Tag Archives: Posiel

Peer Review 3 – The Honest Skincare Guide

If you’re interested in skincare or new to skincare and wish to get honest product reviews and recommendations, tobi’s routine is the place for you.

Design and content

Tobi uses the Savona Theme which has a minimalistic and chic design. I like that she uses a simple design where there aren’t many distractions, my focus goes directly to her content when I clicked onto her website. There are plenty of white spaces to balance out the heavier focus. It’s comfortable to browse through her website, not only because her content is interesting, but there’s also a unity of design present on her website. The colours she used on her website is mainly black and white, even for the photos she picked, they are all in white backgrounds. This makes the whole blog looks harmonic and clean due to the consistency of colour. The only colours that appeared on the website are the photos of the beauty products. This allows the content to stand out and it’s the first thing that catches my attention when I read through her blog.

Tobi’s blog is user-friendly. She clearly listed out the categories in her main menu, which is very accessible for users. There are search, recent posts, recent comments, archives and categories on the sidebar. I could easily navigate and search for a particular post.

Content

Tobi always includes an excerpt, so readers will know what the post is mainly about before clicking into it. Reading through her posts, she always includes some skincare tips and her experiences, it makes readers feel relatable. I like that there are three related posts on the bottom of each post which I think can make the website more engaging and attract readers to stay longer on the website.

Audience

Tobi’s blog is a place for people who are interested in skin care and are looking for honest reviews. She shares good recommendations for products that are suitable for young girls and don’t have specific skin concerns. There are plenty of beauty bloggers out there but I think what Tobi did to stand out from the crowd is that she includes her first-hand experiences and reviews for her audiences.

Many of the beauty reviews on YouTube are usually sponsored content, viewers thus don’t know whether the products are really that worthy or are that just for the sake of earning money, as many influences nowadays rely on ad revenue to keep their blogs/channels going. In one of the weekly readings – The Toast Is Toast: Literary Humor Site Shuts Down Over Ad Revenue Woes by Shelby Carpenter, she mentioned that online revenues have a huge impact on both big and small sites. Using ads is one of the common ways for websites to reach their target audiences. Reading the ad-free tobi’s routine, I know that all her content are truthful and reliable. When influencers nowadays rely on ad revenue for a living, they do not enjoy the autonomy that Tobi enjoys, where she can write about anything she likes.

Last week, we had Monique Sherrett from Boxcar Media TBC sharing about marketing, monetisation, audience and analytics. She talks about the SMART objectives and the customer journey.  I will share about my customer journey as a visitor to Tobi’s blog.

  1. Awareness – I know about this site because of PUB101. I think it would be great if Tobi can include her social links on the blog as well, such as Instagram and Facebook. I think it will increase the site traffic if she includes her website in any of her social networks. I’m sure people are interested in beauty product reviews!
  2. Engagement – There aren’t many comments on her blog posts but I can feel that Tobi is working hard to connect with her audiences. She uses “I” and “you” quite often in her blog post, like in the What’s exfoliating, she reminds audiences about the cautions of using scrubs. The way she writes make readers feel like we’re close to her, even if we don’t really know her in person. I think this is a good way to interact and bring her readers closer to her life and style.
  3. Retention – I definitely had a great first experience and I will definitely return to this website in the future. Keep it up! 🙂

Overall, it is a website worth visiting and I look forward to seeing more beauty tips from Tobi!

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Week 9

In last week’s lecture, we learnt about analytics, audiences and marketing. It was very interesting for me to see how the numbers in analytics translate into the audience online engagement to our website.

Looking at my blog’s google analytics, I notice that Monday and Tuesday seem to be the peak of traffic. And I think that definitely has something to do with the fact that our lecture is on Tuesday, and I tend to upload all my new posts on Monday night or Tuesday. The bounce rate of my blog is around 51%. People averagely spend around 5 min on my site. From what we learnt in lecture, the lower the bounce rate, the better. Because that means people are actually taking time reading my blog. That is definitely something I could improve on.

Another interesting thing that have come up in my analytics is where my audiences are located. Most of my audience are from United States, and the second most are from Canada. In the ranking of city, most of the visitor of my websites are from Vancouver, which is not surprising. But the second city in ranking is New York, which makes me quite happy since it is my favourite city in the whole world. I also get a few random users visiting from Spain, Belgium, Brazil, etc. It is exciting to think how someone across the world are visiting my blog. Another part of the demographic of my audience that has surprised me is the fact that there are more users are in the age of 25-34 than the ones in the age of 18-24. Since I fall in the category of 18-24, I’ve assumed that would be my audience’s demographic as well, but apparently it’s not the case.

