1. Bethany Dill
“Related Links Review”
Intro to New Media Design
Professor Klinkowstein
January 2013
! The related link for assignment one gave insight on how to make a good clear
presentation. The author of the article referenced Steve Jobs as a good presenter and
walked through his presenting techniques. From the article, it was said that good
presenting is achieved when the speaker “sells the benefit”, “builds simple, visual
slides”, “tells stories”, “prepares and practices excessively”, “avoids reading from notes”,
“has fun”, and “inspires their audience”. This biggest tip that that relates most to our
assignment was “building simple, visual slides”. The article says that doing this creates
a clean easy-to-read look that gets the point across.
! The related links for assignment two give insight as to what a brand is and what
makes a “good” brand. Seth Godin defines a brand as a set of “expectations”,
“memories”, “stories” and “relationships” that help a customer choose one product over
another. He claims that design is not a brand. Another related article by Suzanne Gibbs
Howard goes further to describe what makes a good brand. Her idea of a good brand is
a brand that shares what you care about, empowers people to make it their own,
localizes and discriminates. She further goes to say that a brand attracts like-minded
customers that are different from most other customers and that these like-minded
customers have the ability to make the brand their own by sharing their own stories,
expectations, memories and relationships (as Godin would say). The customers help to
make a “good” brand. In another relates article, “Brand New Conference, a Review by
IDEO”, further describes what a good brand is. Building on the previous article, this
article declares that stories connect people and create relationships and that these
ideas should be wrapped around a brand. The article also says that a brand should be
describes as a person with a personality. This article also describes a brand that “fails”
as one that does not relate to customers and is not attentive to a customer’s needs.
Another related article that was posted on tumblr does not directly reference branding
but does impose ideas that relate to the concept of branding. The article defines
trandsmedia storytelling as a technique where a story is told across multiple platforms
and formats using current digital technologies. It explains that the story being told needs
to allow an audience to participate in the story. This concept can be related to “good”
branding in that the story being told about the brand needs to appear on many platforms
of media and must allow people to participate in the story of the brand.
! The related links for assignment three describes what logo is and does and the
effectiveness of a “good” logo. According to the article, by Paul Rand, a logo is a
signature of a product, company, service, ect. that identifies that product, company,
service, ect. What a logo means is more important than what it looks like. Rand also
claims that the effectiveness of a logo depends on it’s distinctiveness, visibility, usability,
memorability, universality, durability, and timelessness. Rand also explains that the logo
design is associated with the product, company, service, ect. it’s attached to and that a
logo design will be attractive or unattractive based on the product, company, service,
ect. it represents. In another related article, written by Alex Bigman, Rands ideas from
the article above are explained more in depth. Bigman explains that logos can look like
whatever they want, and they don’t have to relate to the subject matter the are
representing. They just have to be memorable. Another point that Bigman makes is that
2. Bethany Dill
“Related Links Review”
Intro to New Media Design
Professor Klinkowstein
January 2013
simplicity is not the goal; simplicity occurs when it is truly understood what a logo is an
is not capable of doing.
! The related link for assignment four explains how a brand should utilize a
Facebook page and how to get the most out of the page’s fans. The article explains that
only a small fraction of the people who like a Facebok page are actually engaging with
the product. These fans are known as “superfans” and the article suggests that a brand
should use it’s superfans to promote the brand further. In order to do this, the article
suggests that it rewards superfan loyalty, builds a two way relationship between the
superfan and the “brand” or the administrators of the Facebook page, and by asking for
the help of the superfans. By doing this, superfans feel like they are part of the brand
“experience” and they will be more likely to promote the brand.
! The related links for assignment five gives insight on how to create a web page
that will be profitable to a product, service, company, ect. In Jakob Nielsen’s article, it is
revealed that most people pay attention to the left side and top of the webpage more
than any other part of the webpage. A scientific study was conducted to prove this. The
reason that this is true is because most languages have a left-to-right reading direction
and the left of the page usually contains a navigation bar. Therefore, it s concluded that
the most important information should be in the two left-most thirds of the webpage and
the secondary information should be in the right-most third of the webpage. In the next
related article, also written by Nielsen, print design (i.e. newspaper design) and web
design are compared. Print design has a bigger canvas to work with and it’s 2-
dimensional, page turning experience. Web pages are 1-dimensional and N-
dimensional, meaning that it has a scrolling experience instead of a canvas experience.
The article also argues that print design has a better image and type quality than web
design because the images can be printed larger and with more detail, fancy type can
be used (because on a computer, you don’t know if a specific type has been installed or
not) and there can be more text on a page since it is unpleasant to read off of a screen.
However, even though this is true, the author ultimately decides that the online medium
is ultimately better because it has user engagement and this creates a more memorable
experience and therefore, it does the job better than print design.
Links:
Assignment 1:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/10/04/11-presentation-lessons-you-can-
still-learn-from-steve-jobs/2/
Assignment 2:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/define-brand.html
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662388/ideo-good-stories-make-good-brands-heres-4-
tips-and-7-examples
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/
brand_new_conference_a_review_by_ideo.php
http://transmediaexperience.tumblr.com/
3. Bethany Dill
“Related Links Review”
Intro to New Media Design
Professor Klinkowstein
January 2013
Assignment 3:
http://www.paul-rand.com/
http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/thoughts_logosflags/#.UNyR4LZqaBQ
http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/09/04/4-principles-by-paul-rand-that-may-
surprise-you/
Assignment 4:
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-base-engage-superfans/238773/
Assignment 5:
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/horizontal-attention-leans-left/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/differences-between-print-design-and-web-design/