WK 11 | Making Media – Photo

View this post on Instagram

Good designs will have it all — aesthetic pleasure, art, creativity — and at the same time be usable, workable, and enjoyable. The WiFi router from @huawei not only has the minimalist style aesthetic pleasure but also it is creative to have one base and one satellite in the set, the most important is it works so well, it’s true plug and play and it’s high speed everywhere. What item in your life do you think it’s suitable these characteristics? #design #designs #gooddesign #huawei #huaweiwifi #huaweiwifiq2pro #huaweiwifirouter #wifi #wifirouter #routerwifi #router #aesthetic #aesthetics #aesthetic #minimalism #minimalist #creative #creativity #home #homeappliance #smarthome #china #chineseproducts #white

A post shared by 🌿 📚📗📝💚🏕 (@yumao0520) on

 

How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

 

I captured the image by continuing using the build-in camera on Instagram on my iPhone 7 as I would like to explore the affordances of Instagram completely, even if I am still not used to use the Instagram to author photos so far and disliked the authoring process of the Instagram. The objects I chose for this week is a set of Wi-Fi router. I captured many photos for them because I kept changing the background setup and wanted to create the best aesthetic pleasing for the white router as I can (in the situation that only uses the basic editing tool in Instagram). I finally opted the grey-purple silk background and it produced the slight spangled visual effects in the picture.

 

Using the Instagram build-in camera to capture photos is an easy process, but it would become a little complicated when users tried to capture a lot of photos. In particular, when it compared with a phone camera, it is kind of wasting time to a certain extent. The Instagram camera is not allowed users to continuous shoot, and users have to click the “go back” icon on the left upper corner in the Instagram capturing page and then users are able to capture next photo. The previous photo would save as the draft automatically. Differences in phone camera capturing, users can take photos continuously which only needs to click the recording button repeatedly.

 

I took these photos from the same angle as possible as I can, but the color in the pictures, especially the color of the silk background seems to look different in these four photos, I think it can be partly related to the lighting position. I handed hold the lamp in the side of directly upper of the objects in order to eliminate the routers’ shadow as much as possible and used the low-level lighting to avoid the over-exposure, but because I held the lamp by hand, the light would be slightly moved. While taking photos, I tried not to be so closed towards the router because the phone shadow would show on the routers if I was very close, but I also need to near the routers as close as possible and had the router become the main object in the photo meanwhile.

 

I dislike keeping the aesthetics consistency for these six posts by using the same filter and editing tools, as I think every photo has their different aesthetics creativity (although keeping similar style will look fantastic in the Instagram feed). Therefore, I always like to playing around with different filters and editing tools to each post. In this post, I choose the filter “Reyes”, which I am not familiar to, and also because the lighting is slightly different in each photo, I needed to edit photos one by one by playing around with the different editing tools. I adjusted the contrast level, structure level and so on,  also I tried the radial of the tilt-shift to make the object obviously, but I was not satisfied with the effect.

 

How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

 

Before publishing, I took a couple of pictures as I changed many backgrounds setup and its actual effects needed to be seen in the pictures, not in the eyes, also I captured some photos showing their details and then it can help further understand the story behind them, not only to show the objects themselves. Besides, I wanted to make a little different with the previous two image posts that I only uploaded single photo, thus I chose four photos from among this time and uploaded them onto the Instagram account yumao0520. The standard I chose photos is according to if details are clear and if its aesthetics.

 

I also added more hashtags compared to the last week’s post as I wanted to expand the distribution, these were #design #designs #gooddesign #huawei #huaweiwifi #huaweiwifiq2pro #huaweiwifirouter #wifi #wifirouter #routerwifi #router #aesthetic #aesthetics #aesthetic #minimalism #minimalist #creative #creativity #home #homeapliance #smarthome #china #chineseproducts #white. Different from I geo-tagged on the popular tourist spot in previous posts, I geo-tagged into the city which I am currently living in, in the photo post. I will clearly explain why I use some different hashtags and changed the geo-tagging in the distribution part.

 

The caption I included said:

 

 

In the text caption, I quoted Norman’s idea that he thinks good designs should have aesthetics, creativity and easy to use these characteristics (Norman 1998, pp. xiv) and explained why I define the Huawei router is a good design product from these characteristics perspectives, then same with previous five posts, I asked a question as to the end. I had considered that whether or not I should change my caption into very short version like previous students done, but I think the one sentence or few words cannot satisfied with my understanding to the good design and why I think the object is good design. It would not have reliability and persuasiveness.

 

How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

 

As I mentioned in the publish part, I used more hashtags in this photo post. Among them, I used some hashtags which are related to some keywords that I mentioned in the text caption but I didn’t use them in the previous posts, such as aesthetics and creativity. There are a huge number of posts in these hashtags, such as #aesthetic (58.9M posts) and #creativity (18.3M posts). Employing much more hashtags is useful in distribution. It is the first time my photo post to get three “likes” in a very short time after uploading. It is a really exciting outcome for me, although the 3 “likes” are not a big thing, compared with I only got the one “like” in the previous posts, it proves that using more hashtags is efficient in distribution. In order to keep up more engagement through distribution, I also tagged the @huawei Instagram official account in order to distribute towards people who would view Huawei Instagram account, and added a geo-tag as well.

 

In addition, I toggled both Tumblr and Facebook buttons which allowed for automatic posting of the photo onto these two social platforms. I found out an interesting thing though, on Facebook, it would show the all four photos in the post, whereas, in the Tumblr, it only showed the first photo and if you want to have a look more, you need to click the photo and then it would bring you to my Instagram account. This way might be useful to further distribute my Instagram account on Tumblr. But I think it is one of the affordances within Tumblr, I therefore would stop here and not explain more in this blog.

 

My Post on Tumblr

 

My Post on Facebook

 

Reference List:

 

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York, pp. Vii-xv.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *