This is a poster I made for a movie. In the movie, a cycling mailman is getting chased by a gangster or something. Naturally my gangster is Tony Montana. The mailman is unknown…thank God it’s not me :p
Feb
09
Ok. For this workshop I chose a poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Haren og Reven (The Hare and the Fox :p). A nice little poem which is complicated enough for a simple guy like me. The site isn’t very fancy because I’m not very good at this yet. But enjoy anyway: www.student.uib.no/~ara007/html_filer/dikt.html
Jan
31
Semiotic analysis of a Norwegian political party’s website
Well, to begin with I just want to say that all the sites I found belonging to Norwegian political parties were pretty bad. They were all boring and square, no fancy stuff (they have a lot to learn from mr. John Edwards). Anyway, I am going to analyze Senterpartiet’s web site.
The first thing that strikes me when I enter is without doubt the design. The whole page is green! The color green represents the environment. By displaying the page in green they tell us that Sp is an environmentally concerned political party. Their ideological message is first and foremost to preserve the environment and protect the Norwegian farmers’ interests. I think they have done an exelent job exposing this not only by writing it, but also showing it.
Along with the colors, there are some notable pictures. My focus is turned especially towards the one to the left, with Åslaug Haga portraited, which represents the party. The picture works in a denotative way. It denotes nature. It is very close to being a motion graphic, because obviously she was in motion when the picture was taken (or so it seems), she appears healthy in the picture, and the party is obviously trying to promote a healthy and ecological message to the viewer. There are green surroundings on the picture, and along with her greenish jacket this again tells us about their stand on environmental issues. It gives me connotations towards freshness and good health.
Discourse:
Sp are known for their support of Norwegian farmers and developement of ecological farming, which in addition to the color of the page and the photograph, is reflected with their logo, the four-leaf clover, in the top left corner of the page.
To navigate around the site is pretty simple, on the top of the site you find different categories that you may relate to or find more interesting than the rest, e.g. aiming at women and youth. If you click on these links, the things you, e.g. as a teenager, probarbly find most interesting will appear. So there are different sections within the main site itself.
Beneath the logo we find the classic: what we do, who we are and what we stand for info links, like any other political party site would have (but maybe not as easy to find as on this one, way to go Sp!). You can easily sign up for a membership and/or look for open spots within the party, through links on each side of the main page.
On the top right there is a calendar displayed, on this you can click on to each date (if there’s something happening then) for spesific info about their agenda that day. And under the calendar there is a list of the most important events in the future. This keeps the viewer up to date.
Throughout the middle of the page they publish news about different events and issues like an ordinary newspaper-site would have done. The most recent and important news are naturally displayed at the top for the viewer to read at once, so that he or she does not have to scroll down and look for them etc. There is also a spesific search launch to the right where you can search for spesific things you want to read about, have questions about or aquire knowledge about. The lower left-hand side of the page consists of articles where Sp are involved, and displays how they are reviewed other places (e.g. in newspapers and on TV).
Production:
The page is not very interactive. I could not find any forums or something like that where I could participate in any kinds of debates or something. Perhaps if you are already a member, but they should atleast have a forum so that people who are interested in becoming members could chat with others and ask questions etc., and not having to contact them by phone, fax or mail (numbers at the very bottom of the page). If I compare, the John Edwards page is much more interactive in many ways, some may say too interactive, so interactive that it becomes confusing (too much on one page). But one thing I have noticed with the John Edwards page that I think the Sp page is missing, is publishing of political material on popular websites that have alot of visitors every day. E.g. John Edwards’ “multimedia campagn” on youtube. I believe that, to involve the public in those ways, is a good move to capture voters, but so far, I have not seen Sp doing anything similar on their page.
To conclude I would say the page is easy to navigate and has a clear way of telling the visitor what they stand for. But it could definetly be more interactive. There are (as far as I could see) no audio or video messages/links on the page which could be used to help them gain more support and more voters from, perhaps, a younger crowd. So basically, the page provides a clear political message, which is good, it’s easy to navigate which also is good, but does not involve the visitor/viewer in any way, atleast not any good way.
Jan
26
heisveis
This is a “reaction” to Robert’s post about his space. The reason why I want to comment on his post is because when I first read it, I drew connotations to my own blog (no offense Robert :p ). It was suprisingly similar in many ways, first of all it was written in English, like mine (I write in English for fun since I study English, I am Norwegian though…), he had described his working space, like myself, and his IKEA desk. Similar to my description of my JYSK desk.
As for the design (colors etc), he chose soft white, with a wooden finish :p In my eyes, this tells me that he is a traditional “city man” and is living in a rush. He doesn’t care about colors and stuff, and his motto when it comes to furniture (if he has one, something I seriously doubt) is probarbly: if it’s easy and simple, I’ll take it.
When we talked about ideology in class, our teacher mentioned something about if it’s green or ecological, the person is probarbly conservative, traditional, carefree and wild (yes, those were the words). This matches my description of Robert’s not only workspace, but also the walls surrounding it. It may not be green, but it’s definetly ecological with all the wood etc. That’s my opinion anyway, comment if you disagree. Now, I won’t go as far as saying that Robert is carefree and wild (I mean gz! I don’t know the guy), but as I mentioned earlier perhaps he’s kind of traditional and stuff.
Jan
19
Heisveis
I’ve just moved to a new apartment, so I haven’t really done anything other than just dropping off everything I own. But I have a vision of how I’d like it to be; nice and tidy, but it probarbly won’t (or maybe it will, because I really don’t own that much). My room however is just a regular room with four walls, not very exciting. There aren’t anything on the walls yet, because I don’t know if I’m allowed to hang something up yet (I only rent you know). I have a computer (with no internet YEY!) and a big screen TV (with no signal YEY!!!), thats pretty much the electronic stuff. When I “designed” my workspace (and by designed I mean put together, and by workspace I mean a desk from JYSK), I considered the fact that I like, although I’m not a lefty, the PC-mouse on my left and not on my right (long story). So I made sure to have alot of open space on the left side of the desk, for the mouse.
I’ve placed my bed under the window because I like the view. I even gave up the good room, just to get that view. My friend got a much better room, but I’m a view man so I don’t care. I can see Ulriken and Fløyen etc. while the only thing he can see is a bunch of trash cans.
I’m a nice guy with a nice personality, so I put a carpet on the floor so I won’t bother the people living under me with noisy steps etc. And as you probarbly have noticed by now, I’m not very good at using the terms we’re supposed to use. ( I’m gonna have to come back to the multimodal text stuff, got to read some more about it before I screw this even more up)