I also notice that posiel.com of course is my main referral. But ever since I added my website address onto my own Instagram account bio, I’ve noticed an increase of incoming traffic from Instagram. In the future, I will definitely try and promote my blog posts on my social a bit more often, in order to drive up the traffic. I also get analytic report from my Instagram account since it is a business account. And it is very interesting to compare my website statistics with my Instagram’s.

In my opinion, these analytic statistics are so important because it helps us to understand our audience better, so that we could tailor the content better to our intended audience. But at the same time, it is quite a scary thing thinking about how  every step we take on the internet every second is recorded and analyzed by others.

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Process Post #9: analytics and audience.

This week in class, we had a guest speaker, Monique Sherrett, who shared with us some tips and SMART goals that bloggers should know. The blogger always has to keep track of his audience and what kind of topics interest them the most. Setting SMART goals can help improve the bounce rate and also help to find ways to keep audience longer on my blog.

  • Specific: specific target to hit.
  • Measurable: a metric that can be tracked.
  • Actionable and achievable: possible to improve based on this action.
  • Relevant and realistic: based on the history of performance, this is a reasonable goal.
  • Time-based: the clear timeframe.

Setting SMART goals is a great way to improve my blog, attract different audiences, and get them engaged with my blog. I learnt a lot of tips for blog improvement from Monique during this lecture.

Peer review #3.

For my third peer review, I got a chance to review Marium’s blog . This peer review will focus on the blog’s marketability to the intended audience. The main focus of Marium’s blog is poetry.

The audience can get a clear view about Marium’s content of the blog by looking at About the Author section of her main page. It’s on the right, and it’s separated by color from all her other posts. There she shares with the audience the way her friends describe her. She intends to create a more united world by understanding the feelings people go through and share it through poems.

The design of her blog looks like it’s a book about magic. The colours she uses caught my attention immediately. Even though her blog design looks very girly, and you would think it will only attract the female audience, but once you read her blog posts, your opinion would change. Her poetry content is very deep and can connect with different groups of people.

My favorite part of her blog was that many of her posts include songs. The lyrics of the songs she uses for every post match her poetry. I believe that listening to the song and reading the poem at the same time, allows the audience to experience better Marium’s feelings.

On the menu tab, Marium also has a FAQs section. It’s a great way to allow visitors of her page to get answers to some of the important questions.

Through Marium’s FAQs section, I discovered that she also has an Instagram page with her boyfriend. There they share poetry while being in the long distance relationship. It’s a great way to inspire other people who are in the same situation as them.

I really enjoyed reviewing Marium’s blog and can’t wait to see how it develops. Everyone should go and take a look at Marium’s blog!

Process Post_9 SMART Goals

It is the 9th week since I have developed my personal blog, “Maggie Loves to Share.”  However, I notice that being a blogger is not that simple as I thought. Indeed, as a blogger, I understand that there are many things that I still need to learn in order to improve my blog. From the last nine weeks, I have gradually understood some important sources that I need to take care of as a “startup blogger.” To illustrate, from the previous process posts, “know your audiences” and “connection,” I understand that it is important to know my readers more if I want to attract more readers. At this point, I have to observe what kind of topics my readers would like to see more through my blog. Also, maintaining the connections between my audiences and myself is another important process needed to focus on. In other words, I have to link with my audiences through building up different connections. However, despite of knowing my audiences more and building more connections, setting up the SMART goals is also another important concept that I need to do for my blog.

This week in class, we have the guest speaker, Monique Sherrett to discuss the importance of setting up the SMART Goals for our personal blogs. The SMART Goals are described as follow:

S– Specific – setting up the specific target to hit; Benchmark or starting point is clear.

M– Measurable – a metric (target) that can be tracked.

A– Actionable and Achievable – it is possible to improve based on this action.

R– Relevant and Realistic – based on the history of performance, this is a reasonable goal.

T– Time-based – timeframe; how much time is required to reach the target.

Although I have learned the concept of SMART Goals from other classes, actually I have never thought about setting up a smart goal from the blogger’s point of view. In this circumstance, I decided to set up a smart goal that I can achieve in the short-term period for my personal blog. My smart goal will be described as follow:

S– create more criterias to attract different audiences.

M– looking for different interesting topics that my readers would like to read.

