Part 1: To me, multimedia authoring means packaging information to be digitally presented. So for example, taking pictures, making videos, using text and so much more can be considered a type of multimedia authoring. With that being said, I guess I would have quite a bit of experience in multimedia authoring. Since about 6th grade I have been using Photoshop for both simple and more experienced tasks. For example, in 7th grade, I took a computer class during which I would find pictures of my friends in that class and put their faces onto animal bodies. However, I have done more complicated tasks like switching the background in a picture I have taken to look like the picture was really taken during the nighttime with a city view, rather than during daytime with an ugly background. I chose to take this class because I felt like it would educate me on a subject that I already enjoy.
Part 2: I chose this blog template because I felt like it was very easy to navigate and figure out what’s going on. Personally, I care a lot about how things look. This specific template, to me, has a very simple but fun look to it. There is an “About” page that has a brief introduction of me, as well as a “Contact” page for people to get a hold of me if need be. Other than that, all my blog posts are in order from most recent to oldest which makes the website simple for people who have not visited it before. However, I am kind of bummed out that the template doesn’t have a page where all of the blog posts are archived, instead of having to scroll through the main page to find old posts.
Part 3: Kristin Arola made many great points throughout her article in relation to design and the heavy use of templates. Arola says, “students in our classes learn only to fill up those templates and fill in those electric boxes.” By this, she means that if we keep using things like Powerpoint only for their technical ability, we lose our sense of creativity and our will to compose. Instead, we turn into a type of robot that is simply “filling up” the space we are provided with information. With that being said, I definitely agree with many of the points she makes, and I think my template could be much better. I see now that I don’t really like the size of the photo on my welcome screen, there are other colors I would rather have used but I was not given the option for many colors, just like Arola discussed in her article. Besides all that, I really feel like if I knew how to, I could create a website that looks far superior to this one.
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