Response to pgs. 168-189

This chapter (chapter 8) talked about designing a visual argument, which is essentially what our multimodal assignment is. At the beginning of the chapter, they specifically talked about how to combine visual and verbal design elements and designing arguments for public audiences. Later in the chapter they talked about opinion advertisements, photo essays, website building, and creating a multimedia montage. All these topics are related to our assignment because they are all components of a multimodal assignment. I think the most important part of this chapter in relation to our project is the part about making a multimedia montage. This is what is going to be the main component of our final project. These montages combine many different types of media, including sound, writing, digital elements and more. They often do not progress in a linear fashion to make their argument, but present the argument throughout the project as a whole. When creating a multimedia project, you must consider the audience, argument, medium, form and purpose for your project. This chapter also talked about levels of decorum, or appropriateness. I feel like our multimedia assignments would mostly be presented in a middle style because I feel like they should be a little more formal than if they were in plain or low style, but not be as dry as a grand or high style level of decorum. Another section of the chapter talked about designing arguments for public audiences. I think that this is also an important part of the chapter because our final project will be designed for a public audience. You have to keep your audience in mind when putting together your project because it has to be audience friendly. You have to make it interesting while still making your argument very clear to the audience. This chapter also talked about opinion advertising, and I a way our project is an advertisement of our group’s opinion on our topic. Also, the chapter mentions photo essays, which could also be a potential way for us to present our project to our audience. A photo essay uses pictures to convey the central argument rather than words. The chapter concludes by detailing the creation of a webpage, which is also a component of our project, making this section of the chapter very important. The talk about how to effectively layout a webpage and talk about different “Levels” of a webpage that combine to make it interesting for the audience to view.