Twitter news

This morning I finished my essay, at least to the point where it has everything in it. Tweaks will have to be made no doubt, but I'm pretty pleased thus far. It's been a really interesting topic to write about and so I have enjoyed researching and writing it.

We were given the choice of five essay titles, each quite wide themselves. I chose the title of New News and the area I chose to cover in my essay... or rather the question I set out to answer was: How has technology and social networks enabled news to spread faster and further? Or something along those lines. My essay title, as it stands at the moment is:

How Twitter, and new technology, has enabled news to spread faster than ever before – and to a wider audience.

Although I briefly cover other social networks, Facebook, YouTube etc, I really wanted to focus on Twitter. And that is what I have done.

This is a paragraph early on in the essay, talking about Twitter:

"Twitter users are invited to share what they are doing, “What's happening?”. However, Twitter is also used to share information whether it be interesting facts, humorous video links or breaking news stories. It is the latter that proves to be a huge internet revolution. When a particular story becomes popular it is known as a 'trending topic', grouped by words that are commonly used in the latest tweets. Similarly, #hashtagging is used by users to specify a particular theme. These features make spreading information even easier, and with the possibility to 're-tweet' those messages that a user finds particularly interesting, news stories can spread, not only, faster than ever before but also to a wider audience,
across the world."

Some great TED talks I reference in my essay:
Evan Williams on Listening to Twitter Users
Clay Shirky: How Social Media can make History

And interesting articles:
How Twitter helped to spread information on the Japan earthquake
Six Degrees of Separation
Game Theory
Social media facts

Essay submission

Essay is due in this Thursday. I had pretty much completed it over the Christmas break, so there was very little that I need to add to it. I basically just added an extra quote or two, shuffled some bits around and made any grammatical/spelling corrections after two of my friends read it through. I am pleased with it anyway, so I hope I get a decent grade.

A few people mentioned laying out their essays in InDesign, which I hadn't planned to do, but this evening I thought "hey, why not?"I didn't do anything over-the-top, just set a simple grid and four columns. Keeping certain information to the left hand side on each page, in its own larger margin.

Note the similarity index - the lower number the less you have copied and the

less "plagiarism". I'm impressed, that means I wrote an awful lot myself! Haha.

2551 words

The Supermarket

I started my essay today, 2400 words later, I've also nearly finished it.

There was a particularly interesting and useful documentary on a few weeks ago, I watched it whilst it was on but also recorded it to watch back – taking notes. It was a Panorama special, 'SUPERMARKETS: What Price Cheap Food'. (I'm pretty sure that title doesn't actually make grammatical or logical sense.)

I have found said documentary on YouTube if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E7C5A03225114D54

An extract from my essay:

“Salesmanship isn't the science of selling people goods they do not require – it is more the art of teaching them to require and buy the goods you have for sale.” A quote that is as relevant today as when it was published in Grocery, a grocer's journal, in July 1924. It is our way of life, we have to consume to survive, more so in terms of food than any other industry. We get our food where we can, most of us from the local supermarket as it is the easiest and most reliable source of food consumption. There are more food products on offer to us now than ever before, but when did this begin? And how did it become so easy for the consumer?

The Canon & Stefan Sagmeister

I've just completed my first essay at university.

1200 words on 'Which designer do you think should be canonised?'.

Choosing a graphic designer who is well known now, and looking at it 20 years in the future (so, with an aspect of creative writing).

So, who will still be around in 20 years time?

Who deserves to enter the "graphic design canon"?

"The canon is a group of highly regarded people within a certain field of expertise. New people can join by doing something which makes them worthy of their place. The public can decide who belongs in the cannon, generally those who are most popular or successful." - the first couple of sentences of the essay.

I chose Stefan Sagmeister. Some may argue he is already a part of the canon, but I think in order to write about someone well enough and express why they deserve to be canonised, they have to be relatively canonised already. If that makes sense. 

Also as we are graphic designers, we don't just write an essay. We put it into the format of a book/ magazine spread, as if it is in some kind of graphic design canon compilation.

Here it is: