Through Hiker

Colors for the Chromatically Challenged

Thank goodness for Clagnutt’s Compendium of Color tools! I’ve been reading all the advice on color, but seemed to have no practical idea on how to get started picking a color scheme.

Getting off square one seemed to be the toughest part of the challenge without any design experience. The compendium’s tools seemed to get better with each click. The color blender was pretty helpful, especially after two or three mixes to get a good background color. Until now I was feeling lost looking at web-safe 256 color charts, and it always seemed that color # FFFFCC was the most subdued and least obnoxious.

Sitepro’s Coulour scheme chooser was a real gem. I used the colors I mixed as a starting point to find colors that would work well through the menu on the sitepro app. You’ve gotta love the slider bars as well!

The last bit of helpful advice was the use of the eyedropper to sample colors in photographs, etc. I loved the idea, and picked the color off several pictures, then input the hex # into Sitepro. This gave a great range of colors to pick from. Thanks!

Driving around the Block, checking out the Neighbors

It’s been fun checking out the blogs and type assignments this week. Clio 1 and 2 are making us more demanding. I made a suggestion to Marty on usability and connectivity between his blog and projects–I think we should all post links back to the student roster…I found myself clicking back a lot of times today trying to back out to Prof P’s student roster to check out the neighbors.

Several Type Projects are looking great. I had to leave a comment on Jenny’s blog because it looked great. I liked the color combo (glad somebody’s learning!) and thought the handwriting headings are great. I had an idea for Mark’s background and left a comment there, and wonder if anybody else got seasick from Tad’s opposite rolling background of tiles!? Lastly, Tufte gives some provocative ideas, but I commented on Jennifer’s blog that it’s tough to translate Tufte’s ideas into better PowerPoint!

Fellow Clio Travelers: If you’ve been looking at the Type assignment and wondering about a few requirements unfamiliar to many of us, here’s a rundown of those likely to be the most unfamiliar:

Pull quote: A section of copy taken out of an article, enlarged or set in a different type, and inserted back into the article. An example is depicted in Wikipedia. Rules of thumb for pull quotes are available in a helpful article “Pull Quotes” found at fonts.com

Rule: A solid line used to separate editorial matter. Consider using a fancy line, possibly a “border font”

Leading (pronounced led’ing): The space between lines of text. “Non type-aware” individuals like myself always rely on auto-leading which assigns a certain percentage to the space between lines. An article on leading at fonts.com warns (my emphasis):

“While auto leading can speed the setting of body text, it’s not useful for setting display type. Display type in larger sizes needs a lot less leading than text (see illustrations). This is especially true with all-cap settings that have no descenders to fill in the space between the lines. For display type, auto leading settings will generally be way off the mark. Use your eye, not your software, to make larger type settings visually appropriate.”

Good luck on the type assignments, see you on Tuesday.

Bill

Jenny, Tad, Laura, and John commented on Historians as Translators this week. I posted a comment on Laura’s blog, but decided to copy it into my own posting.  

The historian has to be an interpreter. Historians create a narrative about the past to be understood in the present. Language, ideas, and methodology all perform subtle interpretation. Think of histories from a hundred years ago, they are anachronistic when compared to recent histories on the same topic. No matter how objective we are, we are translating the past as we create a fresh narrative.

Comment posted at Laura’s Three Cheers for Digital History

 Other comments this week:

Comment on Ken’s “I’d love to take a public beating.”

Comment on Walaa’s “Footnotes”

Comment on Lee Ann’s “Who do polyglot historians talk to?”

Ahmed’s Polyglot Manifesto is a powerful and convincing argument for the translation of history (the past) into the (digital) future. He raises some of the most important questions of our day facing the humanities.

As one of the new-media Young Turks, Ahmed’s manifesto calls into question the form and purpose of history. History needs to be translated into new (digital) forms for the purpose of connecting with the rest of the world or be “annihilated.”

Ahmed’s assault on form takes on the traditional scholarly monograph in order to make serious history available to the connected world. Connections then should breed collaboration and advancement of the field.

This, however, calls into question the very purpose of history. If history is to be written for everyman in the connected world, then get on with it! Get going! Don’t look back, but good luck paying the rent.

If history is to be written for the profession, publication of serious digital history faces an insurmountable barrier. Shifting from the monograph to the web will transfer political power from the profession’s gatekeepers to everyman.

This transfer of power will take a generation and it will only happen if two conditions are met: first, enough Young Turks have to gain tenure by first satisfying the old guard under existing conventions. Second, they will have to remain true to their beliefs and ultimately give up their power when they gain it. This is a tall task considering human nature.

The sad dilemma is that this potential diffusion of the profession’s power through mass digitization is going to annihilate the practice due to action, not the lack of it. This annihilation will take place because the mass democratization of history will ultimately lower the barriers, but also ultimately the professional standards and practices.

A couple of days banging on the screw got my CSS project onto the other guy’s territory, but the clock ran out just outside field goal range. I had a header image working fine on my harddrive, but it didn’t go when I ftp’ed it. Same for an imbedded picture. I’m hoping for illumination during the last hour of class tomorrow (i.e. an overtime period?)

Feb 3,4,5 tool of choice for turning CSS screws.

If you need a sense of superiority, please enjoy my efforts at CSS project and Portfolio

Sorry about the mixed metaphors, it’s getting late!

Bill

Erin Kissane’s Typography Matters was a revelation. I had been blaming myself for poor attention span when trying to read online content (see my previous post from Clio 1), but the readings this week and last week’s seminar discussion let me off the hook! I’m now convinced that writing online content has to be different.

The habits we’ve fallen into like scanning, spidering, and the temptations of quick and interesting detours through our browser put a tough mandate on the online authors back: “structure thy writing for quick sampling lest you quickly lose the reader’s interest.”

The contrasts between Kissane’s “Typography Matters” and Himmelfarb’s “Where Have all the Footnotes Gone?” were striking. Kissane was optimized for the web, had a maximum of two sentences per text block, and less than a dozen words per line. It was easy to hang with her.

Himmelfarb’s article suffered greatly in the print to web transfer: The 30+ word long lines were a slog, and the white-black contrast was harsh. The only redeeming aspect of the presentation was the fat vertical slider indicating I wouldn’t have to hang on very long.

The difference reveals a daunting task for new-media historians: translate dense monologues to something that stands a chance of being read!