Nicola Owen

Online identity

Often in everyday life we are faced with having to hide our real self just so we will not experience rejection or embarrassment. We have the control to decide which self we display in which social settings; there is a solution to this, personal homepages. These allow a person to be who ever they want without the fear of any personal attack. There is less decimation online than in the real world, people are free to say what they want without fear of not being accepting. Things on a personal homepage for example can be easily changed, like the colours or what we say about our selves, and sometimes we can make up a whole new person or change our gender. These sites give a person the chance to be who they want even if its not the real them.

Many services provides offer free web space such as yahoo or geocities, who claim to have over 4.5 million active homepage builders each. These companies offer templates as well for your sites making it even easier to have your own webpage.

Often people use these sites as a simple diary to tell the world what they have done that day, or write down there feelings, people often do this to make things clearer in there heads. These homepages act as the person’s connection to a world where their self-doubts are easily hidden or overcome in certain situations online. The main example of this is a homosexual person who feels they can’t reveal there sexuality to someone face to face, the internet gives them the oppurity to relieve this information in a less harsh environment on the web. Often getting this information out in the open on the web will help the person reveal it to people face to face as well. The Internet offers the user the opportunity to relieve facts with of the fear of social discrimination. It also gives the user the oppurtity to chat to others people on the web who are in similar situation or people who can help you. The Internet brings together people from different cultures and background who all chat freely together on the net, but they would not dream of talking to these people if they met on the street. Would we class this as an ideal world, a world without discrimination, a world were people live in peace? Or is this just fantasy world?

Although having a homepage is often seen as a good thing. Is it really? People seem to be living out a fantasy life on the web. Are they simply showing complete strangers the real them and hiding behind a more socially accepted personality in real life?

Are they fakers? Surely this is wrong when complete strangers may know the real them better than their blood relatives or their friends? The question is does the Internet help these people be more socially accepted or does it simply encourage them to live a lie.

Another way people create an online identity is by creating fan sites these are similar to homepages but the person has dedicated their site to their favourite programme, film or film star or even hero.
Fans are stereotyped as obsessive losers living in a fantasy world populated with characters from their favourite programmes. Maybe this is a bit harsh should we really stereotyped all of fans as losers, could they just be people who want to share their views with other people who enjoy the same things. Science friction programme are often set in the future, give the viewer a chance to in put there own idea, because there is a strong element of fantasy, they relate these to real-life issues. It seems to me that often people have theses website because in normal life they are not accepted for whatever reason maybe they are gay or they different than the normal in some way. But again is this just a stereotype or is it true?

I don’t use chartrooms so I don’t really know what goes in them, but from what I have heard they are ordinary people who chat to each other often they have never meant. This is properly why I don’t use they I idea of chatting to a complete stranger does not really appeal to me, but I understand that some people like to chat to people from all over the world.

Again on sites like this people change the names and don’t always relieve who they really are, they also sometimes change everything about them, inventing a whole new person.

I have never really thought about my online identity, but I do use the Internet a lot. I find it quite scary that when I go on the Amazon website it always says welcome Nicola even when I haven’t logged in. It was then that I realised that when you visit sites they remember data about you and what you looked at. This is what makes up part of my online identity, it kind of scary when you think that it might be really easy for someone to access information about you. Information is gathered about everyone that uses the internet, so if that it true then we all have an online identity, data facts about us and what we like. Can you access this information? If it is information about you then should you be able to view it? Who can view it? Is it right that facts and credit card details are stored about us on the web, most people don’t even realise that they even have an online identity or data built up about them.


Another reason why that I have an online identity is by MSN messenger and hotmail I use this to keep in touch with my friends who are all over England at different universities. Having free email accounts, which can be accessed, easily on the net makes it easy for anyone to have one. Having your own email means the user can have any name they want not necersily there name. I am bit boring and mines just my name but a lot of people have weird emails, often there favourite football team of some sort of nickname. But on msn messenger you can change sign in name to something other than your name. Most people have completely random names, which mean nothing to anyone. Mine is completely random it is a line from a song but people always ask me why I have that as my sign in name because they no it is out of character, because your friends know you who you are and what you are like. But in chat rooms it is easier to use any name you want because no one knows the real you. Is having a sign-in name another way to hide the real me from people or is it a bit of fun? I would personally say that it is a bit of fun but maybe for certain people they use it to so a different side to their personally or a different them. As I chat to my friends on the Internet I would not say I have a different identity online but in a chat room I might chat to someone different because I didn’t no them and would be reserved.

