When I started the blog, I had an okay clear picture of how the blog would look and work. But standing here today, close to the end of this course, the evolution of the blog proves just how little I did know of having a blog and creating a platform. My experience as an online publisher have been a new experience for me. Even though I have been online for many years now, more than I thought when I started counting, the online persona as a publisher is new. Now I’m not only myself writing comments on a photo or article, but now I have a whole new responsibility as a creator making my posts not only readable but interesting. I figured that I wanted to use this new liability as a publisher to actually do something I would have appreciate as a reader. Right now I am in a position in my life whereas I’m a bit confused about what I really want to do. I have less then a year left on my studies and after that I have to grow up and be an adult. Growing up and be an adult is for me to have direct responsibility over others at maybe a workplace or even in your friendships, why I regard myself not being a 100% grown up right now is because the choices I make and do almost only affect myself. So I wanted to make this blog a sort of guide or maybe an inspiration for my future self, I wanted to go deep down and research the branch of graphical designers.

Reading the article Survival Strategies for Local Journalism by Vauhini Vara I got inspired. She talk about the fight the local journalism have with actually being profitable, and how advertisement sometimes isn’t enough to keep it running. Today you need a lot to keep a local newspaper running, and even in such a big city as San Fransisco couldn’t be enough. This made me think a lot about my actual plan for my blog. Do I want it to be a profitable one or do I only want to do it as a school project? When I decided to make the blog to an online gallery for female nordic graphic designers, the plan got a bit clearer: Make it a place worth your visit and not a moneymaker. I read a post called How To Start a Blog – Beginner’s Guide for 2018 by Jessica Knapp, mostly for fun to get inspiration but it actually got me thinking a lot on what the blog itself can and probably would be: a platform for your own business. I wanted to create something that could be of use for people in the same ”confused about the future” situation that I’m in — and looking back now, I truly hope that I did achieve just that.

As an online publisher, I have tried to be a responsible publisher of others speech. Since my posts have been interviews, the second goal (after the first one being inspiring myself and others) have been to give all these amazing designers a platform to be visible. In the article The man who studies the spread of ignorance by Georgina Kenyon the ignorance of today is being discussed. Kenyon mentions the internet as one of the things that is helping to propagate ignorance as it is a place where everyone have a chance to be their own expert, which make the prey for powerful interests wishing to deliberately spread ignorance pretty easy. When creating my blog and my online persona as a publisher, I realised I wanted to use the internet kind of in that way, but not exactly. I wanted to give the interviewed designer a spot where they could act as experts and spread their knowledge. As the one in charge of publishing the interviews, I as a person was in charge of spreading there expertise. Does this make me just as Kenyon describes? One speeding ignorance, or is it just the opposite? I would say the opposite. As the ones being interviewed actually do have expertise in what they are being questioned about, I would say my blog is fighting against the internet ignorance and instead tries to fill it with knowledge.

James Bridle discuss the phenomenon of the internet being accessible for everyone in his short essay Something is wrong on the internet. Bridle talk abut the internet being filled with material bad for one group in particular, kids, that have access to see everything. He links multiple examples of videos on Youtube which are made for kids that are highly inappropriate. Even though my blog doesn’t target kids as readers, the essay got me thinking about who really have been visiting my blog and if my content can be seen as appropriate. With Google Analytics I can check how many that have read and how long they actually stayed on my website. Using this data, I can check how appreciated my blog is with my readers. Even if the numbers aren’t extremely high, I can still make out that visitors coming to tNGD to read, actually do just that: read. For me that is the biggest achievement I could aver have asked for when creating the blog: actually having people visiting and appreciating my interviews.

I am pretty sure that I will not continue to post blogposts and continually interview designers, I believe the cause of my blog have been fulfilled. But I’m not finished with the platform as an opportunity to be seen and, of course, visible on the World Wide Web in a way I can by myself decide. My plan for the blog is to reinvent it as a future portfolio. I believe that the platform I have created will be the perfect place for me to build my own “sales pitch” and be seen as a designer. Just as all the amazing female designers I’ve interviewed here, hopefully I will take place right beside them for a more female featured design.

