Author: Daniel Libertz

“Rhetorical velocity” is a nonsensical term that means ‘the theory of how rhetoric/art/object are remixed, reconstituted, changed in physical and digital spaces over time and distance’. Reading about this concept made me think about memes. Memes are spread quickly, build meaning off of each successive variation and are themselves creates by “cutting and pasting” elements of rhetoric remixed with culture. While a meme itself is usually created to be repurposed and circulated, the original rhetoric may have not been made with those intensions. One meme that has been popular is “Brace Yourself Winter is Coming”. According to “Know Your Meme”, a website that tracks the history and usage of memes, “Brace Yourself Winter is Coming” originated from Game of Thrones from Ned Stark’s family saying, “Winter is Coming”. The image is a screenshot from a scene in the show in which Sean Bean is holding a sword. It is usually changed to “Brace Yourself X is coming” and commonly used for something cyclical in nature going to occur again, such as “Brace Yourself, Pumpkin Spice Season is Coming”, but can also be used in derivative ways. Due to the show’s popularity and easily recognizable, somewhat catchy quotes, and the meme’s ease of mutability, this meme has been popular for a number of years. Memes are built from popular or recognizable objects and transformed into “in-jokes”, social commentary, building relationships, etc. Memes are quick to share, easy to digest and don’t require the attention something like an article would need.

While “Brace Yourself Winter is Coming” has had mostly neutral usage, one meme made national headlines for it’s use by “Alt-right” media and has often been pegged as a racist symbol, Pepe the frog. The creator denounced it’s use and even due a funeral cartoon to “kill” the character. I’ll attach an opinion piece of the use of Pepe and the changing nature of memes at the end of this comment.

I think memes are a useful way to think about “rhetorical velocity” but they are certainly not the only object that is similar. In my poetry classes, we were often assigned to write a poem in response to a painting, sculpture, etc. The poem itself had to stand on it’s own, without relying on it’s inspiration for meaning and context. I think this assignment is a good example of “rhetorical velocity” in action. We remixed an emotive response into a different artwork. The audience was small because the class was small, but shared on a different media, it could have reached a larger audience.

Audience matters when we discuss “rhetorical velocity”. Medium also matters. In the age of the internet, asking the right question opens the right doors. Sometimes a turn of phrase can yield vastly different results on a Google search. I think that one of the lessons that we can glean from this reading is that information on the internet often can take on a life of it’s own.

The materials that we produce from this class, may be found be other individuals or groups. We can harken back to our perusal of the NASA website to find lessons about how information gets re-used, re-mixed and re-package. We theorized that NASA produced the climate change page as a resource for teachers, or students, or curious minds. NASA has a widely-known, reputable name, so the information on their website is assumed by the audience to be scientific, well researched, fact-checked and easy accessible for the audience to digest and repurpose the information.

The documents that we produce for this class do not benefit from name recognition and threrefore, must rely on the audience’s perception of the material. Did we use credible sources to establish ethos? Is our language biased? Is the point of our material coming across to the audience? Does the document have easily accessible “facts” that can be pulled out by an audience member?

I pulled the following passages from our reading, because I believe they hold some “bigger picture” value:

“The medium, or process, of our time—electric technology—is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life… Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication”

 

“delivery can no longer be thought of simply as a technical aspect of public discourse. It must be seen also as ethical and political—a democratic aspiration to devise delivery systems that circulate ideas, information, opinions and knowledge and thereby expand the public forums in which people deliberate on the issues of the day”

 

These remind me of social media, particularly of Facebook, and the importance of ‘sharing’ content in a responsible manner. Facebook has evolved from simply a way to connect with friends to the newest iteration, a more news-focused social sharing site. If we share our class materials, we have the responsibility to check our content for culturally insensitive material or language, be inclusive of people directly impacted by our social justice issues and to accurately portray the issue without relying on stereotypes or misinformation. It is our responsibility to consume media that also meets those standards. With the incessant, addictive nature of social media, it is easy to share content, react to the content produced by others and consume content without digesting it or contextualizing it.

