Intro: The Villager is an online newspaper that is run by students at Stevenson University. The newspaper caters mainly to Stevenson Students and other members of the Stevenson community as it allows for quick access to information about Stevenson as they publish weekly updates about sports, school events, and accomplishments.
Modes and Affordances:
Pertaining to the site’s modes, one of the main forms of communication appears to be pictures. Upon opening the site, the first thing you see is a revolving panel of images with titles that lead to articles. On the side and underneath, the moving panel is multiple still images with the same type of formatting. The front page allows you to scroll down where it continues to show you more images and titles. The use of imagery is a good attention grabber, although some of the titles fail in capturing my attention. However, this makes the site easily accessible and user-friendly as you can access featured articles with little to no effort.
Linguistics. The word choice of the Villager is very simplistic and easy to understand. The font size is large, square, and white, which makes it easy for the viewer to read. The article’s organization of sentences and information is also very clear and develops well into a coherent idea in the end. The delivery of the text is not very long and is only necessary information which also holds the reader’s attention.
Visual. The color of the Villager is not very interesting. It is a lot of white and black with a hint of green in the header. The layout of the site is very functional and allows you to access information easily, as well as find other articles similar to the one you are already reading. I think the size of the Stevenson Villager title is a little obnoxious because the logo just blends into the white background without any type of distinctiveness. The entire site’s style seems to be minimalistic but in a bad way. The framing of the website does not aid your perspective in any way. Everything seems to kind of blend or run together in an endless field of white.
Aural. There are not many aural modes on the Villager. I think that as an online newspaper that reports on things such as sports the Villager should have more video content. Videos are far more interesting to a lot of people who do not want to or like to, read. Therefore, the Villager should take advantage of adding a little sound to their website. Maybe an opening video that talks about a couple featured stories on the front page. Or a clip of sporting event that can be borrowed from Stevenson’s live streaming services.
Spatial. I think that the way the featured page was organized was very poor. The unevenness of the articles posted kind of gives a blended effect and can lead to confusion, frustration, and a headache.
Gestural. The gestural interaction of the user and the site is scrolling.
Conclusion. Overall, The Villager is a very functional website as it uses space, language, and visuals to communicate the information effectively. However, the website can become cluttered with unnecessary spacing issues caused by a lack of boundaries. Also, the website is not maximizing its full potential by not using any aural modes.