The Curse of the Photoshop Blessing: Pandora's .exe - Week Four

Photoshop has turned people into either a skeptic or a fool. Being a powerful and useful program, much digital imagery's legitimacy is questioned. There is a social responsibility that ought to come along with Photoshop, as it may be one of the most powerful tools for deception we have.
The social responsibility of Photoshop is multiplied with the ease of distribution over the Internet. Individuals have more of a personal responsibility about this as they have no repercussions; the anonymity of the Internet allows safety.
Official publications have to worry about fact-checking their information. For text, this could involve  research, knowledge or communicating with people. For pictures, it involves trusting sources or a very keen eye. For example:

This photo of George Bush shows him reading a child's book upside-down. Pretty stupid.

This photo shows him with the book right-side-up. However you feel about this man, and there's no bias coming from me, but for truth's sake it's likely that he's not so stupid that he can't tell the difference between correct and upside-down text. The top image is the logically Photoshopped one.

So what? Well, this is similar to libel, and what people don't seem to understand is that publishing something to the Internet, anywhere on the Internet, is still publishing something. If half the people who saw that photo believed it to be real, that's real damage to Bush's reputation.

It's a powerful tool, Photoshop. Seeing is believing. Or it was, before digital photo manipulation was a household activity. Now everything we see is absorbed with skepticism, and we can never recover that comfortable trust.

CRAP - Week Three

There are no rules to art.
But actually, there are, if you want it to be appealing. And in design, that's the point: making something that grabs attention and looks good. The obnoxiously named CRAP system is a universal tool for visual artists and designers that, whether intentional or not, is usually employed in good displays.
Here's some album art wherein the designers used CRAP principles:

Contrast
The Strokes - Is This It
This album art for the European release of the record shows the basics of contrast: black over white. The black glove pops out in the image, from both the pure white background and the white-tinted female form. The stark contrast of black on white is much more appealing, eye-catching and attractive than, say, a brown glove on a flesh coloured behind would be.

Repetition
The Used - Lies for the Liars
The repetition shown on this cover is the hair/tentacle effect used in the text and the image. The artist created a theme of... whatever those protrusions are supposed to be in the image and applied it to the text of the piece, creating an effective consistency to the album cover, as a whole.

Alignment
Michael Jackson - Bad
The designer's choice of aligning the text to the right side of the album, running sideways, allows for a good placement for a photograph of the artist. Although a simple cover, the placement of Jackson's name, the album title "Bad" and the artist makes for a great looking cover. The placement of the album's title is especially effective; "Bad" is almost an "anti-alignment," seemingly just pasted anywhere. It just happened to be the perfect spot.

Proximity
Weezer - Weezer (2008)
Known as the "Red Album," Weezer's 2008 release has the band on the bottom with simple text of the name on the top. The four members are close together, neatly lined up across the bottom. They are given equal positioning and distance, giving a visual sense of unity and neatness.

The CRAP principles are great for judging work. However, I feel as a part of the design process, the artist should not be worried, asking him or herself if there is enough repetition used. CRAP shouldn't hinder the process, but be used as a tool for review. With that, the best of both are employed: the artistic process is untainted, and the designed principles can be applied to punch up the first draft for maximum appeal. And a really good artist will likely use the principles instinctively.

This is a Las Vegas Post Card.

I have never been to Las Vegas.

Your Digital Footprint: How I Avoid Putting My Foot in My Chatbox - Week Two

I have small feet.
I typed my name into the Google search bar, at which point it accused me of spelling my own name wrong and was rude kind enough to correct me.
There's one hit on the first page: a blog I set up three and a half years ago as a portfolio of my work from Sheridan College. There is one hit on the second page, and it's this blog. Seven pages in is an article I wrote for my church in 2007 that I don't remember doing, and another blog that I set up post-Sheridan. I gave up after page 15.
Spezify yielded no relevant results.
And I'm okay with this.
I realize that with having a Facebook account, a Twitter account (now) and a blog, that I am publishing things for the public. Yeah, there are privacy settings (which I typically crank up) but things posted on the internet:
a) are put there with the fact that it's possible that everyone can see; and
b) it stays there.
So I shape my footprint by limiting my footprint.
I'm a private guy, and I do minimal sharing on a personal level with close friends, much less mass-informing mild acquaintances and strangers. But that's just me, and I fully appreciate others' needs to share themselves. There is a line that people cross, in my opinion, where lovingly sharing turns into attention grabbing. I keep myself back from that.

Digital Media and You - Week One

A clarification of the term was in order. Ambiguous on it's own, Digital Media was a class I couldn't place within the context of Ryerson's Radio and Television program.
I took the term Digital Media to mean internet/computer-based production. It's turned out to be what I half expected: Photoshop, After Effects and Dreamweaver. I thought there would be some Final Cut Pro thrown in as well. What I wasn't expecting was the required use of Twitter and Blogger. I can understand it. It's how most people get their news now: short bursts and/or uninfluenced sources. 
I was hoping to avoid Twitter indefinitely; I'm on a slow boat to the digital age. I don't misunderstand Twitters value. I just wanted to be a non-participant. But now I'm on it, giving, receiving and participating, and I feel it's value. Being dragged into digital media, not quite kicking and screaming, more along the lines of grumbling and scowling, might be a good thing.
I begrudgingly  admit it: Twitter is necessary for damn near everything. To have a media-based university program require students to be familiar with Twitter as a medium makes sense. Cross-platform media, in news delivery, story telling and information sharing is a growing trend. Likely, most, if not all, possible job and career outcomes will require, or at least benefit from, Twitter.
So here I am, talking about Twitter. The medium. I think Marshall McLuhan was right. News on Twitter is as immediate as it gets right now, save from first hand experience. Character restrictions shape what's important, and people can react, immediately and on what's important. Print cannot invoke that reaction.
If I understand the phrase correctly, McLuhan was extremely insightful. There's no real right or wrong to it, but he definitely knew what he was talking about.