A– asking for different suggestions from my current audiences (eg,. My family and friends)

R– it is possible have the weekly or monthly meeting with my recent audiences to discuss about how my blog can be improved.

T– this smart goal plan can be runned for the short-term period (eg,. 2, 3 or 6 months goal)

Throughout this smart goal plan, I believe that I can attract more audiences from different perspectives. Ultimately, I would like to thank Monique to bring up the idea of smart goals in class. In my opinion, I think setting up the smart goals is no doubt a really important process to improve my blog.

Peer Review_3

For the final peer review, I was assigned to review Emma’s personal blog. When I first open up Emma’s blog, I am impressed by her design. I really like what Emma do with her website. For example, in my opinion, the grey background color mixes well with the black texts- a smart choice to present her blog. Even though it seems quite simple to go with this combination of color, I can easily and comfortably enjoy reading Emma’s literatures. In this circumstance, compare to blogs that have color contrast that is uncomfortable to human eyes, Emma has made the great color design choice for her audiences. In addition, the other good design that I adore from Emma’s blog is the well organized and structured categories. Throughout Emma’s blog, I can easily navigate through the main menus- assignments, writing and poems that Emma wish to present to her readers. With these well organized menus, surely I can tell that Emma’s intended audiences will be people who love to read and write different types of literatures. Similarly to the colour theme of Emma’s blog, the majority of the titles Emma sets are simple BUT strong and meaningful. From these simple BUT strong themes, they reflect the personalities of Emma. Just like Emma states in her “about me” page, she wishes that her readers can understand the person behind the posts. From my point of view, the short introduction tells me that the contents are created solely by Emma and represented Emma herself- “Simple but Strong and Meaningful.” At this point, as Emma’s reader I would really like to read more about her posts once I see these “simple BUT strong” titles. For instance, the poem “confidence is key” have my attention right away when I see it. As expected, I am touched by Emma’s poem that “I wish I had as much confidence as the men who know they won’t be held accountable for their actions.” Through looking at Emma’s posts, personally, I definitely believe that Emma has the potential to attract more readers in the future. To emphasize, myself unfortunately is not a big fan of reading, especially not the literatures that are written in English. Nonetheless, Emma’s posts have the charm can draw my attention to go on reading her writings. In the circumstance, I think that Emma’s blog also has the personality to fascinate people who are not interested in reading. Ultimately, I would say that it is my pleasure to review Emma’s blog this week. I really enjoy reading her literatures and I will definitely keep following her writings in the future! Lastly, I would like to thank Emma for her review of my blog as well, really appreciate it!

Thank you for reading, if you are a big fan of reading different literatures, check out Emma’s blog, here!

Peer Review – 3

This week, I am reviewing Megan’s blog, the Kindness Lifestyle, a space created for reflecting, sharing and discovering the ways in which people can spread kindness throughout their daily encounters and lives. As we’ve continued to move through the reviews of others’ creations, as well as my own, I’ve found it helpful to compartmentalize my observations and ideas into subtopics as follows; design, function, content and overall impression. For this review, I will adopt and utilize this framework from a marketing perspective.

Design:

Upon immediate landing on Megan’s homepage, the Kindness Lifestyle is captivating and peaceful. Prior to delving into this review, I must admit, Megan’s blog has been an inspiration from the commencement of this course and I have been impressed with her ability to take challenging and polarizing issues like veganism and God and present them in a manner that is approachable and balanced.

I feel that Megan achieves this sense of equilibrium and inclusion via subtle, simple and controlled elements of design directed at user experience that Maria Popova in Bleymaier’s (2013) article suggests is in her readers’ best interests. The soft spectrum of colors highlights a feel of authentic and genuine kindness, with a simple and elegant font that softens each issue. The blog is not a confrontational ‘in your face’ place, but rather an ecosystem of food for thinking that begins to unravel enlightened perspectives. I feel that this degree of openness and neutrality supports the blogs bounce rate, which was discussed in the guest lecture by Monique Sherrett, which is elaborated on here.

I appreciate Megan’s logo; it is creative, welcoming, and without words, does an excellent job of reflecting what her blog is about; being kind. I like that this, as well as the color scheme is carried throughout each page, as it allows for easy navigation and access to content. In terms of font, I really like the titles “welcome” and “things to read,” as these have a personalized feel that evokes a feeling that Megan writes this blog for you. The photography on this blog is relevant and playful, reminding me of the first week’s reading by Craig Mod, “How I got My Attention Back,” where he notes, “the quieter my mind became, and the deeper I went into my own work, the more I realized how my always-on, always-connected state had rendered me largely useless” (2017). Megan’s blog reinforces this consciousness of being in the present, which for me, is helpful and contributive to wanting to be kind.

