Visual rhetoric, April 22, 2013

Tonight1) Overview of what is left2) The portfolio3) WordPress: an easy to manage option4) Or code it up yourself5) Video time6) ACE print materials time/some problems/some solutions7) ACE work memo composing time (30 minutes)

What’s left…Tonight we will write up your memo for the ACE projects, and you will turn in your videos. This will leave us with just the web design task to finish.That will leave us with one last week to meet, and with that will come a meeting where we make sure everything is finished and have one last discussion about this thing we call visual rhetoric. I will also ask you some of my own evaluation questions, in addition to the ones that the program asks for.

The portfolioAs I said, your web project has become your portfolio.People keep asking me what it should include, and I think I keep saying the same thing, but to officially put it down on the screen, here’s what you need to have:1)A reflection on the semester– think like 2-3 single spaced pages, but I don’t want you to think of it as something that needs to be a length. I want you to write about what you’ve learned.2)Examples of your work. Pick three or so things you’re proud of that you did this semester. They can be from design tasks, from either of the major projects, etc.3)Any other work from other courses you want to include

The overarching idea…… isn’t so much to make a portfolio for this class.

I mean that’s the graded part of it. But the idea is to start to build a portfolio to be the home for your work online. You‘ll want that when you go searching for a job, or applying to graduate schools. Or any time you just want to show someone what you’ve been creating. It’s important as students in professional writing and IMS to have a web presence for your work.

For now…… I want you to consider a few things.

The first is that there’s a bit of a “war” of ideas going on in digital scholarship. Some people feel that students need to code everything from the ground up. Others feel that students need to– to borrow from my pal Aristotle– make use of all available means of presentation so as to avoid reinventing the wheel perpetually.

You can guess where I stand from how I phrased it, can’t you?

If you want…… you can code your portfolio from a blank page. I’ll teach you what you need to know, and you can Google up what you cant’ figure out. Or maybe you’re already good with HTML.

But if you’re not familiar with HTML, or if you just don’t feel like trying to make something that looks sharp with your current skills/want something highly flexible, I’m going to show you how to use WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

You can do this for free…… by starting an account at wordpress.com. The free account, though, only does so many things.There is a design level account you can buy, which costs you some money. There’s a slightly better account that costs slightly more.Or if you want to really take a big step, you can find a web hosting solution (like godaddy, for example), buy server space and a domain, and put up your own WordPress install(s) for maximum customization.

If you want to work…… directly with HTML, you can start tinkering now/start looking for things you like. We’ll talk in a bit.

If you want to use WordPress, and you want to do this on the cheap, go to wordpress.com and register an account. I will alt-tab over and walk you through this process.

So for now…… look at your theme options.

Think about what your added pages will look like, how you’d like your material presented, etc. Some themes offer more options for customization than others. Take all of that into account as you choose.

I’ll come around and offer some advice while you look.

Print stuff…We did… I’m going to say “okay” with the revisions this week.

Honestly, we didn’t do the best job in the world. I think some of the confusion came from people not fully getting directions, but I apologize if I was unclear.

The big issue right now, overall, is that a number of things came to me in less-than-stellar form.

What we need…We really don’t have enough class time left to go though fixing this stuff, so what I’m going to do is get it all together and see who wants to step up for and/or talk to each group individually.

But what I do need from you, tonight, is for you to send me all the elements you used in your products (this is what would have been in the InDesign package you were supposed to create). I need your images, your fonts, and whatever file you put together.

The problem we have…… is that a number of you did your design work in Photoshop when you should have done the actual text layout and whatnot in InDesign.

This isn’t always a problem, but it is when we give documents to a client that might want to change the text. It’s also a problem if we save the Photoshop documents smaller than the print documents, not in CYMK, or at less than 300 dpi. All of those things lead to bad printing.

So basically what we need to happen is for those documents to be re-created/tweaked into InDesign docs in CYMK with high res images. It won’t be super-difficult to do as long as we have everything, but it’s a step we should have been doing last week. So make sure I have all your stuff before you leave– image files, fonts, you product, etc.

And lastly…Tonight we need to complete the memo part of your ACE projects. This should be as long as you feel it needs to be (or as short, but realize this is the roadmap for your grade, so take it seriously). As such, I only have really six questions:

1. What did you do in each project? 2. What did your teammates do? How was your collaboration? Did everyone pitch in and communicate? (okay, that’s a lot of questions)3. What are you most proud of?4. What are you least proud of? 5. There were obviously some problems understanding precisely what we needed to create here. What do you think were the major contributing factors, and what do you wish has gone differently? 6. What did you learn from this experience?

Next week……we close up shop.

I want you to read this:

I will have some questions for you to answer in class as well (about class– they’re for my benefit, a Dr. Phill set of evaluation questions).

We will spend the time after that discussion and answering those questions making sure your portfolios are in good shape.