Haylie Berkland
Contributing Writer
In today’s world, we are gifted with so many creative minds that are eager to work as hard as they can and show their work to as many people as possible. Thus, the internet and media networking sites have made it easy for artists and writers to not only create their work, but to then also easily promote it and make it completely their own. Here are the top 5 media platforms for artists and writers of any kind.
1) Behance– This social media site is geared towards graphic designers aims to “showcase and discover creative work.” With this platform, users throughout the world can post their work in a simple format, as well as link to other networking sites like Twitter or LinkedIn, for any of their followers to see.
As the curators of the site update the feed with new and creative pieces every day, Behance is a useful platform to not only showcase work and gain interest from users near and far, but it also allows creative minds to easily discover what other artists are doing.
Senior IMS major Katelyn Emricson was introduced to Behance by her professors and in response said it has become very useful for her. “It’s a community of designers… So it’s great to get ideas and inspiration, but also to get feedback.” Emricson says that Behance has changed the way in which she is able to look at work, saying that, “It gave me more of an ability to have an outsider’s perspective.”
2) WordPress– For all of the writers out there, WordPress can be a very handy tool for promoting all styles of writing. It allows users to create free websites or blogs with personal domain names using any of the thousands of themes and plugins that the site offers. With features such as built-in comments and the ability for a lot of interactivity, this customizable and flexible platform site has become “the largest self-hosted blogging tool” available to writers.
“It’s really cool,” says English major Mackenzie Richards ‘15, who was introduced to WordPress when she received a blog assignment for her IMS class. “I can do this mesh between writing with my own voice, and writing to persuade people, while incorporating lots of humor and making it fun to read.” Richards says that she also really enjoys being able to incorporate images, hyperlinks and other mediums into her WordPress blog that help make it her own.
3) Flickr– Photographers all around the world can unite in the Flickr community, where users can share their own photographs, while also following other photographers to see their work. Not only can users upload any previously taken photos to their profile, but they can also take high resolution photos and videos to post right from the phone app. Flickr also offers editing tools and filters. With enough space to add more than 500,000 photos, Flickr is the perfect place for photographers to share and store their work.
4) Scrivener– College students know, more than anyone else, the difficulties in trying to organize their jumbled thoughts and ideas when they are doing any kind of longer writing assignment. However, Scrivener is here to make this part of the process easier.
Scrivener, a content-generation and project management tool, allows writers to do much more than simply type their words, from start to finish. With Scrivener, writers can break up their words, paragraphs or pages any way they want, and easily, select specific sections to take out, place in the margins, and drag and drop back into the document wherever and whenever they want.
Another useful feature of Scrivener is that it allows the user to keep any images, webpages, PDF files, videos, etc. that they might be using right in the program, and then presents them in a split screen along with the document, so the user can write while also looking at their extra material without having to go back and forth between different pages.
5) SoundCloud– With a mission to become the world’s largest social sound platform, SoundCloud allows users to upload, record, promote, and share their original music. This free website also allows users to follow other musicians, send messages, create playlists while discovering and listening to as much music as they want, and upload up to 180 minutes of their own original audio content onto their profile.
Additionally, while listening to content on SoundCloud, users can make comments on any specific part of the track, which will then show up when that certain part of the track is played. SoundCloud serves as very useful tool for musicians as well as anyone who loves a good tune.
