I meme it.

Writing factor means a lot in memes. To properly understand a meme, it has to make sense intellectually. Sometimes I will see memes that make no sense whatsoever… leaving me confused by trying to decipher what it is talking about. Memes are a great way of telling a story, but including pictures. They are similar to comics in this way, but they have to remain short. If a meme is too text-heavy, it takes away from the appreciation of the meme – completely failing at its purpose.

Similar to this, visual rhetoric is SUPER important in meme-making. (Is that a term?) It is important to keep the text minimal, but also be able to convey your story or narrative, but also have a picture that goes along with the narrative. You can’t have a meme picture be conveying politics, but then have the text talk about like… cats or something. I mean, you could, but it has to flow. Choosing the correct visual for the narrative in your head is a big part of creating memes. You also have to worry about squishing the text too much. If the text in your meme is too small for anyone to read, it is not going to perform well. A lot of effort goes into making memes, and I don’t think a lot of people really get that until they try to make their own.

Question: Have you ever tried to make a meme and it flopped?

Give me delivery or give me death.

Delivery in Roman times was different than delivery nowadays. In Roman times, delivery was referred to as predominantly oral delivery. It was mainly focused on how things were said, rather than what was said. It was important that emotion be conveyed during delivery in order to grab and keep the attention. The focus was also on your body language and how you used it in order to convey and persuade your message. The emotional aspect of delivery was dependent on the focus of body language and vocal pitch. While these aspects have not changed in a drastic manner, the fact that we now have technology to help us has. Using your body in an oral presentation online can be tricky – if not done right, you can lose the ability to connect to your audience’s emotion.

Distribution refers to the way you contact and relay information to your audience. Circulation refers to the way the information is perceived by said audience. Porter argues that it is important to know who your audience will be when decided how to distribute your writing. You should also focus on the circulation aspect of your chosen distribution because you need to know if you have chosen the right distribution aspect for the right audience. This is similar in digital delivery today because you must pay attention to who you are submitting work to, and who their audience is. If you write a piece about political affiliations within your office, should you submit that to a local publisher or someone who publishes similar articles. That depends on the type of circulation and audience you want to connect with.

Recently, in my advanced fiction writing class, I have had to think about the audience that will be reading my story. Do I focus on the people who I want to read my story? Or do I focus on the audience that will be reading my story? I always end up choosing focusing on the audience whom I want to read my story – which would be considered the circulation aspect.

Have you ever regretted submitting work to a particular place because you are unsure if that is the demographic you wanted?

The Bachelor… Design Edition.

For my chosen design game, I played Type Connection: The Typographic Dating Game. The object of the game is to find compatible typefaces, but not too similar. For my first round, I ended up choosing typefaces that, when I chose “Send Them on a Date,” were too close of cousins! I know we’re in Kentucky, but I sure was not expecting that.

The game focused on the aspects of different typography and even had a page where you could interact with the different elements of the typography and read more about specific parts. It also showed how the typefaces you chose were similar. For “the cousin group,” I chose ITC Stone Sans and Gill Sans. When the game layered them up, it was cool to see how different yet similar they are.

The game taught me how to pick compatible typefaces rather than ones that just look similar. There’s a whole different connection between family fonts and compatible fonts. However, it did take me quite a bit longer to figure this out than I would like to admit. I think these types of games are good, in theory, but for the first time I tried it, I was invested in the tiny bios that they gave the fonts, not so much the font itself. I think doing these types of games for larger projects could be more on the distracting side, rather than the educational side.

Marry Me, Canva.

Canva has always been my go-to when dealing with any type of personal design that needs created. I find that the templates help you, even if you do not necessarily click and edit them. Most of the time, I take inspiration from two or three template designs to create my own. Sometimes I will like the color scheme of one, the way the pictures are aligned in another, or the typeface in another design. So, I use my little imagination and BAM! Design without a template.

When it comes to this assignment, I thought Canva made it super easy to make the flyers for the contest. Although the templates can be restricting when you’re wanting to place an image or text box in a specific place, it is usually because Canva make sure it lines up with the other aspects of the design. Canva is a really helpful tool, in my opinion.