I would consider one element of change in terms of design that could very well be a personal preference; however, I feel that under “Things to Read” on the main page, I would like to see the pictures posted at the same level. While I sometimes enjoy the contrast of things being off-centered, it throws me off here, and gives me the slight, yet incorrect perspective that the right side, Academics, is of greater value.

Function:

I truly appreciate the functional aspect of this blog, as it is easy to navigate, flows nicely across the page and is rather intuitive. There is an element of predictability in how it looks and feels, which leaves the content to present itself as refreshing and novel. Items are easy to locate, and with the content space carrying through the larger images on the page, the writing is locatable and takes centre stage as you scroll.

I appreciate the drop down menu on “academics” and unlike some blogs, this feels organic, not forced, which reiterates the overall feel of the site. Likewise, the predictable nature of functional aspects of the blog, such as the title, easily get you to where you wish go. I would prefer for the word, “blog” to be an actual link, because it takes a little more accuracy to hit “have a read,” but overall, it’s excellent.

Content:

Megan’s writing is elegant, honest, insightful and contemplative, which for me is what I wish to see on a blog. In class, Trevor Battye discussed the importance of providing a blog that is unique, as in a saturated online world with opinions, photos and articles, being one of a kind or at least, one of a few helps to generate the marketing potential of oneself. ‘Detailed’ looks at some of these unique blogs here. For Megan, her topic is extremely timely, as in the age of cyberbullying and Trumped-up racism, stereotyping and hate, a little kindness is a fresh and needed concept. I particularly enjoy her blog on Emoto, which you can digest here, as well as this candid writing she did on Dr. Brene Brown.

Megan’s content is memorable, and because it’s so unique, it could benefit from some greater hashtagging. I think that there is some specific language being employed, so highlighting this with hashtags would be beneficial for readers and marketing the true depth of her content. For instance, “Emoto” would be a good start.

Overall:

Megan’s blog is a fascinating expose on being kind. One would think that this is not necessarily something that needs to be blogged about, but when you consider the relevance and importance of such actions and attitudes, a blog is important, engaging and actually quite useful in finding inner and outwards happiness. From a marketing perspective, Megan provides an excellent product; it is consistent, novel, engaging, easy to understand and negates an instant departure through providing stunning images and inquisitive writing.

Nishita’s Blog

Nishita’s Blog
Here’s a little bit of me!

*The above image was taken from Nishita’s Blog.

A peer review on audience and channels

Nishita’s Blog is vibrant and eclectic gallery of multi-media art. The overall aesthetics are consistent, easy to navigate, and convey a style that seems to be very reflective of Nishita herself: on her about page Nishita shares her love of hip hop, which is ever-present in the style and colours for this blog. The pages themselves are purposely monochromatic: the dark background acts as the perfect wall, drawing all attention to the images of art. As Travis Gerts explains in his article Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse, “nothing makes a drop of colour brighter than when it’s set against a wall of grey”. Most of the images are vibrant, and bright pieces of art, contrasting well against the simple and dark theme. With this in mind, I find the title of her blog really hard to read against the busy background – changing the font colour from black to white, or even to the same red as the paper garland would allow for the title of the blog to pop, and become a lot more legible.

While navigating Nishita’s website, the first noticeable graphics were the large Instagram icons on the right, under the blog tab. There is a main instagram page that is private, as well as public art page While this is a wonderful way of building a following and audience, I would recommend linking your blog to your Instagram, which would allow for a stronger use of this cross-promotion. In addition, I would recommend making the main page public to allow for greater audience and reach – especially as it is labeled main, which leaves me to assume that traffic would be preferably diverted here as opposed to the accompanying art page. If this is not the case, I would remove the main link altogether. This seesaw between personal blog and art blog speaks to the multidisciplinary qualities of social media, and the undefined rules of online networks, which are “bringing change to all forms of information” (Kissane).

