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IDF – Effective Web Communication – #12

IDF – Effective Web Communication – #12

Interaction Design Foundation today suggested we reconsider our homepage’s pictures and words.

​Visual: OH I love the painting of the young 1700s author in inkwell-pausing contemplation. He communicates: We are trying to do a good job here, but we’re so awfully young, and have been ripped from foreign far-flung times before we could acclimate to them and placed here, in this strange netherworld of floating bits of thought and color: God help us!, people forgive us! and somehow if you could please help us we feel ourselves caught between the rough granite mortar and pestle, feel ourselves oozing out on all sides. Visually appealing: check; Building Familiarity and (lonely oh so lonely) presence: check; reducing uncertainty: ??? well, you are learning what you will get here: a lonely lost forgetful little boy turned author from the would-be-classicist-but-too-broken-hearted-to-stay-within-the-lines school.

Writing:

See below for info on WAP ebooks, novelty gifts, a Pure Love advertisement/gimmick/scam/lark, as well as intros to the poetry and assorted what-not that Bartleby Willard—as isolated and mournful as a blue whale quietly circling the sevenseas—lobbed onto this site during the six years he was supposed to be staying on task.​

WAS CHANGED TO:

See below for info on WAP ebooks, novelty gifts, Pure Love ads/scams, and intros to the poetry and assorted what-not Bartleby Willard—as isolated and mournful as a blue whale quietly circling the sevenseas—lobbed onto this site during the six years he was supposed to be staying on task.​

STREAMLINED it a bit. Considered taking the passive out of the end of the sentence, but decided I liked how it wrapped around reader and author, cuddling them together in the shameful sorrow of an almost-author almost-working all the time.

On the whole, I think this front page does the best it can. It gives readers a sense of the author (building familiarity and presence) while introducing the various offerings of the site. It is a little long-winded and self-indulgent in spots, but that’s part of explaining to would-be readers who we are: so sad, so lonely, so defeated by the monster, lying there flatback on the cold cement having given-up; yet trying, hoping, pushing for a better way, for Beauty which lifts up all. What about uncertainty? Are we reducing that? I think so: we’re making it very clear what is offered: a book, some novelty items, lots of literary doodles, lots of giveup. Is this what people want? What???
I ask you: What is a human being to do in a time so jumbled, chaotic, and likely to blow up as our own? They speak of a post-truth society, and we say: is there no way home from here? Is there no hope for shared truths founded upon a shared Truth? They say: work hard and go for it!, and we say: what? We can’t hear you, but do you see the ten gazillion scraps of thought and action flying from every direction, running like lemmings or Jesus-cursed pigs over the cliff?

When net-neutrality goes, even less people will see our pathetic little tappings at the overhead ice. Oh, someone pull them out! Someone break the ice! This is too terrible! To watch them through the cloudy scarred ice as the wrap their impotent tired little fists against four feet of frozen solid! Never were very good swimmers, nor much for holding their breath. Quite sad really–just not up for the task at hand; wrong training and all that.

AMW/BW/Sigh