It was harder to break the rules in Canva. Boxes wanted to move to where they were aligned with others and it was quite difficult to get them to stop doing that. There might be a way to turn this off, but for this assignment, I had no idea how to do that… so, I was stuck.

A situation in which Canva would not be good to use would be a larger, more public project. If you needed to create a logo for a company, going to Canva would not really help you because the logos are not unique anymore. So many people use Canva as a one-stop-shop when opening a small business, that it is hard to find a template that is not used by everyone and their mother.

Have you ever used Canva to create Instagram posts for yourself?

Tactical Type

When Nichols uses the phrase “tactical type,” he means it in the sense of a typography that is used in a non-practical or familiar way. He further explains that using “bad type” could have you come across as lacking pretension, refusing to adopt what is normal, and even straying away from formality (p. 52). Nichols uses Comic Sans as an example of “bad type,” but he also describes how it could be used well and in the correct situation. Comic Sans, according to Nichols, has a “happy” attitude about it – making it perfect to use if you are advertising a fundraiser, a church or school function, etc. Although I am not a giant fan of Comic Sans, I can see why Nichols describes it as a welcoming font – it is sort of bubbly which can make a person feel happy or welcome.

Personally, I am excited to explore with what Nichols describes as “bad type.” I think that all these years of not being able to have the creative liberty and freedom will be beneficial to me during this semester of writing and design. I love being able to slyly break the rules, which being able to use “bad type” lowkey feels like.

Question:

Is anyone else super overwhelmed with school and life right now? I feel like everything’s going so fast and it’s insane.

A Times New Roman World

Honestly, I do not have an overwhelming hatred for Times New Roman. Although I like to type in Courier New when working on personal, creative projects, I like having a sense of formality when writing my academic papers. However, I do find it to be a bit of a dated font type. I associate Times New Roman with academic and structured writing – not having much freedom to write how and what I choose – which correlates to my feelings. The particular reason I do not rejoice in Butterick’s “staring into the void” of changing type to a more Serif version is because I have that association between academic works and Times New Roman. I have often tried to type papers in a different font and then switching it before turning in my final draft, but it doesn’t feel right.

For my Mini Analysis and Proposal, I am choosing the Optima font from Butterick’s acceptable font list. I like how uniformed the typography is and I think it is an excellent choice to do this assignment on. It is more distinctive than Times New Roman, yet also a more up-to-date font that is optimized (or should I say Optima-ized) for the screen. Being as we turn everything in online nowadays, especially during a pandemic, I think this font is a good start. It is a considerably larger font than Times New Roman which would make an academic paper seem longer, in theory.

We’re All Thieves, Right?

Whew. This week’s readings were really interesting to say the least. When I first read the title, “What I have learned from stealing great designs,” I was really confused – I imagine we all were to an extent. But as I kept reading, I understood what Henry Cheng was saying. Absorbency is a type of flattery – especially for writers and designers.

“Good” stealing refers to absorbing what is good and how a writer has adapted to their audience. It is seeing what works for them in order to see what works for you. However, “bad” stealing is quite the opposite. Instead of giving credit, you are immediately copying and claiming other great pieces as your own. “Bad” stealing is plagiarizing, “good” stealing is monopolizing.

I don’t mean monopolizing in the sense of taking control, but in the sense that you (the writer or designer) are taking the greatest share of someone’s brilliant work and seeing how you can make your own work reflect their creativity.

Some signs to know if you have crossed the lines in stealing are obvious. Ask yourself these questions: did you write it? Did you design it? Is your name pasted on another great creative mind’s work? If the answers are no, no, and yes… you, my slimy thief of a friend, have crossed the stealing line. Do not pass “GO,” do not collect $200.

As Kleon states, “imitating is not flattering,” (15). “Stealing well” is a hard thing to do. In design, you have to make sure you know what passes and what doesn’t. In writing, taking someone’s idea and changing it, does not work. Actually, it does not work in design either. Absorb what works. Become that writer and live in that situation.

In my personal opinion, stealing “well” is harder in design. It might be hard to place yourself in the designer’s shoes – and it might be easier to just borrow the shoes and never return them. Brand your name in them and tell them you’ve always had those shoes. There are only so many ways one can flip, change, and absorb a design to not look like a thief or a copycat.

