Arranged Delirium

Students in my new media courses have been studying representation and (hopefully) thinking more deeply about how the media reflects ideology back to us, and thus influences our own ideological beliefs. Gender is always a deep topic of interest in this debate, since we all see representation of ourselves in magazines and on television (among other places). There’s a good film on the topic regarding how the media reflects the notion of ‘woman’ back to us in Missrepresentation. You can watch a trailer for it here:

Thinking of gender, there was an article in the Chronicle lately entitled Saving the ‘Lost Boys’ of Higher Education, which supported my own anecdotal observations that female students are typically much better than male undergraduates. I’m concerned that more young men aren’t interested in taking their future seriously. I say this as someone who did not have his act together his early undergraduate days; but eventually got there. I’m beginning to fear for a generation of young men who aren’t getting there before they get out of school…

While not necessarily recent, we’ve seen a bit of controversy in past months regarding Limor Fried’s Wired cover. And, its a great example for my New Media and Digital Imaging courses. Not in the traditional form - usually we are critiquing the over-ambitious or questionable Imagery edits - but this time we see the lack of editing that was critiqued in ignorance by GOOD.is editor Cord Jefferson. Of course we should be thoughtful about media representations and how they affect us - after all, that’s the whole point of several of my classes. But it’s similarly important to know your facts before you write something - even if it’s an opinion piece. In this case, the cover was produced with lighting and some basic tonal adjustments that I would suggest any photographer would use.

The Mary Sue has an article with all the details, and Wired has a nice Q&A up for Limor Fried if you are not familiar with her or her contributions. You can learn more about the photographer, Jill Greenberg, and her work through this post illustrating some of her past work and detailing a talk she gave recently…

Rounded corners should be easy. As I’ve been doing more work with mobile app development, I’ve realized that I have a number of old ways to do it, but I want to get it done fast. So, I’ve put together this little example for making quick rounded edge icons for mobile apps; but you can extrapolate the process for about any image.

First some assumptions: we’ll want to save this as a 24-bit png file - don’t worry, it’s so small it wont make any appreciable difference as far as file size is concerned. Speaking of which, I’ll be using a resolution of 114X114 pixels which will ensure the image looks good on high resolution displays (others will simply render it down to the right size). Lastly, I’m assuming we’re all working in RGB mode. If you are taking an image you’ve already used and indexed (as a gif or png file) make sure you change the mode you are working in or you’ll be flummoxed.

OK, so here we go:

1) Open your file and re-size to 114X114 pixels.
2) Select your Rounded Rectangle tool. You’ll want the defaults for the tool selected in the options bar - specifically, ‘shape layers’ - and set the radius to your desired amount (I recommend 20px).
3) Draw your shape - this will create a new layer for you, with a vector mask. How convenient!
4) CMD-click on the vector mask (in History, you’ll notice this loads a new selection).
5) Click on the original background layer and press CMD-J (this copies the selected pixels to a new layer).
6) Make the original layer and the layer with the vector mask invisible, then Save for Web as a 24-bit png file with transparency.

Of course, as with anything Photoshop, there are a dozen ways to do this. I’ve just found this to be the most efficient for me. I could have made a selection, inverted it, and smoothed it out, and then deleting the pixels in that inverted selection. But I wasn’t as pleased with the edges of the corners, and I found it usually left me with additional trimming work to do. So, I think this works most efficiently.

I’ve been struck by how often I’m articulating in class that design is about organizing content and communication as well as aesthetics. Recently, I came across an article regarding a grad student redesign of the iTunes terms of service documentation, and I thought it would make a good example. One reason people don’t read the TOS is because, well, that’s obvious isn’t it? But while we might want to fault people for not reading, don’t we have an obligation to make the content accessible? Then we can legitimately gripe about people not reading…

As a professor of New Media, I’m often finding myself talking about the appropriation of cultural content - and frequently explaining to students the important distinctions between appropriation and plagiarism. One issue that muddies the water for student is the concept of Fair Use, and I think that holds true for academic partitioners as well who are afraid (for good cause in recent years) of using content they are entitled to employ under fair use guidelines. There’s a very good article in the Chronicle that describes the basics and can help us all feel a bit more at ease with the employ of Fair Use.