act: Final Communication Model

Final Model


The main focus for our model was the alteration of the idea. It starts with intent, where the idea grows into a completed thought, and then is filtered through the brain. As it goes through this process, thoughts get left behind that cannot crossover. Some examples of this would be how they came up with the idea, the person's background and personality that helped form the idea, etc. As the idea narrows down into something that can be transmitted to another person, be it through Facebook or in a poster, the receiver sees the idea and makes a first impression. Noise effects the message once its out into the world. Effected by the receiver's own background and context, the message gets altered once more and ends with the receiver's concluded thought about what the sender was trying to convey.

critique:
-not as dimensional, try to show its structure
-be more clear with the labels
-perhaps not a motion graphic, but an actual kinetic model with things falling into it like an hourglass?

Practical Example of our Model in Action

act: communication model with larry

our model focuses on the alteration of an idea during communication. The idea has to go through three filters: A's brain, the transmitter, and B's brain. In each filter, the idea is changed. In A's brain, the filter loses some of A's thoughts and background information as to how A thought up with the idea. In the transmitter, it is the idea is further filtered into a medium that all (or a group of) people can access. Finally, the idea goes through B's brain, where B comes to their own conclusions despite what A's intent was.

act: Final Bike Walk Poster

Biking Bandit

Audience: people like Zoa Smalley. Specifically, people who work hard and need some time away from work/school. This poster speaks to those who prefer logic over emotion and who enjoy simplicity. For those stressed out, the poster serves as comic relief and a moment of clarity.

Rhetorical Tropes:
Personification - the white smile added to the bike chain gives it human features that people can identify as a happy person.
Pun - a play on the word "getaway." Both a getaway from one's problems and a "getaway car" for a criminal escaping the police, the raccoon-like eyes speak to both characteristics. Biking helps one escape their problems.

act: pre-final posters

i'm not sure how to push these posters forward...
perhaps using different wording?

act: bike advocacy iterations

act: bike campaign brainstorm + definitions

Terms Defined for Rhetoric
9 different tropes

personification - giving an inanimate object human characteristics
hyperbole - an exaggeration of a characteristic/quality of something
pun - a play on words that use similar language from differing ideas
antithesis - showing the opposite of something
irony - depicting an unexpected outcome
metonomy - the usage of something (quality/characteristic) to stand in for another concept
synechdoche - using a part of something to represent a whole or vise versa
metaphor - combining two differing ideas that have similar qualities
parody - using the societal implications of cultural references or another person's work and changing it to mean something else, usually with humor

act: 5 signs for biking

act: ideation matrix

ones on the left are my top six

act: logos

Significance of Logos

While pathos may seem like a more direct and powerful way to persuade the viewer/audience, playing on a person's emotions only goes so far. Pathos is at times too quickly absorbed and understood, and can ironically seem superficial and forced. Since it's foundation is emotionality, it has no firm grounds and does not have as much ethos, or credibility, as logos does. For example, take a person speaking in front of a crowd about saving the environment. The person may include examples about animals struggling to survive due to man-made waste, however, adding statistics and facts about how ecosystems are interconnected and the impact of pollution answers the "so what" factor.

When comparing the two, pathos asks the viewer to react and logos calls the viewer to think. As people respond to images differently according to their personal backgrounds and personalities, emotionality and logic appeals to certain types of people. Some may believe the artist of an image is trying too hard by playing the pity card and may dismiss the image, others may think that it makes the information relatable. In some ways, visualizing data bridges this gap of the incomprehensibility of information through relative size and color variations.

Both pathos and logos have to be used correctly: pathos used in the wrong way can trigger feelings of insincerity and shallowness while logos used in the wrong way can seem incomprehensible. For pathos to have its strongest impact, the viewer should not see the author's clear attempt to manipulate the viewer. Logos is most effective when clear and direct.

