Notes for a random day of visual rhet.

2. TODAY
1) Icebreaker
2) Fliers
3) Lynda
4) Quick activity: how to read theory
5) Design Task 1
6) Work time
7) For Thursday!

3. Icebreaker
For today, I want you to tell us your name (obviously)
and the very first thing you remember wanting to be
when you grew up.
Dr. Phill wanted to be Spider-man.
That didn’t quite work out.

5. This should say “2586 Davos
Trail,” but it got cut off.
It says “vinyl” in this mess
being made by “West Vail”
It’s actually Big & Nasty
Productions. I think he just
typoed. But he can stay
Big@Nasty if you wish. It’s your
world. I’m just living in it.

14. NEXT!

15. Lynda.com.
I’m going to alt-tab

16. NEXT!

17. I wanted to give you an example of how to approach reading
theoretical works. You have to resist thinking that you can pull
a one sentence summary for any of these; that won’t happen.
But what you can do is look for what seem to be key passages
and break them down.
Something like this:

18. Roland Barthes
Barthes challenges us thusly:
“Now even– and above all if– the image is in a certain manner the
limit of meaning, it permits the consideration of a veritable ontology
of the process of signification. How does meaning get into the image?
Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?”

19. What?

23. So….
.. Images carry meaning. But how’d the meaning GET
there, Barthes asks us to consider.

24. Gunther Kress
Kress tells us:
“The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention
to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design,
but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the
fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their
cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those
cultures.”

25. Like…

28. These images have meaning…
…because we know them.
They emerge from our culture and are reinforced by our culture.
Recognize this?
That isn’t this, is it? = SOr is it?

29. NEXT!

30. Design task one
…is to put yourself into the movie poster. I will walk you
through one way to do it, on the overhead, but if you’re an
advanced Photoshop user, you will realize there are more
elegant alternative ways to do this. When you finish, post it to
the “Design Task 1” forum in the module for next Tuesday.
That will require you saving as a png or jpg then using Imgur
(or something similar). I can show you how to do that if you’re
not familiar. Because we are working on this in class AND as a
homework design task, I will expect you to do the best job you
can with it. I will grade you, to a degree, on blending.

31. Homework
For Thursday, keep reading the theory stuff that was due
today.
Remember your first reading response is due by noon before
our next class. There’s a forum for it in the Feb 5th
module.
Start the Lynda tutorials. Build yourself a little calendar. I
recommend doing the Illustrator and Photoshop basics first.