Tyler Rubis

Tag: Peer Assessment

  • Peer Review #2

    3–4 minutes

    This week I’m reviewing Asal Ghaffari’s site Music Diary Through Politics. Opening the site, you are immediately greeted by the words “Discover Your Next Great album to listen to” in an easy to read capitalized sans-serif font. Underneath the heading there is a description of Asal’s intentions for the blog, explaining what motivates her album choices and her goals in reviewing them. This heading and description makes the blog’s topic very clear from the beginning. Underneath the heading, there is a section that shows the three most recent posts on the site.

    Perhaps the single most prominent visual feature of the home page is the colour palette. Travis Gertz, in his article Design Machines, said that in an internet full of bland, colourless websites, “I refuse to sit back and let our digital culture fade to corporate beige,” and it seems so does Asal, as her site’s background is a bold, vibrant pink, which immediately grabs and holds the viewer’s attention. This colour choice is a clear artistic decision that sets the site apart from much of the internet, and complements the topics of Asal’s blog which heavily features music that protests and rebels against the status quo.

    If I were to make a suggestion for the homepage, it would be to make a few tweaks to the latest posts section. As the focus of the site is album reviews, making the featured images in this section square instead of rectangular would show the full album cover. It also may make the site’s focus more clear if this section specifically showed the blog posts instead of including POSIEL content as well.

    Moving on to the site’s About me and Weekly Album Review pages reveal large banners across the tops of the pages, which add visual interest and draw the eyes downwards to the pages’ titles and the content on them, however there is a large gap between the page titles and the header which makes a large chunk of the screen appear empty. As the site’s primary content, the Weekly Album Review page is very nicely laid out, with each album listed with its cover and title. 

    Clicking on the albums brings you to Asal’s reviews which dig into the albums, providing context for the reader before going into a deeper lyrical and thematic analysis. As the central idea of the blog is the political messages in the albums, Asal provides enough background information that even someone who is otherwise unfamiliar with the events is able to understand the artists’ inspirations.

    One thing I noticed was that the site’s footer was not visible on the home page, and off centre on the other pages, even when the rest of the content was centred causing parts of the site to feel a bit lopsided. Another thing that caught my attention was that on multiple pages of the site were the “previous” and “next” buttons at the bottom, which felt somewhat out of place on certain pages. I also found that clicking through the buttons cycles through site pages, blog posts, and Posiel content, making navigation within specific categories more difficult, as I would have to go back to that page’s menu. That being said, the site’s navigation menu is well laid out with a pop-down menu on the POSIEL tab that makes finding course content very easy.

    Ultimately, Asal’s site has a memorable design and covers an interesting topic, which while quite specific, is still approachable even if a reader is not familiar with a given album or song. I enjoyed reading her analysis and reviews of albums I knew, and her posts have convinced me to listen to some new music as well! I look forward to seeing her site develop more over the rest of the course.

  • Peer Assessment #1

    Peer Assessment #1

    2–3 minutes

    This week I am reviewing Sitong Li’s site luodenghua.com, CROWN OF THE KING. Immediately upon opening the site, I was greeted by an elegant, dark red patterned background and a selection of images that visually complemented the site’s warm colour palette.

    Navigating to the site’s About tab revealed a drop down menu with the options: About Me, About Game, and About Evan Lu. As I went through the 3 sections, I learned a bit about Sitong as a second year communications student at SFU and the focus of her website: a romance video game called Light and Night.

    The website focuses on Sitong’s favourite character from the game, Evan Lu, and through the character’s ‘about’ page and blog posts, provides the audience with background information and game/character lore in a simple and easily-understandable way. Sitong also explains that she intends to generally discuss the genre of romance or otome games where the player plays as a female protagonist and features male love interests, whether or not the viewer is themselves familiar with or plays said games.

    As a whole, the site is very aesthetically pleasing and presents a clear online persona of the author and her interests. As Danah Boyd wrote, even prior to the internet and social media teens have “tried to create publics from their own homes,” and they “often use media and new technologies to do so” (2014). This is something that can be seen in this website, as it is aimed at a very particular audience, sharing content for this specific public.

    I particularly like the thoughtfulness of the site’s design in terms of navigation, as nearly every page has neatly organized buttons that redirect the user to other related pages, or dropdown menus and text boxes that provide further context and information. This design allows the individual pages to maintain a simple appearance when first opened, but lets the user conveniently navigate deeper into the site.

    The site also makes effective use of images, either providing a visual reference for users who may not be familiar with Light and Night and the character of Evan Lu, or by adding personality and individuality, as seen in the ‘About Me’ page.

    If I were to make any suggestions, I would note that on a few pages, such as the ‘About game’ page, contain some quite small text, or text colours that slightly blend into the background such as on the Blog page. The layout of the Process Posts page also feels slightly cumbersome as navigating between posts requires returning to the initial page. Adding a way to navigate from post to post, within the individual posts themselves would make reading through them more fluid and seamless.

    Ultimately, Sitong’s site feels like an ernest and genuine presentation of one of her interests, while also having a unique and clearly defined visual aesthetic that seems to compliment the tone of the game and character in a meaningful and intentional way. While I may not be at all familiar with the website’s primary subject, I appreciate the site’s design and the intentionality behind it, and I am interested to see how it develops further over the duration of the course.

    References

    Boyd, Danah. 2014 “Searching for a public of their own.” It’s Complicated. pp 213-227