The Nordic Graphic Design is a blog that strives to work as a gallery for female creativity. All readers are also a part of of shaping this website into what it is supposed to be. Therefor, tNGD ask readers to act intelligent, insightful and strive, when commenting: to have an entertaining conversation. Argument can always end up being more fire than calm, which of course is okay, but always treat everyone with respect and act with grace. Treat others as you expect to be treated.

The Nordic Graphic Design have now been active around ten weeks, and in those weeks the blog have evolved to a kind of network. My intentions with the blog when creating it was to spread the word about the amazing female graphic designers in Sweden, and for my own sake, to learn more about the branch itself. According to this, I have tried to accomplish a some what platform for the designers to be recognised, a chance for them to been seen and heard by others. regarding that intention, my transmedia will follow this intention: to give people a chance to be seen.

I like the forum where people have a shot to be heard, therefor Twitter makes sense to use. But the problem with Twitter is the lack of focus on images and, of course, the limitation of how many words you can use. The designers need pictures to show their work, portfolio, and words to describe their choices: Twitter will not work for my cause. My focus will be on Instagram just as many of my fellow interviewed designers have chosen to use.

Something else that would be a great thong for my blog would be the use of an email subscribe list. To get people to sign up for the subscription, I will use give aways as an attraction. I will also spread the word on linkedIn, where future employers for the partaking designers can sign up for a weekly suggestion for a new designer to hire.

PLAN: INSTAGRAM

1. Use the platform as a gallery instead of post-to-post updates.

2. Let one designer use the account once every week to spread their design.

3. Three posts per day, all connected.

4. The images for each day/designer will be color coloured.

Grace in Adulting

True tales of a clueless adult 

Grace in Adulting is a beautiful blog that is about Grace, surviving her days in the adult world.  The posts are very personal and told with a lot of humor and warmth. The blog is very sobering and welcoming for everyone that want to have a good time, and also get a feel of recognition. But I would say that the audience group also would be someone in my age, 22, and also have a similar life: the one filled with so much thought, happenings and ideas that the schedule is overflowing. How come that? Because Grace give you just what you need: a feeling that you are not by yourself in that situation.

In the article Internet Trends Report 2018, the activity of the medial footprint is discussed. The internet usage growth is continued solid, but many do think that it is way too high. The dynamics of global competition and innovation are pushing the improvements forward, which are making the usage rise. It just keeps getting better since many of the improvement made are based on data-collected information, recorded when the user made taps, clips, movements on their device. When reading Grace’s blog I keep thinking about that fact, how even my movement here on a friendly and sweet blog will make a mark and will be recorded. maybe not by the blog owner herself but by the owner of the host site. Whatever move I do, someone will know. Continuing with the Internet Trends Report 2018, the discussion keep on with how the internet companies continue to make low-priced services better, in part, from user data. And us, the users, continue to increase time spent on Internet services based on perceived value. When everything keeps getting better, we keep going back even more and more.

I see the value of Grace’s blog, the posts are something that appeal to many and therefor is valuable. I do think that the blog itself could easily be a very popular and highly visited one if Grace keep up the good work. Like its mentioned in the article How Facebook Messenger clawed its way to 1 billion users, the amount of users, on our case viewers/visitors, is extremely important for the value of the site. The article discuss the Facebook application Messenger and how the higher the usage gets, the more attractive will the platform be for others who still might be using something other platform (SMS, email etc) and also brands and developers. So the more Grace will brand her blog and, of course, get more viewer to read it, the higher the value of the marketability will be. I see a bright future for this blog if Grace stay as personal and down to earth as she does know, doing that will make her audience group closely follow her future posts. That will make her blog truly bloom!

Want to read Grace amazing blog? Just click here!

I got curious on what kind of visitors that actually clicked into my blog. I used Google Analytics and checked. Doing that was even more sobering than tracing my own footprint last week. I don’t have a lot of readers, but I have a few that I was actually able to trace. My first guess was that the few readers would be the designers that I interviewed, which looked to be true. But I also had a few others  that hade looked through all my interviews, which made me happy. What does that say about their digital mark on my website? Probably that the people I chose to talk to and publish, is interesting and have a story to tell that people want to know about. But then I had some information that troubled me, people didn’t always stay long enough to actually read the interview.

This new information give me a little boost t make my interviews look even more interesting and intriguing. that is my responsibility to all the amazing designers I interview.  In the future, I must be even more careful with the design and how the interview is presented.