So we can see that online identities are created in loads of different ways often without the user even knowing about it. So what ever you use the web for you are constantly building up an online identity.

posted by monkeynic @ 7:37 pm 0 comments

Colour theory and graphic design

Most people have a basic understanding of colour and the colour wheel. But there are lots of other aspects to colour, which most people don’t always know. Most people know that all colours can be divided into categories, such as primary, warm, or neutral colours, but often this is as much as they know, it is essential that designers have a better understanding of colour theory.

Designers use colour because they evoke certain emotions or because they look good most people will tell you that the latter is not the best way to approach colour designs. Although I feel that it is important to get a balance between the two, proper colour theory can help a designer create something, which both looks good and evokes emotion.



The psychological association of a colour is often more meaningful than a visual experience, which is why it is important that a designer has a good understanding of colour theory. Colours can stimulate all sorts of different emotions such as: excite, depress, tranquilize, increase appetite and create a feeling of warmth or coolness. Each colour affects us differently emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. By understanding how colour psychology influences us, we can effectively use colour therapy to give us an effective use of colour. This composition to me creates a sense of warmth; I think this is because the colours remind me of summer, which evokes the feeling of warmth and a happy emotion.

As I said earlier colours could be arranged into categories, colours are seen as warm or cool, mainly because of a universal association, but not all colours evoke the same meaning to everyone, people from different cultures often have different views.

Yellow, orange and red are associated with warm feeling, blue, green, violet are cooler feeling. Often artists use warm colours in the foreground of their pictures and cooler colours in the background to create depth.



People are familiar with the basic colour wheel but there are millions of other colours in between each of the main colours, red, yellow, blue, orange, violet, green. Artists spend year’s experminating with paints, to work out which colours work together. It is a well know saying that red and green should never be seen together expect upon a fool, but the basic colour theory says that compliementy colours such as red and green should work together. This colour composition illustrates the use of red and green together and I feel the colours do work well together but I feel the only reason for that is because I have used hues of the colour red and green and not just the standard colour on the wheel. I will leave it up to you to decide weather you feel the colours work together or not. Would this composition work if it was the anycolours together or does it have to be compliementy colours, does the colours being opposite on the colour wheel really make that much difference?

picture4essay
Originally uploaded by nic6.

“Nature doesn’t make mistakes with colour. No matter how vivid or subtle, they always seem to work together – lime greens, blues, violet pinks, yellows”

I found this quote on a website and decided to give it a try I took a picture of a birds of paradise flower. I picked the six main colours, and then I found images, which were the same colours as well as changing the colours of images to fit in with the colour range. I then randomly put the images together in no real order I just wanted them to look right. I think the theory has worked well and that this is an excellent way to guarantee that the colours work together.

“Colour not only affects other colours, but also people viewing it. It affects people emotionally and mentally. When you view a colour, it is transmitted to your eye by reflected light (general) and is encoded by the rods and cones in the retina. These ocular mechanisms invert the information and send it through the optic nerve, when the information reaches the brain, it is then decoded and it is here that the mind will translate the colour into meaning.”

Colours have different meanings all around the world, most painters are not concerned with colour psychology but graphic designers have to consider this when designing. Colours such as yellow are seen as bright and cheerful but can be over-powering if looked at for a long time. Red is considered as an angry yet energizing, pink on the other hand is seen as calming. A designer most take all this in to account when designing, it is important that the colours not only work well together but they are also pleasing to the eye.

It is not often just one colour that tigers the response to the colour, it is often the combinations of colours that surround it.

“ there are no wrong colours; we do not respond to just one colour, but to colours in combination. You could have a grey sky on a summer day, but our reaction to that grey with the vivid colours of the summer landscape would be different from the combination of a grey sky with snow white. Even the winter landscape contains many colours.”

So when design a designer not only has to decide if the colour work well together using colour theory but if also the colours evoke a meaning which works with the thing they are designing.

While I was doing my research I found this website which doesn’t take colour theory into account at all bad website the colour in the background distracts the viewer from the rest and after a while the colour starts to hurt your eyes and the text blends into the background because the colours are really similar.




Bibliography

Websites:

http://www.liquisoft.com/colortheory.html colour theory 26/11/04


http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdpal3.htm colour theory for web site designers 26/11/04

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html colour theory 22/11/04

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html colour psychology 2/12/04

http://psychology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://shibuya.com/garden/colorpsycho.html colour psychology 2/12/04

http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/astrology/color.shtml meanings of colours 21/12/04

http://www.heavenlyideas.com/color-therapy/color-psychology.html colour psychology 11/12/04

http://www.total.net/~daxx/colour_psycho.shtml colour psychology 11/12/04

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/how.html colour theory 12/12/04

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color3.html colour theory 12/12/04

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/how.html colour 2/12/04

http://koti.mbnet.fi/neptunia/quotes/clpsych.htm really bad colour theory website 12/12/04

posted by monkeynic @ 7:34 pm 0 comments