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Progress on Project 3

What I Did

I honestly haven’t done much more with my project this week. I’ve mostly been thinking of ways that I could present my information. I decided a while ago that I wanted to do my project in InDesign, and I’m thinking about doing an infographic or a magazine, but I’m not entirely set on either yet.

Why I Did It

I want to use InDesign for my project because it’s been two years since I took Designing Documents for Print, so my skills are rusty, and they were moderate at best. I want to have as much skill as possible with InDesign, because my current top choice for a job this May requires lots of InDesign skill. I like the idea of an infographic because it’s simple, they’re fun to read, and I would have lots of creative freedom. I like the idea of a magazine because the aforementioned job involves designing stuff for catalogs, and I think this would be a great way to get that kind of experience and the final product would be an excellent addition to my portfolio. I’d go with a magazine instead of a catalog because it’s obviously a more story-friendly format.

Project 3 Story Selection

I’ve chosen to work with The Princess and the Pea for my story redesign. I will work with the original Hans Christian Andersen version, a YouTube children’s channel video version, and a 2012 children’s book called The Pea that provides a slight twist to the story. The citations for each are below.

  1. “The Princess and the Pea,” by Hans Christian Andersen
    • Andersen, Hans. “The Princess and the Pea.” Classics of Children’s Literature. 6th John W. Griffith, Charles H. Frey. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. pp 117-118. Print.
  2. Princess and the Pea – Fairy Tale Time at Cool School!
  3. One Pea, by Julia Meyer and MarieTabler
    • Meyer, Julia, and Marie Tabler. One Pea. Art Mill, 2012. Print.

Project Presentations: They’re Finally Done

Obviously my favorite program today was Storify, since it was the only option. I thought it was cool that it allows you to make many elements of social media together, and I would use it to create a comprehensive look at someone.

Today, I fixed issues with my pages not lining up and shifted information to my new pages.

I did that because I had all of my information clumped into one page and wanted to make it more navigable, but I had previously been unable to get the page separation to work.

Project Presentations: Day 3

My favorite tool presented today was Prezi. I always love it when people present in class using Prezi, and I’ve been curious about the tool. I think it’s really cool that the tool is so versatile, and it definitely shakes up the typical PowerPoint format. I think that it functions to grab the audience’s attention. I also like that it’s accessible from any computer with internet, and I have yet to see it get glitchy when others have used it. I would use it in a classroom presentation setting.

Project 2 Presentations: Day 2

I really liked Canva. It was actually my top pick for my presentation, and after seeing all of the features, I’m definitely considering using it for Project 3. I like that it allows the user to do so many different things. A lot of the applications we’ve seen are good at one thing, but Canva allows you to do a lot of different stuff in the same place. It also seems that the tools actually function, which is more than I can say about some of the other applications presented today. I might use it for making a presentation, because it provides a cool alternative feel and offers more creative freedom than a PowerPoint.

Project 2 Presentations: Day 1

My favorite application was definitely 750 Words. I’m always happier when I make time to journal, but I’m pretty terrible at maintaining the habit. This site helps to solve that problem by creating a minimum and recognizing the user for doing it every day. The rewards may not mean anything, but they come with a sense of accomplishment, which is enough for most people on the internet. The only real downside is the $5 monthly fee. I was totally going to use this site until the $60 per year thing came up. I understand why they’d rather have people pay than run ads, though, because an ad would kill the minimalistic non-distracting design.

Class Happenings 10/8/14

What I Did

I spent last night working on my web essay. I discussed my initial thoughts about the site, getting started on a project,and adding data. I added screenshots of the site throughout.

Why I Did It

I spent all of my class time (and about an hour outside of class) working on my infogram project, so I hadn’t had any time to even start my web essay or presentation. I wanted to give a walk through of the design process with the site and then add separate pages for affordances and constraints, but my blog isn’t letting me add the subpages, so we’ll see. I added screenshots for clarity.

What I Still Need to Do

Obviously, I still need to build a presentation. I also need to finish my overview and give my affordances and constraints in my web essay. I also need to figure out why my wordpress won’t let me add secondary pages, because that’s a huge problem. Finally, I want to add a link to the document I created with infogram, but the code for it that I got from the site is not working for some reason.

Class Happenings 10/6/14

What I Did

I finished my infographic. I added statistics on female and corps enrollment. I used two kinds of charts.

Why I Did It

I think that letting females into the school and lifting the corps requirement is a lot of what allowed Virginia Tech to expand so greatly, and I think that women and corps members are two important parts of the student body. I used two different kinds of charts to show what the site is able to do.

10/2/14

What I did

I explored Infogram, which is a site dedicated to making infographics and charts. I took notes on the usability and began making an infographic. I started with a graph at the top that will ultimately show Virginia Tech’s enrollment from 1872-2008 based on information I found on the Virginia Tech website. I plan to add information about college enrollment, war influence on enrollment (it drops significantly during the world wars), the growing female presence, and the racial breakdown.

Why I did it

I chose to start with the graph because it was at the top. I chose to do the Virginia Tech enrollment over time because I couldn’t change the chart type to a bar graph, so I could not use my original idea of the number of students in each college/major. The enrollment over time lends itself well to a line graph.