Daily Message for Oct. 25

Good Morning,

Module 6 got off to a bit of rough start. 

About Exercise 6

A number of people were confused by this instruction for Exercise 6:

For Exercise 6, use the grid template (see project module) and respond to the following: Designing Visual Language, complete #3 under Exercises at the end of Chapter 6 (see page 255 in textbook 1st edition, or 238 in textbook 2nd edition). 

By that, I meant "use the grid to plan your response to the exercise and then do the exercise." 

I provided the grid for your convenience. You should be using the grid, or at least working through the grid in your head, for every document you produce at this point. My apologies to those who were confused; as I mentioned on the discussion board, if it appears you made a sincere attempt to do the exercise I'll grant you full points on this one. Don't let the bummer start to this project taint the whole thing; while I do want you to be purposeful and deliberate and thoughtful with this enhanced resume, I also want you to have fun with this assignment.

About the enhanced resume

That said, if you have not started to think through your enhanced resume from the perspective of the grid, that would be an excellent place to start your work on this module. One of the biggest weaknesses I saw across the board with the Mod 4 presentations was insufficient thought connection between audience, purpose, and context of use and the choices made with respect to textual design and choice of graphics. Using the grid will help you short-circuit that problem on the enhanced resume. Since I'm envisioning this as a fun assignment, and there isn't a specific universal real-world audience/purpose for this assignment, using the grid as a planning tool will help you be more deliberate in your planning and give you something to talk about in your reflection.

I suspect the graphical/non-textual aspects of the resume project will be the most challenging. As you can imagine, graphics can play a key role in your enhanced resume project.  You will want to try to present your skills and abilities on as many levels as possible, in as many ways as possible.  So the question for your enhanced resume is:

How can you present yourself in both textual and graphical forms?

As you think about graphical use, the primary thing to keep in mind is that pictures, logos, icons, etc. are both design features and elements to be designed.  In other words, when you consider the use of graphics in your text(s), you always have to think about the context in which these elements appear.

Graphics should be purposeful -- that is they should convey information(maybe they're just helping you establish ethos or set a mood, maybe they're helping the reader understand an idea) -- and not be merely decorative. Try to steer clear of clip art altogether. Ask yourself why you're including a graphic "here" and whether the graphic you've chosen helps you achieve your purpose.


If you're looking for visuals, an excellent place to start is Wikipedia's Public Domain Image Resources page. A couple of other sites I like: Morguefile and Stock.Xchng. If you come across a useful resource for this assignment, feel free to share it over on the discussion board.

Finally, your draft is due for peer review on Wednesday. You'll notice the peer review prompts for this module are pretty much limited to the review of a traditional resume.  I expect each group to develop and use (or at least talk about) a separate set of prompts specific to this enhanced resume project.  Think about using graphics, think about using multiple pages, think about presenting yourself in both linear and non-linear ways.  Challenge each other to expand your resume as fully as possible.

I'll be checking on group activity later today and make any adjustments that seem necessary before I activate your peer review/discussion groups for this go-round.

In the meantime, have a great day!

Julie