Reading v Multimodal

This reading will be extremely helpful for us in the coming weeks with working on our projects.  It gives a general idea that simple formatting of images and research can help the project lean towards specific audiences or to make the audience listening feels a certain way.

It talks about the structure of a page.  How its important that it attracts the reader’s eye and has it led through the page in the way the author wishes it to; it doesn't have to just be restricted to reading from left to right.  Instead the author could have it set up that the audiences eye follows from top to bottom as they go from left to right.

In terms of integrating images, they stressed that the pictures should pertain to the text it's near, possibly with a caption.  This allows the reader to have a reference point in the project where they can have an image of what the author is speaking about.

The reading also makes a point that words can be images too.  If one bolds, underlines, or italicize specific words or phrases in a page; such as if one took the phrase "I didn't say I took her pencil" and you stressed each word to make seven different sentences you can have seven different angles of the sentence.  If you stress "I" it makes the sentence sound like the person saying it is hiding the actual culprit of the pencil stealing.  Or if you stress "pencil" is makes the sentence sound like the person saying it is guilty of stealing something of "hers" but it isn't specific as to what.

Next, the reading looks at the use of parodies.  It allows the author to use something popular or well known in today's culture and relate it to their topic.  In doing this the readers are able to relate more to the image, video, or writing.  Such as the example in the book used an op-ad for the Alcohol Anonymous groups in that they shaped the circle of chairs into the outline of a vodka bottle, specifically parodying Absolute Vodka ads.  It's using this to attract the eyes of a possible addict, maybe as they're reading a magazine they see this ad and instantly relate it to the Absolute Vodka ads a look further.

The book then talks about the use of web pages and making them look differently based on the subject of the page.  It's pointless to have the page filled with pictures of cars and cars logos if the actual website is discussing a television show about animal.

And final there's the writing of the subject.  It gives us a good outline for where to start, such as finding an argument, an audience, and a purpose.

With these thoughts in mind it will make it a lot easier for us to figure out where to use images, how to use text, and how to design certain pages based on what we are using for our subject.