gerry leonidas typography & graphic communication · gerry leonidas typography & graphic...

Cloudfacetweetflickpress is good for you. Really. 

Gerry LeonidasTypography & Graphic Communication

MA Typeface Design

PGT course is the basis for the trials with online platforms: flexibility, and speed (annual cycle)

Intensely international distribution of graduates

Official sitesBlogs Social mediaStudent-driven sites

We use a range of channels to create a reference body of connections and links ot resources

Blackboard: a closed system, does not allow easy interaction and connection with the wider internet

Dept homepage already hints at social media connections

UoR-hosted blog very successful (1,500 twitter followers on the blog stream alone)

Two “official” channels; Wordpress very good for staff buy-in

Programme-specific Tumblr site: infrequent, longer posts...

... and reference lists, seminar items: pump-prime discourse in other HEIs through leadership

Student-driven site with graduate work, including some academic work: key reference (c. 10,000 hits when updated with each new cohort); record goes back to 2000, a record of excellence in the field

Some of the work posted there is key reference notes for practical projects

Recap: two official sites, two programme-specific

Flickr site driven by students: a lot of “how we teach” images, but also from seminars: nearly 4,000 images...

... mostly of historical material

Additionally: personal blogs that have items like conference talk slides:

as from this TED-like event from Poland last week

Overall, six key channels with different identities.

@gerryleonidas >1800@typefacedesign >3300

Social media: two key Twitter streams, c. 4,500 unique followers

... and two Facebook groups, driven by students (staff mostly lurk)

iftt.comtwitterfeed.com

We hook the blogs to Twitter automatically with iftt and twitterfeed

So: CMS site updates through social mediaBlogs feed into Twitter

Student-driven sites create both more permanent presence and ephemeral buzz

Issues

Online identity and staff personasUpdating of content

ITS support for UoR sitesComparative costs

Not all staff want to be online, but Wordpress has made a big differenceCMS is not user-friendly, we need rapid and easy posting

Further work

MA (Res) TDKnowledge hub for typeface design

New initiatives for distance-learning extend our requirements, we are looking at options. Access to UoR resources by students in ex-EU locations is a an issue.

Digital Dev introduced us to Yammer, we are currently playing around

Thank you

@gerryleonidas@typefacedesign