Social media content is important, but our social media use is also important as well. Smart phones bring us immediate validation, every ‘ping’ of a notification makes us more reliant on the next notification. We rely on technology in every aspect of our days and it becomes a funnel for how we consume new information. While we must be cognizant of what we share on social media, we must also be aware of how much we rely on it to find new information.

The content we produce may have a life of it’s own on the internet, or it may never see the light of day. We have a responsibility to produce quality documents and share them wisely. As we’ve seen with memes, we don’t always know where our content will go.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/10/03/can-a-meme-be-a-hate-symbol-6/internet-memes-are-value-neutral-but-do-reflect-cultural-moments

When reading “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery” It made me realize my work could eventually be used by another person to further the work I have started with our campaign.  “Remixing—or the process of taking old pieces of text, images, sounds, and video and stitching them together to form a new product—is how individual writers and communities build common values” Ridolfo and DeVoss (2009) this quote in particular made me feel this way.  I started this campaign about Pittsburgh’s structurally deficient bridges because of information I have read about from other writers.  For my campaign, it is a mixture of different writers’ work compiled with my own information and organized in a way I believe can intrigue more writers to write about this topic.

Delivery is one of the most important aspects of giving a presentation or giving a speech to a group of people.  I am sure just like me, you have heard a presentation where the speaker was either not loud enough, or spoke in a very monotone voice throughout.  These make a presentation very hard to pay attention to regardless of the information they are presenting to you.  Aristotle said “These are the three things—volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm—that a speaker bears in mind.” Ridolfo and DeVoss (2009).

An issue our campaign can see is time and place of our audience.  While we are trying to raise awareness to the general public about the Pittsburgh bridge issue, it will be changing over time.  “It can no longer be assumed, even in a contemporary instance of oral delivery, that the time, place, and medium of delivery will necessarily be the same for both the speaker and the speaker’s audiences.” Ridolfo and DeVoss (2009).  This quote from Ridolfo and DeVoss is very accurate for our situation because more information and situations are happening throughout the year on these brides.  For now we are targeting the general public to raise awareness, but in the future our campaign could play a role in presenting to legislatures to gain funding.

When creating this campaign, we are constantly thinking of what this could turn into in the future.  By writing a news article, we are making it easy to access and pull information quickly for a third party to continue on and push agenda farther.  By being able to access our information quick and easily, it gives more opportunity for another person to run with our information.

The overall goal of my group’s campaign is for the city of Pittsburgh to receive adequate funding to be able to improve the infrastructure of the many structurally deficient bridges in the area.  In order to do so, two main audiences need to be addressed: government officials and citizens/commuters of the area.  Because of this, our campaign pieces need to be detailed and fact-based so that readers and/or listeners can become passionate and concerned about the problem, and possibly present the case to city officials.  However, they must also be worded simply enough so that information can be spread easily to other ordinary citizens and commuters.  Without widespread knowledge about the infrastructure problem, our campaign will never reach its goal.

 

Ridolfo and DeVoss’ section on amplification contains valuable information in regards to spreading information and reaching wider audiences.  The use of the internet will be crucial in our campaign plan, and as the two authors point out, the concept of amplification through the internet is relatively simple and can be incredibly effective.  They describe the use of “attack videos” in their piece:

 

“In the case of short attack videos, only the footage of the actual attack need come from Iraq. Once an affiliated individual has received that footage and basic accompanying information, which can be transferred over the Internet or by mobile phone, he has only to add the insurgent group’s logo, a short title sequence, and perhaps a soundtrack with a motivational song. He then uploads the resulting video product to a free upload-download site and posts an announcement to a forum. The video-editing software required to produce such a video is cheap and readily available. (p. 35)”

 

Reading this passage actually changed my outlook on my second campaign piece.  While I originally thought that a brochure describing the bridge problem and what needed to be done would suffice, I now realize that the internet should be the main concern.  As Ridolfo and Devoss show in their work, the audience of a public piece can exponentially increase through the use of the internet.  Now, for our campaign, the problem is figuring out what type of internet piece will be most effective and easy to be shared.