The mixed modes of art is really wonderful: this blog truly highlights Nishita’s talent and versatility. When it comes to videos, however, I could be cautious with the auto-play. For example, the blog tab automatically plays the last video at the bottom of the page – a vibrant alleyway filled with colourful street art and vendors. At first, its hard to say where the sound is coming: I check all my other tabs to see if there might be an add somewhere, or a video that popped up. We’ve all seen those people I class, in a café, or in a library, who interrupt the silence with an unexpected video, and panic trying to turn the sound off. Similarly, I often find myself browsing websites in a public space, and exit the website immediately as opposed to taking time to find the source of the sound. Keeping this in mind, especially if this blog is looking at retention, lower bounce rate, and overall keeping track of the analytics. If the auto-play function is something particularly desired, perhaps the blog could have a pop up muted video, like in Lonely Planet’s landing page, so the user immediately knows where the sound is coming from.  Similarly, having a preview of the post as opposed to the entire post would allow for reduced scrolling, and potentially more retention: the easier it is to find what you need, the better the experience for the user, which means a higher chance of returning to the blog.

These simple suggestions could help elevate the blog to the next level, creating a stronger sense of legitimacy, and foster a strong following. Overall, Nishita does a beautiful job of curating her website to best highlight her art. If you’re an art enthusiast, or an artist yourself, I recommend you check out her work here!

Peer Review #3

This week, I had the pleasure to visit Jill’s Book Blog.Jill's Book Blog Homepage

Jill’s Book Blog — Adventures of Accessible Reading, as it states quite clearly in the title tag, is all about books. Reading through Jillian’s blog, I learnt so much about her and her favourite thing to do EVER — Reading!! In 2018, she read 96 books in 365, which is so crazily impressive. Jill’s Book Blog at the moment features three categories: Book Reviews, Accessible Reading and Posiel. From the type of content that Jillian has been constantly posted, i think the intended audience of the blog are book lovers like Jillian herself. People who would be frequent visitors of Jill’s blog are people who love reading, who also love to learn more about certain books and how others think of them. And since most of the books that have been reviewed are mostly fictions, romance, thrillers, etc, I figure the demographic of Jill’s blog are the demographic of these books, which are mostly teens to young adults and young professional, predominately female. And lastly, in most of the post, Jillian’s tone of voice seems quite lighthearted, excited, and playful most of the time, which also leads me to believe that the age of the intended audience of Jill’s Book Blog are around 17 to 30.

In my opinion, Jillian has done a great job in terms of keeping her audience engaged with her constant and high-quality content. The design of her website is fairly simple. There is quite a lot of white space, which is a great thing, since it makes the blog seems way less cluttered. On that note, the fact that there are not too many menu options also makes the blog seems less overwhelming. When I visit Jill’s website, I always find myself feeling calm and collected. And a lot of that has to do with the timeless design that Jillian has chosen. One thing that I do wish Jill’s blog could improve itself on, would be the homepage. At the moment, when users of its site opens the homepage for the first time, it has all of the most recent posts on one page, positioned vertically, and it causes the homepage to be quite long. Since most of the audience of Jill’s blog are around our age, I think it would nice to make the homepage slightly shorter with more directions to the posts. In that way, her audience could find what they want a bit easier, and it would decrease the bounce rate of her site. Another thing that I think could be improved would be finding some way to break up some of the text-heavy content. Since it is a mostly text-based site, it would be nice to see some more breaks in between paragraphs, it could be by highlightin certain quotes, adding images, or just adding simple lines and subheading, in order to keep her audience even more engaged with her content.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed Jill’s Book Blog, and I am excited to see where this blog would develop and process in the future.

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Peer Review #3

Reace Mok

Reace has written a powerful and vulnerable blog called ReRouted. His blog discusses his experiences in finding his identity after he left playing football. Coming from an ex-athlete such as myself, I found myself relating to his posts which brought me comfort in realizing I wasn’t alone in my experiences of finding my identity past my sport. In saying this, I believe Reace’s intended audience is athletes of all sports. I say athletes in general because although he discusses the life of a retired football player, athletes from all sports must experience this one day and would find value in his blog at any stage of their athletic career.

Right off the bat, Reace’s stunning homepage immediately shows his viewers what his blog is all about. I absolutely love the series of images he chose as they tell his story of slowly shedding off his identity as a football player and coming into his new self. This series of images alone is a huge way he has marketed his blog towards athletes, and more specifically retired athletes, as we all can relate to this feeling of taking off our uniform for the last time. In this sense, Reace has already gained his audience’s attention on a personal level right from the beginning of their search. He also has featured his “About” section on the side bar of the front page, so if he has any viewers who may not have understood the series of images at first glance, they can easily find what his blog is about on the homepage. Both the eye-catching images and his “About” section being on the homepage is a great way to decrease bounce rate, which as our guest speaker, Monique Sherrett, explained, is the rate at which people come to your website and leave right away.

