Miriam Sachs Q2 Media Fluency

Posted by Miriam Sachs in Technology- Freshmen - Hull - y1 on Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 9:59 am

Hi, my name is Miriam and I am an artist and an athlete. I wanted to combine these two parts of my personality into one phrase. “Stay active” came to mind. I wanted something creative and unique. Creative ended up being the word I used to complete this phrase. I centered the words in the gray area. I made the type size 60 so the words would be big, but still have some empty space around them. I used a gray background so it would easily contrast with the words. I wanted the words to stand out. I made the letters a shade of red so they would come towards the viewer and contrast from the background. Tahmid pointed out that my words spelled SAC vertically and if I added HS, it would spell my last name. The only thing I could come up with was “has strengths”. I kept in mind that Zach Holman said to delete half the words on a slide. “Staying actively creative has strengths” sounded strange, so I deleted “has strengths”. I made the picture a similar shape as my slide (both are rectangular). I made sure the height of the picture was the same height as the slide so it would combine with the rest of the slide harmoniously. For repetition, I made both figures in my picture gray silhouettes with few details. When I tried adding facial features to the figures, they were distracting. I made the figure playing soccer taller than the one playing softball and centered the softball player in comparison to the soccer player so it give the illusion that the soccer player is standing closer to the viewer and will not bump into the softball player if they were actually moving forward. I made sure the soccer player’s head was facing in the direction of the soccer ball and the body was moving towards the soccer ball. I then made a similar connection between the softball’s position and the direction the softball player is facing. Notice that the softball player has one arm pointing at the softball, as if they just threw it. The shapes of the balls are not round to show that they are moving. I wanted to bring attention to the sports gear being used. I made the softball glove and soccer cleat orange. This gave them contrast from the figures, repetition (since both are orange), and made them come forward. I made them come forward to bring attention and make the figures seem three dimensional. I used marker instead of solid shapes to add shading and form and to give the impression that I am still currently drawing. The marker bleeds off the slide. I wanted to show that the marker existed without making the image smaller to fit the entire marker. The thought bubble also bleeds off the slide. The point of this is that I am always thinking with an artist and an athlete’s point of view, but the thought bubble could belong to someone else. Anyone can try to always think creative thoughts, which will help them to imagine drawings such as this one. I had to crop the picture to make the marker and thought bubble bleed off and I should have cut off more of the picture so the edge of the picture would be at the edge of the paper. I drew lines underneath the figures going in the same direction to represent the ground underneath the figures. The lines are curved to show that it is a bumpy field instead of a flat surface. I used multiple lines to show that it is a two dimensional surface.

Reflection

I got rid of the thought bubble because during the class discussion, someone said it was distracting. I decided to write the words by hand so that they would be on the paper. I did this because the first slide had a different shade of gray behind the words than there was where the illustration is. Drawing everything on the paper allowed my new slide to have one background color throughout. I wrote the words diagonally because someone commented that the words looked like an acrostic poem when aligned vertically. I decided to add a figure playing basketball so the slide would be harmonious. It would have looked odd if there were pictures above the words and nothing below. Having figures above and below the words also adds a sense of symmetry. I made the soccer ball and softball orange so that they would be the same color as the rest of the sports equipment. In the first slide, the softball and soccer balls were different colors, which made them distracting. Making all the sports equipment one color (orange) gave the slide harmony and made it easier to see them. Now, everything in the slide looks like it fits together instead of parts being separated by thought bubbles or different backgrounds.

Comments (2)

Lewis Ford

I notice that yours is very unique because you drew on your slide. I wonder how it would look if you edited your drawn picture with your laptop. What if you used more colors to display uniqueness in different sports.

Otter Jung-Allen

I noticed that there is a substantial improvement between the first and second slide in terms of space relationships, contrast, aesthetics and clarity. For example, the first slide has a lot of problems in way of drawing the viewer's eye to a different and distracting spot, but in the second one you fixed that problem by making the text the center and the focus of your slide instead of off to the side. It really worked! The words are bigger, more obvious, easier to understand and the relay the message more clearly than before. The color of the letters was much better than before, because they filled the page and had a more distinct and less bold font because the entire picture was drawn instead of some of it being drawn and some of it being typed.

I wondered how you would be able to fix these problems. After all, they weren't glaring mistakes with very obvious solutions, which made the slide a lot harder to "fix". But you did a great job because of your insight about the tools mentioned above (space relationships, contrasts, aesthetics and clarity). But what if you made the words all lowercase, which would take away from the idea that it is an acronym (S.A.C.). That would also look nicer with the background because it encourages the words to be clearer and bolder. Rather, the viewer would read it as a message instead of a sentence. Thanks!