 

In my experience, I believe people become incredibly passionate when their hometown or home area is being affected.  On social media, there are often passionate articles and videos that are posted, and then are repeatedly shared.  It is certainly possible that a dramatic video, with pictures of the deficient bridges and views of the city would be most effective in reaching my group’s desired audience.  Viewers will then most likely share the video, and most likely add their own sentence or two explaining their receptions and/or opinions about the problem.  In extreme cases, viewers might create their own video showing their reaction to the original video.  These reaction videos have become more popular over the years, especially on YouTube.

 

As the authors state, “Rhetorical velocity is, simply put, a strategic           approach to composing for rhetorical delivery.”  When composing my second campaign piece, it is important that I take into consideration how it will be perceived and altered by my directed audience.  In doing so, I can determine how the information I present can be spread even further, thus increasing concern about and interest of the campaign.

As discussed in Ridolfo and DeVoss’s webtext “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery”, one major consideration, and often problem, to be had when creating pieces for public consumption is maneuvering “a digital age characterized, for instance, by swift, easy, and deep web searching and by copying and pasting practices.”

 

In terms of our campaign, the vast majority of our campaign pieces are being created, published, and accessed online. All of this text can be copied and pasted with little effort, which means that this aspect of recomposition discussed in the webtext is highly relevant.

 

Particularly on Facebook, one of the common conventions of the genre of sharing a post on the platform is adding text above the shared link featuring a person’s opinion or perspective on the text or topic. These insights might include calls to action (“Why does no one talk about this? Spread this like wildfire”), complaints and critiques of a piece (“This writer’s examples are trash but this is still important”), a fitting anecdote or personalization to complement the original text (“Sarah, remember we were literally just talking about this yesterday?”), or some other kind of addition (#metoo). It is also very common to include a quotation from the original text as a way to highlight a particularly strong piece of the text, to give possible readers a sample so they can get a feel for whether they would like to read more, or to distill the point of the text into one easily digested chunk so that even those who do not read the whole text can take understand the general message of the text before moving on.

 

This kind of recombination has an unpredictable rhetorical velocity because it puts the power of recombination directly and autonomously in the hands of the reader. People generally choose to share texts, themselves, inserting their opinions into (not juxtaposing them with) the original text, and doing it of their own volition. This means that the timing of the spread of the pieces cannot be planned beyond their initial release.

 

This is true to a certain extent with any sort of public writing, but dormantly, in the way that someone may find a flyer on the ground for an event after it’s passed. In a situation like that, it would not be natural to make copies of the flyer and post them around. However, on social media, an old post can be jettisoned into relevance again with one well-placed shared post.

 

Sharing a post publicly moves the piece of writing into continually new social spheres, and an old article or other piece of writing online can be shared again long after its first publishing and regain new life as its velocity increases, having been pushed forward by a Facebook post or Tweet.

 

Articles and blogs often reference each other (much like this blog post is itself doing right now), weaving a large tapestry of opinions pieces and posts and arguments. From there, entire websites are dedicated to writing “articles” that are really just curated lists of quotes from other sources and screenshots of posts from Twitter and Facebook, attempting to present how what they usually refer to as “the internet” feels about a certain topic. These articles are then themselves shared online, taking its contents several iterations from its original context.

This removal from a specific context does not necessarily result in the obscuring, simplifying, or erasing of a text’s meaning, however. Campaign pieces can be optimized to prepare for this kind of recombination. If a writer plans for this possible eventuality, and writes in a way such that every sentence’s telos works on several levels – both toward the higher meaning of the final argument and independently as a meaningful statement on its own – then recombination can be a powerful, if unwieldy, tool for reaching a wide audience.

