Day: September 30, 2018

Link: My final design (Downloadable PDF) for Module 2: CBELL FINAL MOD2 INFO

MEMO:

To: Professor Lizardi

From: Charles Bell

Date: 9/23/2018

Re: Module 2: Pre-telegraphic Project

As this project progressed, many changes were made to my original plan and proposal. The useful feedback from both my fellow students and professor caused me to rethink some of the considerations that I had made during my original conception of the project. In the following memo, I will discuss my experience, and how these changes affected each specific area of the project below.

Audience:

The audience was initially intended for school aged children as an introduction into the history of communications. After some of the feedback and readings from the course materials, I decided to create a youthful design that would appeal to High School and Undergraduate students. I feel that the subject matter covered, and looks of this design works well to appeal visually to these students and the information is simple enough to be entertaining and interesting without intimidating the viewer.

Message:

The message here conveys the history of some of the major achievements in the pre-telegraphic history of communications. The first two examples are more primitive and simple, while the latter examples are more complex. I wanted to show how the technology allowed the user to use it for more developed and intellectually oriented uses as language and writing developed and the tools for communication became more complex.

Platform:

For this project, I used Illustrator to do the document layout, and Photoshop to prepare the photographs.

I intended to advance my skills in both programs and wanted to combine the rasterized graphics of Photoshop with the vector elements of Illustrator in order to create a new and interesting design that features both elements.

Design Considerations:

One consideration that I had during this project was to avoid covering too many topics or areas, which could cause me to spread myself too thin. I decided to concentrate on particular 4 areas that I thought relevant to my topic. I think in the future I may focus my research on one particular area in the history of communications, rather than four or more.

Design Challenges:

The biggest challenge was setting up a layout that would contain all of the information in a proper size, so that the text wouldn’t be too small to read when printed or used online. I wanted to have large images for an iconic look that would represent each section. This drastically cut down some of the space available to use. Bright color and icons were chosen so that the information would not be too overwhelming or intimidating to the younger viewers. Overall, I have a good amount of experience using both programs, but it is rare that I use Illustrator to do the bulk of my work in, and was interested in using the program as a way to layout an entire document from scratch.

In summary, I feel that this has been a very worthwhile project. It has allowed for me to grow my skillset in both Photoshop and Illustrator, and has given me an opportunity to gain extensive knowledge in the history of pre-telegraphic communications, and how it applies to the theories of affordance and uses and gratifications, that have been covered in class.