Archive for the ‘content’ Category

  • I love words: manopause, faffage, hellacious

    I learned to read a long time ago, but I can still remember the sheer amazingness of the discovery — like I’d found the keys to the universe and all of a sudden, EVERYTHING made sense. Words were everywhere and I was powering through them like a mad thing (and mispronouncing a fair few, I ought to add).

    reading

    Some years later, not that much has changed. I still read like a mad thing and I still love words. Only now there are more words to love, from the solid everyday standbys (“wattage”, “traveller”, “coax”) to the niche-y specialists you bring out for added pounce(“peripatetic”, “disingenuous”) when time and audience are right.

    The thing that really makes my head spin is the way language evolves. Even as I type this, old words are morphing and merging to send nifty little neologisms strutting out of our cultural soup of signifiers, all a-dazzle with tasty wordiness. Perhaps my favourite of these is the portmanteau, a linguistic mashup of two words and their meanings.

    For some time, I’ve been meaning to make a list of the niftiest new (or new to me) words I come across in daily parlance. Here are three I have enjoyed this week, with more to come as I encounter them.

    Manopause

    Noun: a break from dating, flirting, and all forms of sexual interaction with men

    “He is totally giving you the eye, go for it!”
    “I can’t, I’m on a manopause. He’s fit though — get in there, Shaz.”

    Faffage

    Collective noun: timewasting, to-ing and fro-ing and general faffing

    “You’re right — there is a direct correlation between the number of children a person has and the degree of faffage involved in their getting from A to B. Thank God we chose art over ankle-biters.”

    Hellacious

    Adjective: really awful with a sort of visceral twinge; a combination of hellish and atrocious

    “During the coldest night that winter in Siberia, Ferdinand was forced to rise every hour to stoke the fire with priceless Louis XIV furniture. For an antiques dealer it was a truly hellacious experience.”

    Photo courtesy of New York Public Library, used under a Creative Commons licence

    No Comments

    0
    Sara Williams By Sara Williams

    26th February 10

    0 comments

     content

    opinion

  • Pictory – A beautiful example of online editorial design

    I’ve talked before about exploring different ways of navigating and consuming content online.

    I first came across Pictory a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it. But as it starts to fill with stories and topics I feel provides some beautiful and elegant ways to gorge yourself on content and is really forging a path into new areas of content layout and navigation online.

    Their line ‘Your best photo stories’ explains what it is nicely.

    Pictory screenshot

    Let’s look at the evidence.

    Lovely, big images. Navigation via a keyboard which allows me to skip from piece to piece simply by pressing the left/right arrow keys. A balanced mix of captioned images and short stories pulled together to create a rich textured viewing / reading experience. Real-life stories which often cause an emotional stir in the reader. And the designer in me loves the use of Typekit fonts.

    I think it’s an example of crowdsourcing at it’s absolute best. A nice tightly worded brief but open enough for interpretation by the viewer. (Aren’t all the best briefs like this?)

    Being ultra picky. A full-screen view would be nice.

    Anyway, I think it’s best if you go there now and lose the next hour of your day.

    1 Comment

    1
    Simon I'Anson By Simon I'Anson

    21st January 10

    1 comment

     content

    design

  • Tear down this wall! Crowdsourcing comes of age

    Hello. I’m Sara and I joined Made by Many last month. My forte is content, so it seems appropriate that my first post should be all about conversation… specifically the two conversations that go with just about every digital project.

    Never simple, is it?

    The first of these is all about the customers, the people for whom we’re building this product or service. This conversation is pretty user-centric: essentially, what do they need? What are their problems, and how can we help solve — or at least minimise — them?

    Then there’s a second conversation — the behind-the-scenes, creative-type stuff about how things actually work. What functionality do we offer? Do our user stories tell the whole story, and does it have a happy ending? What about typeface and layout? And finally, how the hell do we iterate this beast? Read full post

    6 Comments

    6
    Sara Williams By Sara Williams

    17th November 09

    6 comments

     Made by Many

    UK Technology

    agile

    content

    innovation

    opinion

You are currently browsing the archives for the content category.

Our latest tweets

Categories

Archives

Find us on the web