In this research, Jim Ridolfo and Danielle Nicole DeVoss introduce the term ‘rhetorical velocity’, something that they have coined as the process of reduplication of media (in virtually any form) in today’s fast-paced and technologically advanced world. This ‘anticipation’ for ‘remixes’ of original work is something, they say, that creators of media must keep in mind throughout the entire process and production of their work. This can be in a physical, distributional, or digital sense, but the argument here is that it is necessary for any document. This “composing for strategic recomposition” is a relatively new phenomenon, due to the increased number of issues surrounding digital distribution, and for this reason I personally have a difficult time wrapping my head around what sorts of factors an author would have to keep in mind while composing his or her piece.

Something that comes into mind when I think of this process is when posters around a school reference something in pop culture while making a different point all together. Current song lyrics or celebrity cameos are common on signs and advertisements on college campuses and this is a way for the producer of the media to gain interest or pique their audience’s curiosity.

Ridolfo and DeVoss specifically use the word ‘remix’ to describe part of this phenomenon, and they want to get the idea across that it isn’t just “anchored and only related to music.” I find it interesting how remix sometimes toes the line of plagiarism, but never becomes immoral (unless done incorrectly). Originality can be hard to come by these days, since it seems as though no one is doing, saying, thinking, or writing anything that hasn’t previously been done. Remix of media (other than music) is actually itself a new culture that is emerging in unexpected areas of life, giving ideas and parts of old media to authors who can create something altogether new, exciting, and original. Lawrence Lessig said “Remix is how we as humans live and everyone within our society engages in this act of creativity.”

When composing my own documents with the idea of future reduplication, I suppose it is important to include facts and statistics in an organized manner that will allow for later usage in another piece, as well as my own educated opinions and hypotheses. While making choices about what to include and what to emphasize, I would have to keep in mind that the audience that would see my own opinions and words might be different than the audience that I am writing for, since reduplication or remixes of my pieces could take place. I think that the information that I compose would have to stay fairly un-biased and comprehensible while still being presented in an appropriate and accessible way.

One passage from the text says, “Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old,” and this is something that I have found difficult with my own project. My first campaign piece was a school newsletter written towards parents and the general community in any given Pennsylvania public school district. A paper newsletter is, unfortunately, an outdated form of communication. Newsletters are much more often found in e-mail form, or maybe on a social media site representing the organization. With this in mind, it came to me that a physical newsletter (made of paper) that is mailed to homes or handed out in public gatherings of the community members is written completely differently than another form of media. If I were to rewrite the newsletter with the idea that it could be reduplicated, I am unsure how I would go about and what changes I would make. The concept of ‘rhetorical velocity’ helps me to understand the ways that information changes when the media or genre changes, but this is a very new and foreign perspective for me. I want my information to be spread, but the specificity of my document might make that difficult. Perhaps the solution is to change the document altogether if I want reduplication of my writing to be possible.