Reace’s blog content is very consistent with his theme. He shares a vulnerable part of himself, which is oftentimes difficult for ex-athletes to talk about. Although there are plenty of articles on the Internet that discuss this identity crisis athletes face when retiring from their sport, this is the first time I’ve come across a blog dedicated to it. One of our guest speakers, Trevor Battye, discussed how our goal with our website should be to create something that no one else can compete with, and I believe Reace has done this. Not many people are willing to be vulnerable and put their struggles online for everyone to read and see, but I believe that is why his blog is extremely marketable to his audience. All retired athletes face this identity battle at varying degrees; Reace’s blog gives these people a place to come and see that they’re not or were not alone in this struggle. Here’s one of his posts that truly demonstrates his courage to be vulnerable with his readers, which is something I truly admire.

A possible way Reace could increase his marketability towards his audience is through including images in his blog posts. Not only does this give the reader a visual break from the text, it also adds another personal touch to his already personal posts. It could be worthwhile to include images of himself playing football! Another way he could increase his marketability towards his audience is by including mental health resources (maybe even ones geared towards athletes) at the end of his posts for viewers to look into if they are struggling and considering getting help. Coming from experience, this retired athlete identity struggle can be difficult to navigate alone; letting his audience know that it’s okay to seek help would not only increase his marketability, but also help decrease the stigma around mental health. I believe Reace will have no problem maintaining and growing his audience as long as he stays true to them and continues to be a courageous blogger through his vulnerability!

Process Post 9 – Reverse Engineering Ads

Recently I’ve been noticing the abundance of engagement ring ads that have been popping up on my Facebook feed. Although it’s something that I have noticed, I haven’t thought deeply about why they may be showing up on my feed until this week in class when we discussed audiences and how websites reach their intended audience. Our professor gave us an activity to try, which was to pick an ad from our Facebook feed and reverse engineer it, A.K.A dissect why it may be popping up on your specific Facebook feed. Below is one of the many engagement ring ads that I’ve come across on my Facebook feed:

As many of you have probably noticed, Facebook seems to know your exact search history based on their creepily accurate ads they place on your feed. However in my case with the engagement ring ads, I found it interesting as I haven’t searched engagement rings in my browser, so where did they get this information from that I might be in this market at the moment? Time to start reverse engineering!

I began with thinking about what my characteristics were and which one’s I’ve shared with Facebook. Like most people, I have my basic characteristics listed on Facebook. This includes my age, gender, education, things like that. However, I also have my relationship status listed, which is currently “in a relationship”. Based on this information I’ve shared with Facebook, they can conclude that I’m a 23 year old female who is in a relationship. In general, women in the age range of 20-30 years old who are in a relationship may be thinking about getting married. Facebook may have taken this information and made an assumption, which is why they’re promoting engagement ring ads on my feed. Another added factor to this may be that I’ve had my relationship status as “in a relationship” on Facebook for over three years now. I noticed that these engagement ring ads started appearing on my feed a few months ago. Since Facebook thinks I’ve been in a relationship for a long time now, maybe that is also an indicator to them that they should start targeting me for engagement ring ads. However, I’m not positive if Facebook actually tracks this factor, but with my experience it seems as though they very well might be.

I plugged in my reverse engineering into Facebook Audience Insights and this is what I discovered:


I set the audience to Vancouver, Canada, and women in the age range of 20-30 years old. I didn’t specify if they were in a relationship or not as I wanted to see the percentage of this audience was listed as “in a relationship.” It appears that 61% of women 18-34 years old who are on Facebook in Vancouver, Canada are in the 25-34 age range, and 39% are in the 18-24 age range. Of those women, 27% of them are listed as “in a relationship.” Based on this information, I can assume that Facebook may be targeting that 27% with engagement ring ads.

SELF AND SKY: Digital Collages

MINI ASSIGNMENT No.4: Remix
Women silhouettes jumping over a mountain range

Jellyfish with eyes overlooks a tent

Little boy looks out the window at the cosmos

Photographic sources (links):
DANCING ACROSS MOUNTAINS:
> the women > the mountain range
THE GREAT JELLYFISH:
> the jellyfish > the outpost > the aquatic eyes
COSMIC DAYDREAMER:
> the child > the cosmos

Hope you found these my new collages to be enchanting. Which is your favourite? Let me know in the comment section below!

