Draft it baby... Draft it

In reflection of the creation process of my blog, I realise now how much there is to consider during the design process. I have used the convention of colour arrangements, different texts, white space, pronouns and linguistic features in a reader centered approach to appeal to my target audience. My audience being the sophisticated and opinionated more mature generation. For example those who listen to talk back radio, aging from around 40 - 70 years old. The purpose of my blog being to give a brazen, uncensored opinion freely and blatantly, hence the name 'The Brazen View'. This form of matter-of-fact opinion aims to arouse the audience in thoroughly agreeing or disagreeing with what I have to say. The idea being the reader's opinion must be "black or white", "left or right" as if to say "There's no fence sitting around here!" Although whether the audience agrees or disagree with the given opinion is irrelevant, as long as they are intrigued and involved.

Firstly, I strategically chose mature colours such as greys, deep blues, maroons and creams to relate to the target audience as 40 - 70 year old are not going to enjoy bright pinks, lime greens and fluorescent yellows striped all over the page. The different texts have also been deliberately chosen. I want to keep a 'classic' feeling to the page, but needed the text to be readable and clear. Therefore I decided to make the headings on the side of the page and the dates of the blogs a classic Georgia font whilst keeping the news feeds easy to read in making them an Arial font.

Secondly, I chose the beach/light house background as it suggests sitting back at a beach house reading the morning news. This is a sophisticated scene that a mature audience would enjoy. The background was also mostly white which made the black text more readable and assisted the use of white space. This was important as the audience at hand would not enjoy copious amount of clutter all over the page as seen on myspace or facebook - blogs that are intended adolescents.

Lastly, I used the convention of pronouns and colloquial language to help the readers relate to the text. For example I included the sentence, "You'll be lucky to get a finger in let alone a foot." The pronoun in this sentence makes the audience think I am talking directly to them and personalises their reading experience. My colloquial writing style helps them to familiarise themselves with me and become comfortable with me as a writer since I am talking to them informally as a friend would. I have also been quite deliberately ironic in my writing style, which adds entertainment value to my blog. For example, "...Lost, I would have to say was one of the top 20 worst television shows ever to be screened. The program consisted of a plot that was lost itself..." This form ironic opinion creates a win/win situation. The reader can either take your humorous opinion as stupid and let it occupy their mind for the rest of the day, thinking about it or agree with you entirely and become your biggest fan.

Each component of my blog has been thoroughly thought out and utilised for a reader centered approach. I found the design process to be tricky at first, but became second nature when I began thinking about my targeted audience.