Design Workshop (45-60 min)
Let’s try some stuff. If you downloaded Microsoft Office through Pitt, you should have Microsoft Publisher. It’s not the best, but you can definitely do plenty of cool things with it.
Here are some essential things to use via Publisher:
Insert -> Draw text box (allows you to write text on the sheet)
Insert -> Shapes (pick shapes to place text or images into or use to make lines for borders)
Page Design -> Background (can choose colors and layouts for page background)
Take some time to play around with some of the functions in pairs.
Activity: Using Publisher or another program you have on your machine (e.g., Adobe InDesign, Pages, PowerPoint) use what you learned from the readings last week to update the design of one of the things you wrote for this class (i.e., your public interest narrative, a blog post, your campaign plan draft, your in-progress campaign piece). Before starting, sketch some notes of how you envision what you want to do (this vision can and likely should change as you work, but good to start with something).
What choices did you make? Why?
Did you have any difficulties figuring out how to do something you wanted to do? What were they? How did you overcome them?
These programs are typically used with print documents in mind: how might you re-mediate your document for a digital space?
Copyright, Creative Commons License, Open Access, and Fair Use (10 min)
My non-legal-expert attempt at breaking this down:
Fair use: something is under copyright but you think you can use it because you are commenting on, criticizing, or parodying the copyrighted work. Unless you can very clearly make this case, you probably shouldn’t chance it.
Creative Commons License: An alternative to copyright, where creator has set certain conditions for the use of their work. CC does not mean anyone can use it for whatever they want. It only means that the creator wanted people to have more freedom with their creation than copyright allows, but may still require users to meet certain conditions (e.g., citation of the work, asking for permission). If those conditions are not met, there can be some sort of penalty.
Public Domain: The work was never copyrighted or the copyright has expired (something unlikely, because Mickey Mouse is the devil). Go ahead, get wild with how you use it. One thing to note: say you have the translation of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil…well he wrote that in the late 19th century so you can go nuts right? It depends. If the edition was copyrighted, that is itself a work, and thus you have to be careful. Always do your homework to make sure something is indeed in the public domain.
Open Access: This refers more to research. Anyone can use for free or anyone can use for free while meeting certain conditions (the latter sort of is like Creative Commons)
Break (15 min)
Quantitative Literacy and Rhetoric (45-60 min)
Quantitative Literacy:
sample size (not enough or not a fair comparison), not a representative sample, losing context of study or figures,… what else numbers folk?
Questions to ask:
- Ask “Who Says So?”
- How Do They Know?
- What’s Missing?
- Did Somebody Change the Subject? (the author tells you how to interpret the figures, and maybe those two don’t quite work as the author claims)
- Does It Make Sense?
Potential outcomes:
- These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s competence.
- These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s integrity.
- I do not understand this piece of evidence, I don’t trust my ability.
- I do not understand this piece of evidence, I don’t trust the author’s integrity.
- I understand this argument. It makes sense to me.
- I do not fully understand this argument, but I trust the author.
Quantitative Rhetoric:
What are all the other possible ways you could express “there’s a 98% chance everything is fine”?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n6NCosVXXoW7c-hkPIsYwGSYk-_P80LofG7JS72f8iM/edit
Activity: Pull a statistic from something you’ve done thus far. If you haven’t, work with a partner on what they are up to. Think of as many ways as possible they could rewrite the statistic or present it differently while maintaining mathematical equality. And think of all the possible effects that might have; list them out.
How do you write a sentence? What are the options you have with quantitative information?
What about visual representations?
How do you write with graphs and tables? What have you been told in other classes? How do things change with a public audience in mind? What could you do instead?
Example of table: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/jpeg/20090814113412_560.jpg
Example of graph: http://www.svsu.edu/media/writingcenter/Figure%201-600×352.jpg
Activity: Go back to the statistic that you made multiple sentences out of. Try to make a visual representation of that statistic for a public audience. Keep track of your decisions. Have a title. What are possibilities beyond conventional academic tables and figures?
Infographics
What qualifies as an infographic? What are its characteristics? Are there conventions as a genre you can begin to see as you compare these four? Infographic to use:
http://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/microsites/hungry-tech/
http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
Let’s try to define some conventions for this genre and what is possible when composing an infographic. What should we keep in mind in regard to the following: Color? Typography? Arrangement? Size? Use of text? Use of images? Motion?
Where does an infographic go? For what purpose? For what kind of rhetorical situation (problem, constraints, audience)? What media can utilize it? Why would you do an infographic and not an APA table or graph? What is the difference between an infographic and such a thing? How about a bar graph with some nice design elements: infographic or not?
Activity: Go back to the visual representation you made earlier. Would you call it an infographic? Why or why not? Go back and revise it–infographic or not–and make some changes in light of what we have talked about so far.
Admin (5-15 min)
Make sure you get your campaign piece 1 draft to me by 4pm on October 17th (earlier would be great too!…want to read them in advance of our meetings next week)
Will see you during our meeting next week. I posted the schedule to Blackboard.
I ask you to please bring some ideas about what you’ll do for campaign piece 2.