A big question I asked going into this course was what is publication, and the best answer I got was from the little short videos in our reading where Matthew said “Publication is the creation and/or shaping of a public is such a central idea for artists and writers” where for me entering this class I’ve been able throughout the weeks of this course been able to put my vision of my own blog out in the world for others that have the same liking of films as much as i do and help then give feedback on films they are interested in. today I will be talking about my journey in making my own film blog and how it’s been for me through all these weeks.
With entering the first week I was nervous and didn’t exactly know what I was getting myself into as I have never made my own website before and didn’t know what to expect. But when we were aloud to make it on whatever we wanted I already had a great idea that I’m very passionate about which was movies, because even on my spare time I watch movie reviews all the time cause I love to see what different peoples opinions are on movies I’ve seen and have not seen and see if I even connect with their opinions. So when I was making my website I wanted to have that same feeling I get from watching YouTube videos of other review sites so I wanted to try and make my audience have that same feeling. A good quote I found from our readings was “I’m going for a feeling of wonderment, a connection across time” and from that quote that’s how I wanted to make my audience feel from just visiting my site and reading my reviews on the movies I’ve been watching.
When it came to my design of my website I made it very masculine and didn’t know how to make it stand out more with my website in general, where to me still my website doesn’t have the cool widgets that make it stand out more from the others but my website is just ordinary but for me that makes it stands out are what I do to my post and how I write them for my audience. Where from the readings to make a good design to my website it says “It is not sufficient for a good design to be rational and logical, great, intuitive design are those that allow us directly, and correctly, to see what we can do with a thing” where for me I wanted to make my post stand out and make it very easy to just navigate my website to see everything to get the most out of it, and with the final week upon me I think I have reached that point.
With each post I am adding to my website I’m hoping it is making my audience feel the same way that I feel about the movies I’ve seen and if it hasn’t made some comments on those posts to give me feedback on what they think as well. I wanted to make my site somewhat a reddit page where people can come and laugh about funny things or even give off some rants about some films and how they disliked them or loved them. Also with using google analytics it has showed me what my audience likes the most about my site in where there visit the most or what kind of post they are looking at the most, so with this knowledge it has helped me redesign most of all my post to fit that so i can get even more people to come in and explore my website
Looking back on my site from the beginning to how it is now it really blows my mind away, where from me posting some really boring posts and not having any pictures on my site to help make it stand out and catch the eyes of my audience. To now with my post for me sounding really good and having a lot more pictures with a lot of tune up to make my site even easier to navigate it makes me feel as if what I’m putting out to the world is getting known now by my intended audience that I am posting for.
With my goals of my online self with these final week ahead of me I’m going to do my best to try and still be active on this site for my little amount of audience I have cause down the road this audience might get even bigger and if that happens will just blow my mind away that people are actually enjoying my movie reviews. This class has taught me a lot of publication and how to get my voice heard and now has got me very intrigued into taking more publication classes to continue my journey on my website.
References:
Matthew Stadler. 2010. “What is Publication?” Talk from the Richard Hugo House’s writer’s conference, Seattle, WA. May 21, 2010. http://vimeo.com/14888791
Victor Kaptelinin. “Affordances.” The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/affordances
Basu, Tanya. September, 5 2020. “Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet” MIT Technology Review.