Rhetorical velocity, in short, seems to be the way in which materials, pieces, documents can be potentially repurposed, after publishing, to serve either positively or negatively to the goal of the original desire of the published document, or to potentially use that information for another goal entirely. For my group’s campaign the three pieces we have completed so far include a Prezi, PowerPoint, and brochure. I will discuss the rhetorical velocity concerning the Prezi, which is my personal campaign piece. The Prezi is normally used as a platform for some sort of presentation or discussion. However, one of the unique things about a Prezi is that anyone can access it though the distinctive URL each Prezi possesses. This distinction of using a Prezi to give a presentation allows the rhetorical velocity to take shape, unlike a presentation using a PowerPoint, since the Prezi is out on the internet for anyone to see and repurpose if they so choose. On the other hand, a potential way of increasing the potential for rhetorical velocity of both fronts (the Prezi and PowerPoint) would be to give the presentation and then post the presentation online on some website where the information provided in the presentation would be put to good use. This video could easily be cut up, and serve a purpose in a variety of ways. Moving on to discuss the potential positive, negative, and neutral possibilities of this campaign piece being repurposed, I truly think given the fact out biggest goal of our campaign is to spread awareness of the CRISPR Ca9 and its possibilities, it would be very hard to see any outcome other than positive. With the Prezi and presentation being posted publically on the internet, any repurposing of information regarding the CRISPR Ca9 would serve our main campaign goal. In other words, for out specific campaign any document we complete should be made available in any possible format that people could potentially use it in any regard. In respect to how the passage I chose, the passage being “COMPOSING FOR RECOMPOSITION: RHETORICAL VELOCITY AND DELIVERY,” helped me think through the initial question, there are a few main points I would like to address. One of the biggest takeaways I had was from this specific line “’If I release the video in this format, could the video be used in this way, and would it be worth their time to do this? And would it be supportive of my objectives for them to do that?’” This allowed me to draw the parallel about recording and posting the presentation I will theoretically give using my Prezi. Additionally, the questions the passage asked very quickly allowed me to connect my objective, informing people about the CRISPR Ca9, with any repurposing of the information we provide could only lead to more people taking interest in this new technology. The other main part of the passage that really let me connect my own campaign to rhetorical velocity was the figure on Rhetorical Velocity as a Concert of Invention. The questions on the left provoked my mind towards my target audience, which essentially is everyone, and realizing that the production (question three) in combination with future possibilities made it very clear that the more assessable anything our campaign produces is, the greater possibly it could be used to inform without costing our group any time.

The topic that really stuck out to me the most from this passage was the whole aspect of rhetorical velocity. While I was reading, I kept thinking of different ways that I can apply this knowledge to my campaign and how useful it would be to get more people to see the information I am trying to provide for them. Ridolfo and DeVoss were explaining the term rhetorical velocity as a way to get rhetoric circulated at a certain speed and direction. What I took from this was they were providing information on how to get your writing/ information out to the public as fast as possible by spreading it through as many different appropriate mediums in different directions to cover all sides of the field. In order to do this, they described a press release as an example. The people who composed the press release could broadcast it through television on news stations, news papers, websites, social media, etc. When they do this through all these different mediums, it allows the press release to reach a variety of types of people ranging from various age groups (older people tend to watch the news more and younger kids tend to browse social media more) to different financial background (some people can afford a newspaper and some can afford a phone to go on Facebook).

My idea for my groups campaign involved putting brochures in science buildings on Pitt’s campus to advertise for my groups information session on the CRISPR/Cas9 in order to circulate the information to different science students that may be interested in learning more about the topic. Also, this reading made me consider putting a post on Facebook or other various social media websites in order for people to have the ability to share my posts to make as many people aware of the session that would include a powerpoint on the gene editing tool as possible. Also, I was thinking for my second campaign piece I was going to make a flyer advertising the info session and put it all around campus. A good idea would be to put the flyers on every table in the library and cathedral like other clubs do to advertise their meetings and fundraisers. I would also put them on telephone polls as well in order to increase the rhetorical velocity to get my campaign out there for all those who are willing to listen.

Another topic Ridolfo and DeVoss talk about is “composing for strategic recomposition.” What I got from this was it was vital to create something that people would want to recreate and write about even further. I am not quite sure if this is correct, but I view it as if a news report went out about the election and it was so good, that other people wrote about what the original author wrote and expanded upon it giving their opinions and criticisms. A way that I can make my campaign similar to this is provide enough facts that people might want to include in a science project or even just write something like my campaign to convince others to care about the CRISPR. They may even find our groups presentation so fascinating that they post about it on their social media accounts.

Reading about the rhetorical velocity and the composing for strategic recomposition made me think a lot about my campaign and gave me some ideas on how to improve upon it.

