Madeline Zomb's Visual Rhetoric Blog

We received a new assignment during our class on Monday to write a comic for the most exciting topic ever: the humanities requirement. Jack and I paired up and decided to take the depth/breadth route for our comic. These comics are for the chair of HUA, Kris Boudreau who wants a better way of explaining something WPI students dread. Because of this, Jack and I brainstormed an theme that would appeal to the typical tech student. We decided on navigation theme with the perspective from the inside of a car giving clear and simple instructions on which roads to take in order to successfully complete your HUA requirement. We will have a speech bubble coming from the screen in the car showing the directions and signs on the road ahead indicating where to turn. We also outlined all of our frames in the comic: Frame 1: Welcome to Mission HUA, one of your most valuable experiences at WPI. Why humanities, you ask? In order to solve the world’s most pressing issues, it is critical for you...

After consulting with my group before Thanksgiving break, we determined what needed to be done in order to finalize our storybook infographic. Following the in class critique, this is what we came up with: This version is very much improved from our previous draft for a number of reasons. The fonts, to start, are very fitting in terms of this being a storybook themed infographic. They are also eye catching and easy to read, as the spacing makes for a quick read and the contrast between the black text and the white clouds is also more appealing to the eye. We also utilized the space on the truck and the smog behind both the truck and plane which added a creative element. In order to clarify the elements on the right of the infographic, we added signs indicating the skyscrapers are representing Boston (where our audience is located) and that the crops are supposed to be a community garden. In addition, we reworded some of our facts and statistics to make them easier to read and more...

Over the weekend, I did research to find specific statistics we could highlight in our infographic. I found a source that was basically an essay of our infographic - the numbers were very useful for the points we were trying to convey to our audience. This table in particular was very helpful: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29277 From this, I calculated how many pounds of CO 2 a plane flying from Washington State to Massachusetts produces because most apples found in groceries stores in MA are grown in WA. The article also had some other information besides numbers that gave us some more good points to use in the textual parts of the infographic. I also found an eco-friendly font that I thought would be an interesting visual to use. I downloaded it for free at https://rymaneco.co.uk/ and thought it created a clean an visually pleasing look to the infographic. This was our first completed draft: Today in class, we critiqued ever...

After meeting in class today, I realized the topic I really wanted to pursue was sustainability. I was late to join a group in the first place and after seeing that the sustainability group was starting their infographic over, I decided to join them. For our infographic, we are focusing on food as a subcategory of sustainability. We spent most of our meeting discussing possible topics, designs, etc. After asking for some outside opinions, we decided on an illustrated scene that shows how much energy eating locally can save. We will show statistics on how much energy it takes to ship common foods such as beef, potatoes, and apples and compare them with those same foods produced in places such as Western MA. We've also had to focus on ways to narrow down our topic so our infographic is fairly easy to read and has clear purpose. The purpose of our infographic is to target young adults and educate them about how much energy they would be conserving by habitually eating locally. Today, ...

For our next project, we were assigned to create an infographic for one of three overarching topics: campus activities, majors and careers, or sustainability. Our group will be creating an infographic with the theme of campus activities. After discussing, we decided to narrow this down to one organization in particular: WPI EMS. After interviewing some of the members, we learned more about the club including eye-catching statistics to use on our infographic and other important facts. For example, they have white and dark clouds in their club; the white clouds are people who tend to be called less, by luck, and the dark clouds are people who are constantly called. Also, most of the calls they receive are due to incidents with alcohol which usually occur on Fridays and Saturdays. For our infographic, we wanted an attention grabbing centerpiece so we created a word cloud in the shape of an ambulance. We used the colors red and blue which are bright, intense colors that will pop on ma...

After finding a free online resource called Vectr to create my font, I started drafting what I had in writing. This is the first draft I created using this software: After consulting with my partner, we spent a long time creating words and looking at how readable the font was. In order for this to work well on a poster, it needed to be clear and easy to read. We also looked at the American Horror Story font because we realized our font was sort of similar. Features like the square dots under certain letters help fill awkward spaces and ground letters such as 'M' and 'W'. This is what we ended up using as our final: We named our font  , inspired by the theme of the escape room.

After meeting with my class, and doing some further research myself, I gained a much better understanding of what I wanted my font to look like. During class, I met with a classmate and we compared our fonts and decided to try and combine different elements of our that would work together. Hers was a much bolder, rigid, and powerful font that had an intimidating feeling to it, while mine was much smaller and had a colder, icier, look to it. This was her font: This was my next draft inspired by hers: It is much bolder and intense than my first draft, yet I still wanted to make the letters more consistent with one another. I also created a mountain-like 'A' which gives the effect of movement due to its angled leg. The 'O's look like eyes because I was inspired by the roller coaster Expedition Everest's font. Following this, we looked through a variety of fonts on Word to work with as a base font. We also researched Nepali to see how we could incorporate th...

WPI is creating an Everest expedition escape room for students at the end of B term. I am creating an eye-catching, winter themed font that conveys the excitement and stress of an escape room. This needs to be able to be used on posters, so it should be clear and easy to read. From research and brainstorming, I have concluded that I want my font to: Be a simple and clean design Have some sort of ice-y elements Show the puzzling and stressful nature of an escape room Be fun and interesting to observe After going through a number of trials, I have come up with this for my first draft: The words are framed with icicles and in the word 'escape' I reversed the second 'E' which gives the word a sense of being trapped. The letters in between are simple yet have a cracked and horizontally squeezed look to them which adds to the stressful feeling of being in an escape room. This is an interesting text to look at but it easily and quickly conveys both the theme and t...