Breaking it down - and knocking it out

At the end of day one of a major contract, I'm numb from absorbing billions of pixels of formal communications. I spent the day learning about the company for whom I'll now be writing and developing information over the next few months.

So I'm going to write something more off-the-cuff. As that poor guy in Mr. Osborne's class said in a posting a few months back: "My brain is full."

I find that so much of my idea generation has to do with finding commonalities between things, or aspects that link them together. If I am going to write anything down - especially here - I will also hope that the product of bringing disparate things together might be something unique, and if not that, at least something worth sharing. After all, there are no unique ideas, only unique iterations, right?

I've been accused by many of being someone who "thinks too much." Since starting to commit my ideas here, I'm now more on the lookout than ever for the deeper meaning of signals everything around me can offer.

Take my last workout with the heavybag in my garage. A former karate student, I still like to mix it up with the bag; I never stopped loving to kick and hit things. (Ah...now one gets why the cheesy choice of photo this week - and no, it ain't me.)

So last time I'm there wailing away on it - it's one of those water-filled base kinds that sit on the floor - and it starts spinning in a predictable pattern, so that it bounces back rythmically toward me with each punch. Each time, I go back in with the right hook in response. It becomes a dance of sorts, as the bag does its wobbly spinning thing each time I club it: bam-wobble-bop-bop-wobble-bam.

And it's this dance that boxers and sparrers of all disciplines rely on in predicting the next best place to go in and punish one's opponent. We also look for signals in the way other body parts might "telegraph" the fighter's intentions, like the eyes getting really wide when someone's about to strike. Dancers act on and often mirror the signals of their partners in a similar fashion.

And isn't it therefore a kind of communication that one has with one's training bag/sparring partner/opponent? See? It's all communication.

Or DO I just think too much? D'you think so? Lemmeknow by posting your comment...

And remember, you can still win this month by posting your comment! [see sidebar top left]

Toronto newsies enjoy clearer, more readable media

I haven't talked much about the mainstream media, and indeed my blog aims to examine what goes on mostly outsideof it. But as a clear language and literacy advocate, I'm sort of excited about what's been going on there lately.

In the last six months, both CanWest Global's TV news and the Toronto Star have launched ad campaigns focusing on how they're making the complex more simple for us.

The Global TV News has been tagging "News. Understood." to its commercials for months, complete with the earnest faces of its anchors as proof. This didn't surprise me, as they've always used a very direct - almost in your face - reporting style.*See Endnote 1*

I was more struck though when I saw that the Toronto Star is now making much on radio ads of its new, more readable, visual layout. It kind of takes me back, as when I have done readability assessments of clients' materials in past, I've often quoted the Star's reading level as an example of what Grade 8 looked like.

Back then, the Star used the more traditional, serif body and heading fonts. Now, as you can read for yourself, Your new Star's redesign improves readability," and "adds new features."

And they've done a very good job of practising what they preach, IMHO. The nice sans-serif blue typeface, the ample whitespace surrounding smiling photographic images...all good stuff for reading ease and consumer appeal.

This medium lends itself naturally to these features: many Web sites follow a "newspaper style" layout, to separate columns of info and images. Witness CNN's site, which has remained a terrific example. **See Endnote 2

The problem is, many sites try to cram too many columns in there, so things like logos and thumbnails end up looking like wads of crushed insects. CNN still only uses three columns, while some sites are up to five or six! Not surprisingly, Global's News site for Ontarians is similar: three main columns.

Interested in clear design? Have some favourite sites of your own? Lemmeknow...

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*Endnote 1
(I admit that I find their reporting tactics to be on the American-style fearmongering side. Personally, I get tired of being asked so often, so urgently "Is this the kind of school you want your child in?". Leslie Roberts' radio show on CFRB, however, is brilliantly sensitive and candid - second only to the also brilliant John Moore.)

**Endnote 2
I could have done without the double-wide, animated, hot-pink Victoria's Secret ad in the extreme right column.

Quickie divorce and remarriage via Facebook

The other week I finally got onto Facebook, the online social networking tool that's been reported on frequently of late as a forum for misguided teenage bullying and careless regard for personal boundaries.

I would not likely have signed up, but when I saw how many of my over-30 friends actually had a profile, I couldn't resist. I just LOVE finding out what makes people tick, and it turned out I was able to locate a whole whack of former colleagues with whom I'd lost touch. Above is the Face that greets my friends on my page(the only ones I've set up to see my profile info).

This week, I found a snag in Facebook's generally intuitive and bullet-proof navigation and user settings.

Since I'm just getting used to how my info displays, I've been adding and removing things from my profile. Take my birth year: I don't mind people knowing when my birthday is, but don't necessarily want all my Facebook friends - or those who want to be my friend - to know I'm pushing 40 (they might kick me out of the club!).

It's common to see where your Facebook friends have altered their profiles, too, as you will get a news feed about the change each time one of them makes it.

So, this week while fiddling, I removed not only my birth year but also my marital status. I'm figuring it's not relevant for these purposes - everyone on my Friends list knows I'm happily partnered, as evidenced by the pix of my daughter and husband available to Facebook friends.

But, when I changed my selection in the drop-down menu from "married" to blank, the newsfeed to my friends said I had changed my status from married - and next to the note was a broken-heart icon!!! So, even though I'd simply wanted the entire category to disappear, the system read and reported my change as though I had become un-married.

When I corrected the error a day later, a couple people jokingly wrote that I sure did work fast: divorced-then-remarried within a day!

Of course, it was the system's fault. It did not allow me to simply remove the mention of marital status and have that change recorded as such. Just goes to show how systems that automatically draw conclusions based on the information that's inputted are only as reliable as those who set them up; this one did not allow for the subtleties of how one might handle that particular chunk of her personal info.

It scares me to think of what happens to people who don't pay as much attention as I do (and I'm not nearly the savviest tech user around), when they choose what information they share, and with whom...