Still, pathos, logos, and ethos in combination and individually are all needed.

metaphor: baldness in human beings and cats

Rhetoric: 8 different tropes
-personification
-hyperbole
-pun
-antithesis
-irony
-metonymy
-synecdoche
-metaphor

parody: stonehenge made to look like ancient legos

parody: vincent van gogh's portrait made clear with glasses

















hyperbole: visualizes what it feels like to eat wasabi

















  personification: shoe made to look like mouth

personification: asparagus made to look like human legs

Biking Narrative

seventy-five degrees

kassidy's bike's back wheel was flat, so i asked for an air pump, but mercedes
had already arrived and was waiting for me at the front. our cheeks were pink
because it was getting warmer

we felt a bit awkward biking at first because we haven't biked in a while

the hill was dangerously steep, and the speed of the clicking gears accelerated

the bike seats were too high for us

cars swooshed by and we felt every muscle propelling the bike forward

the pool blocked the sidewalk

mercedes asked me if i wanted to go to jimmy johns. i said yes because i was hungry

i had a rock to hold the door open, and had to pull in the bike backwards,
then twist it to fit into the door, and finally squish it back into the basement

how did i used to walk everywhere before? walking's so slow

act: amber's infographic

I first notice the infographic as an image, not as interpreted information. The red pops from the dark teal and the white tells the viewer where to focus on. The circle stands out the most, with its repeating rings and racetrack imagery. On closer inspection, the statistics on the circle are hard to connect together. The topics, how much of a percentage it declined over the year, and the year are too spread out that make the viewer struggle to put the three together. The lines from the topics (Project Gemini, Moon sample, etc...) do little and instead retract from clarity. The same goes for the years.

Then I realize that the information is a bit confusing. Are the statistics in the circle representing the achievements or how much of the budget it took up? Why is it depicted in a circle, and what does it have to do with the information? According to what I see, it says that Project Gemini took up 4.31% of the budget in 1965. I keep reverting back to the title: "Decline of Nasa Budget & Achievements." Is the circle depicting the achievements of NASA? If so, what do the numbers imply? The viewer needs some clarity and cohesion.

The graph on the left, however, is clear and I understand what it means. The federal government clearly favors military advancement with 58.42% of the budget going to the military. The bars allow me to see the comparisons between what the government prioritizes and what it neglects. It is surprising to see the difference between the budget going to the military and to NASA, from almost 60% to 4%.

Overall, due to the size of the shapes, the circle implies a greater importance, and the graph on the left is put to the side. However, I feel as though the decline of the NASA budget should be your focus. The two images also look very separate, and some integration would be beneficial to the infographic. It is aesthetically nice, but it needs hierarchy and integration of data.

act: data visualization final

The Great Disparity: Racial InequalityFar from King's Dream

I really enjoyed this project, especially because I like gathering information then sorting it out. Some things that are successful are the visualization's emphasis on the gap between the races and its inclusion of layers of statistics. However, I could have integrated the information more to show relationships between income, marriage, poverty, and home ownership. Though the information is tied together with the same x-axis, they still appear separate and fragmented.

act: data visualization

act: possible data topics

really helpful site:
http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-xenophobia-immigration-and-asylum/statistics-on-racism/



interracial marriage

employment

salary

education

act: final e-blast

As Martin Luther King is a symbol for the civil rights movement and racial equality, I used a photograph of him to appeal to the viewer's ethos. Pathos is then used when they see MLK's sarcastic face, which invokes disappointment. As the viewer scrolls down, there are statistics that use logos to convince the viewer, to a point where it invokes pathos. To emphasize its emotional qualities, I included Martin Luther's eyes looking out a the viewer. 

act: e-blast progress

As the viewer first sees the image, they can only see a fragment of Martin Luther King's face and the words "I HAVE A DREAM..." When they scroll down, they begin to see a word bubble, saying "Yeah. I had a dream that one day racism will be so engrained people won't even know it" coming out of the mouth of a sarcastic, eye-rolling Martin Luther King. Appealing to the viewer through the credibility of the figure depicted, one suddenly feels disappointment and shame for what little progress has occurred throughout the years. At the end of the e-blast is a statistic saying, "After being arrested, blacks are 33% more likely than whites to be detained while facing a felony trial in New York." This statistic gives the viewer a clear example of subtle racism today. Finally, the image ends with "I HAD a dream." 

The viewer is first confronted with obscure shapes, then the words "I don't see race," and then the hand and bucket full of water. Using pathos, the image speaks to the inhumanity of "erasing" peoples' pasts and backgrounds, aligning humans of different races with dirty laundry. The assumption that being "clean" equals taking away race is appalling, and creates a sense of injustice and callousness.