VISLANG: PROJECT 3 FINAL STATMENT & PROGRESS

Communication Theory. What a great thing to learn. After all these years of communicating, I finally learn the theories and explanations behind it all. I have to say, I was unaware of the many different models out there, and now, mine will soon be out there. I'm very interested in people and the way people communicate, so this project was one that kept me even more excited. I was really drawn to the Emmert/Donaghy model. Why? Mainly because of the support from perception, reasoning, and motivation. Perception is a huge factor that I notice when communicating, and the simple slight change in tone of voice can alter that perception.

I took a little influence from the Emmert/Donaghy model in the making of mine. Perception is one that occurs in most of my artifacts, if not all. From this influence, I proposed the idea of creating small little booklets to teach people about communication theory. Each of my four booklets is based around a persona that I created from our actual conversations we had at the beginning of this project. I created the following persona's: Mr. Perfectionist, Little Miss Confused, The Weirdo, and The Know It All. Now honestly, I had an extremely tough time with creating these persona's. I still don't believe they are there yet, as good well-known, well-rounded personas. I thought the booklets needed help with a base, so I paired each persona with a name, making it more personal. "Meet Justin, Mr. Perfectionist". This came about from the idea of certain type of name calling I guess you could say. For example, similar moments have happened in studio. "You pulled a Mo!" means you cut your finger with an xacto. I was trying to apply the same concept to my communication booklets. "Oh I'm speaking to a Justin"-means I'm speaking with a perfectionist-which means we're going to be communicating with no noise. I'm thinking these set of books would be something not only for laughs, but for friends to learn about other communication styles...maybe they'll relate to a persona. haha.

Throughout the piece is the use of Adobe Garamond typeface, and my personal hand-written type. I wanted to use the idea of marking up a paper as marking up the annotations. To further support that and keep cohesiveness, all annotations are in red (the idea of red pen marking up). I gave each persona its own color (Orange-The Know It All, Blue-Mr. Perfectionist, Green-The Weirdo, and Magenta-ish-Little Miss Confused) The narrators color or basic text color is brown, a color that went well with each persona color, and it is also keep cohesive throughout each book. Each book cover also has a subtle pattern in background using an analphabetic I thought fit each persona. (An ellipsis-The Know It All, Question Mark-Little Miss Confused, Exclamation Point-Mr. Perfectionist, and a Pilcrow-The Weirdo)

Altogether, I think I met the project objectives. I created a visual engaging, mulitple page, time based refined graphic design artifact. I designed a communication model referencing the tradtional communication models, and I referenced the orignal dialogue within my design. (They take for of the conversations in each project.)

I am taking a lot with me from this class. From the basics of making sure I explore all my options, concepts, and image making processes to using synecdoche, metaphors, pathos and logos modes of appeal, and communication theory in my future designs. Like "they" say, it really is worth the struggle to see the progress in the end.I feel I have progressed since I transferred in. I know I look and notice these modes of appeal and rhetorical tropes more often in work already out there. It's one thing a understand message within a design, but it's a whole other feeling to understand why you understand that message.






Hand annotated all four books!













Can you see the patterns?



















My box, porable like a deck of cards

Progress Report

Progress:
I shall begin with the titles. I have stuck with a universal title approach

Meet Justin - Mr. Perfectionist
Meet Marley - Little Miss Confused or Little Miss Clueless
Meet Duke - The Know It All
Meet Nick - The Weirdo

I have all of the copy for the books done, but still have to annotate 2 books.

VISLANG: OVER BREAK

Decisions I need to make, and problems I need to resolve:
1. The Cover - What will it look like? Is this going to be hand rendered? How will the text interact with the image? Is there a way I can crop the image to make a more dynamic cover? 10 different approaches
2. The Inner - Simple annotations on the first spreads/ Deeper explanations inside the flip down pages - How many pages are going to flip down? Which ones?
3. Binding - Figure out a solid way to bind the book
4. User Testing - Try this puppy out! See how people react to the folds and the information. Are the flip-downs too confusing? Are the persona's coming across the way I want them to?
5. Consistent dialog around the paper plate.

VISLANG: MORE PROCESS

I wasn't sure how to begin my annotations. Did I want them to be digital? Did I want them to be hand rendered? After working with the digital approach, I decided I didn't like where it was headed, so I explored the hand rendered route.





These are some of my annotation sketches as far as which style and look I want.

Below I printed my pages out and began annotating hoping I wouldn't misspell or mess up. I did once, but it's a matter of rewriting it somewhere else, and switching it in digitally.