Infographic on Personal Multimodal Literacy Experiences

Assignment Goals

A goal of this sequence this piece is in is to consider how multimodal texts are shaped and how the use of various modes affects the ways we interact with texts. For this assignment, you will create infographic your own personal experiences with multimodality. These experience may include but are not limited to your engagement with and/or creation of digital, multilingual, visual, auditory, and other texts.

This assignment is designed to help you:

•   Reflect on your own interactions with multimodality
•   Practice visual rhetoric and design skills
•   Familiarize yourselves with infographic genre conventions
•   Practice creating an informative and visually appealing text

The infographic must be created and submitted digitally, as a png, jpeg, or pdf file or as a shareable link.

Brainstorming Content

Below is a list of brainstorm questions to help you get thinking about you own multimodal literacy experiences. Try thinking about the below questions. Free write, doodle, voice memo record, or jot down your thoughts just to get some ideas out in the tangible way. (You do not need to turn this part in)

• What types of media and multimodal compositions did you interact with growing up?
• What types of media and multimodal compositions do you interact with now?
• What types of media and multimodal compositions do you hope to interact with in the future?
  •  Picture books? Oral storytelling? Movies? TV Shows? Video/Board/Computer games? Music? Multi-lingual texts? Advertisements? Museums or exhibits? Illustrated texts? Podcasts? Computer languages/Coding? Software? Something else?
• Do you produce these texts, interact with them, or serve as an audience member?
• What role have these texts played in your life?
• What types of multimodality have been important parts of your life?
• What types of multimodal resource are you glad you had or wish you had?
• What types of multimodality do you want to engage with more?
• What the settings/places/locations/space in which you have interacted with multimodal texts?
• Who have you shared the experience of multimodal texts with?

You do not need to answer all of the above questions! And there is no one right way to do this assignment!

Structure Tips

When you are making your infographic, you are welcome to create it on one specific theme of your multimodal literacy experiences. For example, I could make an infographic that focuses on my own love of graphic novels, or even my love of a specific graphic novel.

Alternatively, you can give a broader overview of how multimodality has been a part of your life categorically, in a timeline, or in another structural format. You don’t need to include everything that has ever been important to you.

Assignment Example

Here is an example of this for me: MK’s multimodal infographic. (Links to an external site.)

I made this example using the infographic section on prezi, which is super user friendly and free!

Try thinking about this as a visual and textual personal narrative, timeline, overview, and/or profile of the ways multimodality has been a part of your life. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Free Online Resources

• Piktochart: Create free account online; has templates, icons, shapes, and more; https://piktochart.com/ (Links to an external site.)
• Prezi: Has a new infographic creation function. https://prezi.com/ (Links to an external site.)
• Canva: Create free account online; has templates, icons, shapes, and more; https://www.canva.com/ (Links to an external site.)
• Visme: Create free account online; has templates, diagrams, video tutorials, and more; https://www.visme.co/ (Links to an external site.)
• Easel.ly:  https://www.easel.ly (Links to an external site.)
• Infogram.com: https://infogram.com/ (Links to an external site.)

Evaluation: Things to Consider

• Visual Impact: the overall effect and appeal that a visual composition has on an audience
• Visual Coherence: the extent to which visual elements of a composition are tied together with color, shape, image, lines of sight, theme, etc.
• Visual Salience: importance or prominence of a visual element
  • The element/s in an image which stand out and attract the viewer’s attention; the feature(s) in a composition that most grabs your attention.
  • Placement (usually an image becomes heavier if placed towards the top or left of the page), ​color, size, shape, spacing, or, a combination of these can create visual salience
• Visual Organization: pattern of arrangement that relates the elements to each other in a way that promotes viewer comprehension
• Vector: a line that leads your eye from one element to another may be a visible line or an invisible one can be created by such things as pointing fingers, extended arms, the direction of gaze, a fence line
• Juxtaposition: ​Placing visual elements side by side to create contrast or interaction; The placement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases or words side-by-side for a particular purpose, for example to highlight contrast or for rhetorical effect.
• Reading Pathways: the path you take through a visual text (in the U.S. in English usual left to right, up to down); Consider using a flow chart and/or subheadings
• Framing: consider rule of thirds, negative space, and centrality
• Visual elements: consider using symbols, charts, graphs, diagrams; pay attention to your use of color, typography, lines, shapes, space, and scale

Please bring a digital/sharable draft–in the form of a link, pdf, or png–to class on ______ for peer review. You do not need to submit these drafts prior to class.

A second draft for instructor feedback will be due _____ via canvas.

Remember this piece will not be graded individually but will be graded as part of your sequence portfolio. The initial submission is primarily for instructor feedback!

Thanks! Please let me know if you have any questions!