Mini Assignment – Remix

With VFW fast approaching, I thought it only made sense to create my own vision of the VFW poster by remixing a few images together. One of the most special things to me in the poster would be the Vancouver skyline that I photoshopped in. I wanted to make sure the poster not only represents fashion, but also Vancouver as a city. Hope you guys enjoy it.

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OPINION: How Adobe’s Misguided Subscription Model Reinforces Global Inequality

The move away from one-time purchases to monthly subscriptions (known as the “Creative Cloud”) has hindered creative opportunity for countless users across the world.
Mikaela Shannon

Ask anyone in the creative industry and they will tell you that the leading software comes from Adobe Inc. Their programs have become so ubiquitous with contemporary digital arts that the word “photoshopping”––a verb which references their famous photo retouching application, Photoshop––has become part of the lexicon. It almost goes without saying that their graphics software is considered unparalleled in quality, and I myself have grown up loving their range of applications and the seemingly endless artistic possibilities they afford.

As with any company, Adobe is understandably looking to make money and stay at the top of the game for as long as possible. However, in certain circles, there is also an unspoken attitude that Adobe’s go-to status amounts to somewhat of a monopoly over the creative industry.

We all know that great power comes with great responsibility, but I wonder if Adobe has really earned their seemingly untarnished reputation: Unlike other massive tech companies who have all been met with numerous disparaging headlines, whether from Google to Windows to Amazon, this company has managed to avoid the harsh reckonings of such a spotlight. And yet this absence of scrutiny is not due to a lack of questionable business decisions on their part.

Most notably, Adobe has tried to preemptively eliminate their competition by buying them out––specifically in a 2011 move that forced the FTC to intervene. Oddly, Adobe has managed to avoid appropriate critique given that the story was not championed by many (if any) major news organizations. Ask the average person and they have almost certainly never heard of any such controversy, despite likely having the latest version of Adobe Flash Player installed on their laptop.

So the real question is how has this unchallenged position affected their consumers?

In 2013, the company was well aware of its premiere status when it made a very controversial decision amongst their user-base: Adobe switched to a subscription-based model. Prior to the change, users regularly purchased application in bundles to be uploaded into harddrives. Any updates were made available through an internet connection, which Adobe eventually realized could be used to ensure that the software had indeed been legally purchased. After 30 years in business, this premise was what Adobe users had come to expect, so there was rightful outcry when Adobe announced their monumental change.

However, because Adobe had come to dominate the creative industry, the backlash could simply ignored. This is still true today, five years after the new dynamic was introduced, despite sometimes drastic hikes to the monthly fee. (At present, you can pay $20USD/month for a single app, or $52USD/month for all apps excluding Adobe Stock.)

To their credit, subscription services seemingly unavoidable these days and many new companies have revolutionized their industries through this model. But the key difference is that hugely successful giants such as Spotify and Netflix are companies that provide professional, pre-made content for the sake of entertainment. Conversely, Adobe only provides software, or the gateway to creation, to businesses across the creative industry.

It is not as though a graphic design firm, whose entire staff will have spent thousands of dollars in schooling to become expertly familiar with this software, is going to have any alternative than to comply with Adobe’s decisions. This company knows that we are dependant and, unfortunately, they know that they can exploit that reliance.

I am not the first person to write about Adobe’s subscription controversy, so I won’t delve any further into the details of the switch. Instead, I’d like to point out a key issue that has gone virtually unaddressed in all of this uproar: Adobe subscriptions are not available worldwide.

In fact, prominent countries such as Iceland, Nigeria, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Jamaica lack any access through their website. While it is understandable that licensing agreements may be hindered by particular governments, Adobe doesn’t seem to be picking and choosing its licensing choices based on the ethics of a country’s governance.

Instead, Adobe would probably argue that their lack of availability issue of demand, but even that reasoning doesn’t acknowledge Adobe’s role in widening the disparity between “developed” and “undeveloped” nations. Even with a quick glance over the unsupported countries, it is pretty obvious that a lot of these countries are in Africa; a continent which should no longer be ignored given its immense predicted growth.

At the end of the day, the issue is this: Prior to Creative Cloud, Adobe users had much better access to these valuable applications, regardless of where they live. I have seen firsthand that these technological barriers are hindering artistic entrepreneurship and opportunity in these countries, particularly for creative teams.

