How each facet plays its own role in a whole piece

Emphasis

. Describe where your attention is visually drawn in this text. What strategies does the author use to emphasize this element? Given that this text is essentially a title page for a larger project, does this emphasis seem effective to you? Why or why not?

When watching the video, my eyes are draw to the notepad because it stands out the most and the action is localized to it. The author makes this point of emphasis by picking a light colored paper and using a dark pen, while scratching and writing the words. In doing this, the reader is very well aware of the topic DRM because of the color choice and the repetition of the word, as well as the clever play on words.

Between composing the two different pages ("Digital Rights Management/Digital Robbing Maniacs" and "Criminal") the woman disappears from the screen and the jumpy stop-motion effect ceases. Describe how this moment of stillness can be understood as "emphasis" and explain if it seems like an effective strategy? What is emphasized by stopping the movement?

In stopping for a few brief moments the audience is able to effectively read what she has written and later what she has drawn because her motions have drawn our eyes to the notepad and her disappearance has kept our eyes on it. It is effective because as an audience, we correlate the silence to mean importance because action isn’t just stopped, thus what is being stopped becomes more important.

Consider the role sound plays in emphasis. How does the soundtrack to this clip help to (a) emphasize certain moments in the clip, and (b) place a particular emotional emphasis on the meaning of the clip?

First off, the music is akin to something played in the background when diffusing a bomb or puzzling what to do next, thus the audience is conveyed the emotion of solving a question, which in this case would be DRM. The tempo the music allow for emphasis to be placed on parts where it is slowed down, particularly when author is off screen and the action is stopped.

Contrast

1.      Watch 0:22-0:36 of The JUMP's "Call for Papers." Notice the words, the gray box, the cartoon background, and the sound. Do you think any of these elements contrast? If so, which ones and how so (specifically, what makes them different from one another)? What effects do you think this use of contrast has on the audience and the purpose? Consider how the text's effectiveness might change if these elements did not contrast.

In looking at the video, major contrasts include the music, the voice-over, and the cartoon. The music starts off with a dark undertone, which contrasts the pleasant looking comic picture and the words being said. It also contrasts with the song the follows it because the second song is much more light-hearted. The voice-over and comic are major contrast because of the eras in which each takes place, as the lessons mentioned earlier.  Now looking at the effectiveness, the contrast in music makes the audience focus on what the voice-over is saying, while the contrast in image versus voice also brings attention to the voice-over. If these contrasts were not used, then the audience’s attention might wonder to other aspects of this video and miss what the author is trying to convey.

Watch 0:55-1:08 of The JUMP's "Call for Papers." Notice how this is similar to the clip from question 1, yet the background no longer includes the cartoon. First, describe what elements are contrasting. Next, explain why you think the cartoon background was deleted from this section. What happens to the contrast now that the background is black? Which element is now the most emphasized, and how do you think this helps convey the purpose of the text?

The text and the black background truly contrast this time around, which makes the text seem more important and leads the audience to focus on it instead of the comic. The background makes the text easier to see and allows it to be more accessible to the audience.

Imagine you've been asked to design a flyer to post around your campus advertising The JUMP. What would the flyer look like? Which element(s) would contrast and to what effect?

The flyer would have the comic character in the bottom, right corner while the background would be a light gray with black, bolded words except The Jump which would be in red. Having the character contrast with the background allows for the feel of a everyman kind of idea, while having the background contrast the words allows the word to become more important, especially The Jump since it will be in red.

Organization

Choose 5 of the 15 images to drag into the empty timeline. Make a note about each of the 5 photos to explain what each one signifies, and how one leads to another. How does your organization convey your purpose?

The first image I chose, MODERN, denotes the idea that my slide show is going to talk about current ideals. My second image, milk cartons, denotes the idea of buying and selling goods, which is leads into my third image, the barcode on the foot, which can be seen as a correlation between the milk and the being, we are consumed along with being consumers. The forth image is a man smoking, which in today's culture can be seen as rebellious and when coupled with the last image, the fist in the air, a person could see the slide show as a way of saying people are not just goods, but actual people that if strong, will not be "drunk" and thrown away. 

Are there different arguments that you could have made by organizing your 5 photos in different ways?

If I had organized the images differently, I could have made the argument that smoking is a modern plague that leaves a person strapped and crippled by their addiction and just a barcode waiting to expire.

Are there other elements you could add to make your argument stronger—for example, playing music with the slide show or adding text?

If I added statics and music that starts out dark and ends with strength then it would make my slide show more appealing and the audience more receptive to my message.

Alignment

How would you describe alignment of the words "murmuring" and "insects" in the opening scene? How does the unusual alignment (reflected on screen and timed) add to your interpretation of the text?

Dual left alignment is present in this image, which causes the reader to take notice of both words, but not in a way that would make them conflict or negate each other.

2.      Now watch the "Earth" scene. What other elements are aligned in this scene? How does the consistent alignment of elements across screens (and also across some of the scenes) affect how you read these scenes? What elements do you end up focusing on? Would the scene seem as effective if all of the elements on the page (upside-down moon, contrails, words, background color, etc.) had no shared alignment?

The date is right aligned in the bottom, right-hand corner, which causes the reader to look at it after the two words "murmuring" and "insect" have fallen. If this alignment had no organization the message might become confusing and no longer effective in conveying the message.

Now watch the "Air" scene, paying attention to the lines of poetry and the audio tracks. The poem doesn't settle on the same horizontal axis as the other scenes do, and the two phrases in the audio track are aligned (synced) to appear with each line of poetry. Why do you think the alignments of the words are different between the Earth and Air scenes? What is the significance of the audio track's content in relation to that difference?

It allows for a connection to be made by the audience between the music and the words.

3.      Now watch the "Water" scene. How does the curvature of the words, aligning with the background image of an eye, relate to what the man in the audio track is saying?

The eye places the two words together when read because they appear at the same time, so the emphasis is placed on the sentence instead of each separate word.

. Based on the alignment (or lack of alignment) between elements in a scene and across scenes, why are the three menu options ("Air," "Earth," and "Water") on the main screen of this text not aligned? What does this lack of alignment tell you about the emphasis, sequence, and purpose of this text?

It makes the word murmuring become the most important sense it lasts the longest, which in turn disconnects it from the rest of the message because everything else becomes slightly less significant.  In having no alignment, the audience will think it is more about murmuring, especially with insects, instead of what it has to do with the earth and the date.

Proximity

Did you group certain categories of information together? How did you group them—typographically, by placing them closer together, or in some other way?

I put the title “Seagulls” in big, slanted letters at the top and chose a smaller, Arial font for “A Novel about Flight” and put the author’s name at the bottom of the page.

What do you think is the most important piece of information on your cover? What choices did you make about typeface or size to convey that sense of importance? How does the layout of your book cover reflect your sense of how the information should be organized?

The most important text on my front page is the title, closely followed by the author’s name. In making this choice, the audience is led to believe this book is about seagulls and that the book would focus on the aspect of flight in seagulls.

What are some limitations you've encountered in laying out visual elements in a traditional way? What are some other ways you might want to organize the information on a book cover that might work better in a non-traditional format?

In making the choice of the seagulls being a large font, the rest of the words suffer and may go unnoticed because of the traditional manner in which I set up the front cover. If I were to have the author at the top instead, the audience may get confused because society has established a standard for how and what a book cover should have on it.