For my memoir, I wanted my design to be as simple and self-explanatory as possible without being “boring” or “plain.” What I am lacking in color and glitz I hope to make up for in composition and unity. I wanted to use several photos to depict my growth over the years, obviously, but I ran into the issue of distraction/inconsistency since each photo came from a different period of time, a different location, and was produced on a different type of device. The B&W aims to blend the photos together to create a single concept of development, instead of simply showing four separate stages of my life. The layout of the photos aims to create movement. The eyes may be drawn to the center title first and then move outwards to each corner, or they may start at either corner and across the entire cover, but either way I think viewers will grasp the purpose of the book quickly and easily.
I used InDesign for this assignment and will continue to use it for every assignment, most likely. What really separates ID from programs like Word (for me) is its ability to manipulate photos/visuals with ease. Changing the size, shape, placement and arrangement of a visual is as simple as clicking it and dragging it. If anyone has tried putting several images on a Word document before, you know that it’s not that simple. You gotta change the wrap text settings and then adjust all the surrounding text…too complicated. The only complaint I have about ID is that it lacks the one things Word is great at: identifying text mistakes. ID doesn’t give a shit if you have typos, incorrect grammar or misused punctuation, so I am constantly copying and pasting text from my ID documents to a Word doc to ensure I’m not screwing up. Is anyone an ID expert and have insight as to if this is fixable? Does anyone else in this class prefer ID to other programs for the same/similar reasons as I do?
Intro to Digital Texts and Media 