In order to draw the reader’s attention, a text must have both good design and accessibility. A good design efficiently portrays the text’s purpose to the reader and, as a result, is able to accumulate more interest in the public eye. Since both good design and accessibility are extremely vital to a successful writing piece, they are frequently integrated into both print and digital texts. Within these texts, various stylistic details are applied in order to improve the design and, altogether, effectiveness of the piece. One of these principles is the use and depiction of relevant images to accompany text. When an image is not utilized in context, it draws away from the message that the author is attempting to convey. Likewise, an inappropriately sized or placed image can also capture the reader’s attention more than the text itself. With a good design, an image should complement the text in order to strengthen the purpose of the piece. Another principle that is frequently used is the inclusion of white space. Though it may seem simplistic, white space can, ultimately, be the difference between an effective or ineffective text. White space is often used to separate the sections within a paper which retains the attention of the reader. Without the inclusion of white space, the text can become very distracting and the reader will get lost within the information presented to them. This can result in the reader becoming frustrated and turning away from the piece completely. Color is also an important design factor included in most texts. If an appropriate scheme is chosen, it can nicely complement the text. Certain color schemes, however, can become distracting and detract attention away from the primary message. When used correctly, color can tie the piece together and result in a cohesive text that gets its message across to the audience.

Accessibility and good design will share commonalities no matter what medium in which the text is presented. In fact, having a better design results in the information being more accessible to the reader. Proper headers, for example, improve the design of the piece while also making it easier to navigate. Park’s “Redesign” highlights that headers which are the same size and type font of the rest of the text have proven to be ineffective. The reader should be able to utilize the headers in order to identify the start and end of each section to more easily access the information. With no clearly established sections, the reader can become lost in the text and be unable to extract the information they were seeking. Therefore, proper headers are a prime example of how a good design correlates with accessibility. White space is another example of a stylistic choice that improves both the design and accessibility of a piece. White space, similar to headers, creates divisions between sections and makes the text easier to read. Large blocks of text can become tedious to read and will, ultimately, lead to the reader losing interest. White space alleviates the chaos that can occur when too much is placed into one portion of the text. By separating texts and images, the reader can discern what the most important information in the text is and the message it is attempting to convey.

Sometimes, good design does not always result in a piece being more accessible. Though color schemes can contribute greatly to the appearance of text, they can sometimes be a hindrance to its accessibility as well. The use of some colors can be distracting and not complement the material being presented, decreasing the effectiveness of the text. Usually, however, the colors are the stylistic choice that ties the text together to create a cohesive writing piece. Color can be used to underscore the more important information while also enhancing the overall design.

Attaining a balance between good design and accessibility is no easy task. White space should be used throughout the text but not in excess. Images should be incorporated but cannot be the piece’s primary focus. Color schemes should enhance the design of the piece but not to the point where it is distracting to the reader. Since there is no concrete answer as to what is the best way to balance design and accessibility, it is up to the author to decide. They should be able to identify their audience and cater to what they believe would fulfill their needs. For some audiences there may need to be more of a focus on design and for others more on accessibility but, ultimately, it is up to what the author believes will be most successful.

Good design principles are essential in any and all public media.  Most clearly, it is pertinent that the writer puts the most emphasize on texts that captures the document as a whole.  Depending on the type of public writing that is being done, this could mean a company’s name, a date of an event, or the title of the paper is bolded, in larger font relative to the body, or surrounded by white space.  Another commonality between good print and digital media is structure and concision. The body of the text should have a good flow to it, whether it is for a paper or an ad, and should use shorter words and sentences to directly get the point across in the quickest time possible.

Accessible texts and good design go hand in hand.  In the previous paragraph, I talked about a few principles that well designed media have in common.  Ironically, good media design is the way that it is so readers have better accessibility to the most important information.  Once the design is settled, the actual text may be put in, but the design is based around the actual text and what is most important.  Headers are larger than the body so the reader can see if they want to bother reading the body, and the most important information is surrounded by white space so the reader’s eye is drawn to it.  Park said that in text-heavy documents, readability should be the writer’s primary concern.  Here, it is utterly essential that the strategic use of white space, bolded and enlarged headers, and shorter text, possibly a column approach, is used.  The act of eye-drawing and the use of white space can easily be achieved in print and digital media.