It is that time where I pose my question:

Have you ever stolen a design unknowingly? If so, how did you find out you did it?

God, this is bad.

The sins I chose to break are the following: Sin #3 (too many fonts), Sin #4 (bulky borders), Sin #6 (stair stepping), Sin #9 (busy background), Sin #10 (using all caps), and Sin #11 (bad bullets). The more I kept reminding myself of the sins, the more ideas I got on how to break them. I thought this exercise was a lot of fun; I’m not sure if I enjoyed making mine more or looking at everyone else’s creations!

For this terrible poster, I think I would say the problems are more perceptual. I think they would be perceptual because they are things you can clearly see. If they were to be cultural problems, it would be depending on the audience’s feedback and what they personally life. For this assignment, nothing in this poster is pleasing or appealing to the eye. There is a lack of a focal point, there is contrast between the type font and the background it is on, and the balance is completely off.

As far as sins that may not stay sins, I think Sin #10 (specifically, using all caps) might break free of Lucifer’s chains within the next couple of years. Right now, I have noticed that a lot of businesses and people have started using no capitalization whatsoever. In my opinion, I think people might start using all caps for their titles in order to juxtapose the lowercase type everywhere else. For sins that have changed over time and might change in the future, I could see Sin #1 (centering everything) changing in the future. I think a lot of people push their text to the left side margin in order to stay away from centering it, which has become the new “centering it.”

Now, my question: is there a current trend of writing or publishing that you absolutely despise? For me, it would be self publishing. Not that I completely despise it, but as someone who wants to become a publisher, it could come to a point where publishers are too “mainstream” or “strict.”

Spreading My Wings

For my memoir cover, I chose to use a graphic that had quite a bit of different textures on it. The different types of stars and the wing patterns drew me into this picture and I thought it was perfect to use. You can also see the movement of the large butterfly and the large dragonfly which helped solidify my choice to use it for my memoir’s background. I used Pages as my design app of choice, but for some reason, it made my picture blurry when I chose it. I am not sure if this was a user error (it most likely was) or not, but it is definitely something I am going to have to figure out for upcoming assignments. I love the contrast between the black background and the white font/drawings, but I believe the focal point of this design would be the orange butterflies.

I wanted to keep all of the font the same typeface, color, and centered on the page for balance, but then I decided to italicize “a memoir” because I felt like it was important that the type of writing be emphasized without being bigger than the title.

For my question, I would like to ask: did anyone had trouble with pages blurring their chosen artwork or if this was just me not knowing how to properly work Pages?

Design Drives Visual Culture.

“All this is to say that visual culture changes as a result of design’s changing forms and functions, both related to technology and social trends.” – White Space Is Not Your Enemy, page 5.

This quote can symbolize the bridge between writing and design – especially within poetry. As a poet, I have noticed more writers choosing to engage in more poetry on social media, particularly Instagram. Currently, I have noticed that writing and illustrating poems in the way Rupi Kaur is so famous for. Specifically, writing short poems in lowercase, with only the use of a period as punctuation and pairing it with a simple line drawing that complements the poem and its meaning. Poetry has certainly changed from structure, formal forms to this sort of “minimalistic” (I know, its an umbrella adjective and frowned upon) style. I feel like more poets have been dabbling in this style to feel more relatable to their own aesthetic, as well as their readers. It is definitely a social trend, at this point, to portray poems in this type of style.

When the writers say that computers have “democratized” graphic design, they mean that a certain level of graphic design is at everyone’s fingertips. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can sew together a logo, website, or even a business card – making it that much harder for graphic designers to land jobs since they can be replaced by someone cheaper. However, with quantity comes expense. It is known that you get what you pay for. If someone is willing to compromise the professionalism of their business to save a pretty penny, they will. Honestly, I do believe it is the same for writing. If someone pays you to write a bio for them and you have no previous experience, the communication aspect of your bio (compared to someone who has been doing it for years) will not be on the same level and could hinder the business of the customer.

This being said, I pose my question to the class. What are some benefits of hiring an unexperienced writer or designer to be your only source for your visual and creative needs?