Going forward, I would like to see Adobe spearhead some initiatives to counterbalance this discrepancy. How is the rest of the creative world supposed to catch up when they don’t have access to the same tools? The answer is that they can’t, and that is deeply disturbing.





Process Post

After reading Makshada’s review for my blog, I got a better sense of what I need to improve on my site. She mentioned how she viewed my Instagram page that I included on my blog and enjoyed the content I had on my Instagram. Makshada mentioned how I should also add some of my poetry on my blog because it could attract different groups of people. I agree with her and will consider adding some of my poetry on my blog.

Adding poetry on my blog could attract more people on my blog. I do want higher traffic on my site to feel more accomplished. I can then view my analytics and compare how many viewers I gained or lost. I want my audience to stay on my page longer, keeping their attention, and having them come back more than once. In order to do that, I will need to add more content of my poetry for people to relate to. If my audience can relate to my poetry, they would probably come back to my site to see what I post in the future.

Thanks to Makshada for her feedback, I have new perspectives on what I should add on my page.

Process Post 8 – …

For this week’s Process Post, there is not a definite prompt; however, there is certainly work to be done and reflect upon on this blog. I am still incorporating images into the weekly blog posts through determining their best placement, as well as which ones are most-suited to the topic, while also adhering to the theme of change. This has proven to be more difficult than anticipated, as the original images I selected just didn’t maintain the integrity of the site or what I wished for it to evoke in readers – now viewers.

This change, from reader to viewer is what I am looking for. I want people to engage with the language, but I also want people to browse. I tend to write a lot – I have a lot to share, but I am aware that not everyone wishes to flow in my streams of consciousness and may not wish to delve into everything I have to say. My blog is about me, but the content has to be open to interpretation as well as manageable to read, understand, agree with and at times, rebut. Publishing is putting something out there for everyone to see, with everyone being those who read, don’t read, like and dislike what you have to share. Images then, support, drive home, bolster and conjure ideas, feelings, opinions and of course, criticisms. An image beholds an image, one in which I have tried to build through the aesthetic and content of this blog. We market ourselves through this content, and in looking at the consumer, it is important to envision their own perceptions; how does my image market me and what I write? Take a look at the American Marketing Associations beliefs here on how a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Another component of this blog that I am trying to build is the usability and consistency. People tend to purchase the same magazines and newspapers, as well as visit the same YouTube Channels and Blogs not just for the content, but also because they feel like home or an every morning cup of coffee. This always makes me think, is it the taste or the routine that is comforting? When someone becomes accustomed to what they view, they appreciate the familiarity. There can be subtle changes in color or placement of things, but the crux of these media is that there is a recipe, and those who indulge, know exactly what, how much, where and when to eat.

In following the rabbit hole of the Internet (read this for some somewhat eerily fascinating stories of Internet stumble-upons), which started on the Posiel site in this week’s readings, I came across Byline, a crowdfunded newspaper magazine where people fund the content of various writers. I truly appreciate the idea and think it is novel and timely in its development; however, there are two things I don’t appreciate it. First, which connects to my previous paragraph, it’s very inconsistent. It reminds me of shopping online at a store like ASOS where there are so many different styles and types of fashion, that you end up overwhelmed, dazed and confused. Second, there are no advertisements. I know what you’re thinking… But I personally enjoy advertisements because I like evaluating them and dissecting how they, if at all (and they usually do), reflect who I am. I am intrigued by the psychology of marketing and I also like the break; why must I read an entire article about starvation in North Korea without a saunter into the sidebars of new Nikes? Sure, I get the irony of this and I am being somewhat facetious, but I like the contrast as much as the relevance. Since the beginning of print, advertisements have driven publication, so should we eliminate them, or view them as part of the publication process? This brings us back to blogging; successful blogs, which for argument here is measured by visitorship, is are ones that have advertisements. One may argue that books, in their traditional sense, do not include ads, but phrases like, “try these other great reads from Harper Collins” refute this…

Speaking of rabbit holes, you can see that this Process Post has dug deep in a field in which it didn’t start, but in reflecting on how to build my blog to appeal to others, it’s important to know that what one likes is not necessarily liked by the other, and in creating design, it’s valuable to make it comfortable. I am a fan of Hygge [hoo-gah] design, which you can read about straight from it’s Danish source here, and in knowing it, I like how it’s predictable (like I hope my site is), but comforting with a pop of flair, color and juxtaposition. So, in evaluating, reevaluating and of course, publishing, it’s my hope that ReRouted is a place where people stop, stay a while and return.