Colors are also vital in the good design of media.  In the Basic Color Theory article, Harmony is described as the dynamic equilibrium between the blandness of extreme unity and the chaos of extreme complexity.  Our brains reject the information read when the media is on either extreme of the color harmony scale.  The blandness of color can also relate to the blandness of design.  For example, a long, text-based document with one font and little whitespace may be so mundane to look at, our brains won’t retain any of the text.  On the other hand, a crazy document with a bunch of different sized texts and fonts may be too much for our brains to handle.  An organized color scheme can help alleviate either extreme.

In general, I’ve come to the conclusion that the balance between good design and accessibility is not a 50/50 split.  It is more of a 60/40, in good design’s favor.  Although what the writer chooses to make accessible is most likely the reason for writing the piece, it cannot become accessible without good design.  I think the best choice the writer has is to sort their information separately, then combine.  In order to cut down time from the redesign process, organizing their thoughts and creating a template for their piece should be done separately, then putt the text into the template while prioritizing what the reader needs to see.  Good design, when done right, works in favor of accessibility.

The key to successful writing is due largely to the overall design of the written piece. Anyone can agree that certain images or paragraphs or headings can either add to the success of the piece or it can be its downfall. In “Redesign” by Park, guidelines are given so that you can follow through your written piece and redesign it into a more effective one. It is stated that in some cases even discarding your preconceptions can be a liberating experience and will allow you to start on a fresh idea. Park goes on to say that if you believe the document is nearly a success then you can clean it up doing away with the “overly-formal headline font” or “a cluttered-looking corner” and pinpointing the problem elements, deleting them, restructuring them, or replacing them entirely.

In the case of a newsletter, Park gives an example from a museum newsletter that goes through a simple, yet effective redesign. In the original, the headline is quite tricky to read since it is scattered around an odd cartoon dinosaur and the overall text seems boring to read because of its long, straightforward paragraphs. In the redesign, the newsletter is drastically improved; the dinosaur is more realistic, the headline is bold and straight making it easier to read, the headlines are clearly seen in the left margin to catch the reader’s eyes. To me, this redesigned newsletter is successful because of its use of white space in the left margin as it opens the page up and provides an adequate place for the museum’s logo. White space is as important in writing as the words themselves. If you had a book or magazine or pamphlet with nothing but words filling up every inch of the paper, nobody would read it. With the appropriate use of white space, the reader’s eyes are guided through from headline to headline and paragraph to paragraph without losing track of where they are. An effective use of white space can make or break writing.

Print texts and digital texts share a few commonalities between them when it comes to “good” design principles. Both kinds of texts utilize white space and various colors for their specific kind of design they’re going for. In my opinion, digital texts use better design principles because I am more of a visual person so when I am able to see the colors, graphs, pictures, links, headlines, etc. displayed for me in an effective way I will understand the meaning better. When it comes to commonalities between accessible texts and “good” design, the use of white space as stated previously is a shared trait. White space can act as a buffer between sections of a passage or even break up large paragraphs into smaller, easier to read ones. This can improve the readability of the document and increases the accessibility. In the white space, the author’s use of headings can greatly improve the design and accessibility by catching the reader’s eye and introducing readers to new topics.

One of the most powerful tools used in design is color. When color is used in perfect harmony, it can be a pleasing effect to the document and allow the reader to visually experience the words they read. The correct use of color could make the reader see certain images, feel specific emotions, or just make the document look nicer allowing for a more accessible read. The balance of white space and color comes at the expense of the author’s doing and can be a powerful method in writing. For those with poor vision or attention span, colors may be the key to grab that attention for the reader so that they continue on and focus in on the meaning of the document.