trust collective wisdom sites like Yelp and
TripAdvisor. And only 60% of people report trusting traditional
image-based advertising.
 Global Advertising: Consumers Trust Real Friends and
Virtual Strangers the Most