Multimedia Design

You might be pretty good analyzing a text – you have been asked to do it many times in your high school and college classes. Multimedia design, however, is something we consume more than we analyze it. You can apply the same principles to analyzing multimedia design that you apply to analyzing texts:

• Who designed this/created this?
• What’s the purpose?
• What’s the format/genre?
• Who is the audience?
• What’s the content?

These general questions will lead you to more specific questions. For example, you know that any text has a specific perspective and a value. That means that you want to find out what perspectives are part of the multimedia design, and what perspectives are left out.

Next steps and additional information

If you want to show that you are more than a consumer of messages, you can work on your critical and analytical skills. To do this, you can:

• Read multimodal compositions with a critical eye. Don’t be taken in by beautiful images or by the background music.
• Study the multimodal composition by checking whether it includes sounds, images, audio, text, and so on.
• Examine how the multimodal composition is trying to convince you. Is there a logical development to the arguments? Are there plenty examples and enough detail to convince you?
• Find out who the author is. Is this the only work by this author?
• Examine why the author used a specific medium/genre? Is it the best choice for the message that the author tries to get across?
• Check with a Writing Assistant at the University Writing Commons.
• Start Early!

Designing PowerPoint slides or Prezi slides for a presentation might seem easy. You have templates that you can use, so all you need to do is plug in some words, add a few images, and if you want to impress, you put in a video clip, transition slides, and some sound effects, and you are ready to go. It’s a bit more complex because:

• Any medium needs to be designed to get a message across convincingly.
• The medium alone is not the message.
• Your audience needs guideposts to understand the message that you are trying to get across.
• Your PowerPoint, Prezi, or other presentation tool needs to support what you are presenting.

Your presentation on a specific topic will be enhanced by your multimodal composition if you:

• Include a slide that shows the purpose of your presentation
• Use slides that don’t distract from the message, but support the message
• Pay attention to your audience
• Practice, practice, practice.

Public speaking is not for everybody. You will be more confident because you practiced, got feedback, revised your presentation, and practiced again before it’s showtime.

Next steps and additional information

Many times, a presentation is based on work that you have written up or a project that you have created When you learn that your major or your professor expect public presentations, you can focus on the following:

• Find out whether there are specific presentation guidelines in your major, or whether your professor included guidelines the assignment handout.
• Ask your professor about the design expectations of your presentation.
• Find out who the audience will be for your presentation. Will it be in a public space? Will it be in your classroom? Are your parents invited?
• Make sure that the computer and projection screen are working. To keep calm, get to the room early to check the technology.
• Check with a Writing Assistant at the University Writing Commons.
• Start Early!

Poster presentations are a great way to show your skills in your major and also in multimedia design. Posters are very popular with the sciences and technical fields. The humanities and social sciences are beginning to participate in poster presentations as well, especially when students are asked to present research findings at the Undergraduate Research Symposium. There, you’ll see many posters representing a wide range of majors. Posters, in general:

• Provide a brief overview of your work.
• Use visual information (including graphs, use of text size and color, use of images) to underscore the points that you are making.
• Share information with a wide range of audiences.
• Encourage interactions with your audience.

When you create a poster, you follow similar principles that you would use when you write a report or a paper or an essay. You pay attention to the rhetorical situation – what’s the purpose, who is my audience, and what are some of the constraints? What is different from a text-based publication is your focus on text and visuals, and how the text and the visuals create a coherent whole.

Next steps and additional information

To get ready for your own poster presentation, you can:

• Check out what your peers are doing at the undergraduate research symposium or another poster presentation event before you present your own poster.
• Decide on the most important information that you need to include in your poster.
• Look at design principles for poster presentations. If you have seen other posters, do a critical analysis of what worked well and what didn’t work well.
• Show your poster to your professor to make sure that you have all the necessary components included in the poster.
• Practice your presentation with your friends and peers.
• Check with a Writing Assistant at the University Writing Commons.
• Start Early!

Flyers and brochures are highly visible documents that are usually displayed to attract a particular audience for various reasons:

• Advertise a campus event.
• Raise awareness of the impact of beef consumption on the environment.
• Show why your design should win an award.
• Announce a yard sale.
• Show why Flagstaff is the best place for college students.
• Show why you should be the next student representative on ABOR.

No matter what the reason for the flyer or the brochure, certain design principles will help you get your message across. You need to ask yourself:

• Who is my target audience?
• Am I trying to convince somebody to buy something or to participate in a protest march?
• Is the event for which I am creating the flyer or brochure sponsored by my major or by my professor?
• Do I have guidelines to follow?

Flyers and brochures ask you to use your rhetorical skills and our multimedia design skills to encourage your audience to take action.

Public documents require you to think through how you are presenting information. Your online job portfolio should be the same!

Check out our job materials resource page for more information on how to develop your job and online materials.

Next steps and additional information

• Work closely with the organization or group for whom you are creating the flyer and/or brochure.
• Find out whether there are specific guidelines for creating the flyer or brochure.
• Find out who the audience will be for your flyer or brochure.
• Use a design template to start. Once you have developed your own style, you can go solo.
• Make sure that everything is spelled correctly and no words are left out.