Project Assessment Essay
Write about translating linguistic claims into visual claims. How does your visual support your linguistic claim?
Our visuals support these linguistic claims because our pamphlet has multiple visuals which show CrossFit members being motivated, supported, and guided. If you were to walk in a traditional gym and snap photos, you would most likely walk away with pictures of gym members working out on a machine, alone. If you were to walk in a CrossFit gym and snap photos you would walk away with photos of team members giving each other high fives, cheering each other on, and performing the same intense workout, side by side, striving for the same success.The group workouts, which are held by a trained instructor, are a team effort and many of the pictures reflect exactly that. The one photo shows a group of CrossFit members huddled together with their arms wrapped around each other. Another photo shows a CrossFit member being spotted and guided by a trainer. When pushing yourself to reach new goals and better your health; you are not alone while in the CrossFit community.
Write about the context. In what was does your visual argument appeal specifically to the audience you identified? That is, how do your design choices persuade your audience?
Our visuals appeal to our college classroom because many of the pictures show women and our college classroom is dominated by women. Many of the pictures also show a similar age bracket of people. The visuals appeal to our audience because we purposely chose photos that show women with different body types. This helps to show that not just "the fit" person can perform intense workouts like CrossFIt which will help to not discourage our audience.
Write about how you implemented your design plan.
Our design plan was a constructive way to flesh out our ideas. Referring to the design plan kept us on track. Our medium slowly came to life with the thoughtfully chosen visuals and the strategic planning for how to best reach our audience.
THE PROCESS
The most challenging part of the visual aspect of the assignment was probably determining how we were going to go about doing it, and what we were going to include. Originally our intentions were to use Glogster in order to present our videos, content, and images—although given that only one of the three of us had any experience with the website and we were unsure about how to properly include it into the website. Overall, however, given some design experience in our group, the switch to using InDesign to develop the visual image was less of an issue than learning how to use a different program entirely.
In relation to effectiveness, we aimed to riff off of designs CrossFit gyms tend to use—very bold, dark backgrounds, and a bit gritty—but a toned down version to attract a wider audience. The bright cyan was chosen instead of the normal red because it's bold, and exciting without being too intense-seeming—definitely a more welcoming color, without loosing its intensity. The fonts, colors, and design aimed to be fun and young, with the intention of drawing in an energetic, college-aged audience. We kept this theme going throughout the flier and brochure, and once there were done the website was updated to attempt to match these designs.
ETHOS, PATHOS, LOGOS
Ethos means credibility, and so we wanted to portray our information in an accurate model as how our audience would see it presented in the real world. For that reason we chose a pamphlet and flyer combination. Pamphlets are a common sight at most gym desks, as they are capable of containing a significant about of information in a compact and visually appealing way. But those are for when the subject has already found their way to the gym, or in our case, warehouse. The initial spark is often by a commercial, word of mouth, or by flyer. Seeing as a commercial was a bit beyond our price range, we found that a bold flyer modeled after the official CrossFit flyer designs would be best to both gain that interest and show the credibility of our information.
Our personal character comes through in our slight alterations to the CrossFit template. Most CrossFit designs are a dark mixture of black, blue, and red. This is used to relay the intensity of the program and the gritty results it produces. We felt that this was too intimidating for our more laid-back audience, as most college students would be put off by the ‘blood and dirt’ representation. Instead, we removed the red and focused on the black and electric blue colors, which more show the energy that we want to project as well as maintaining the idea that the program is a higher intensity than a traditional gym. WE expanded the white space to make the text stand out more, and added in a green that is similar to the color of many equipment pieces found in the gyms.
The thick typography serves two purposes, to make the text easier to read and to make it more impactful on the reader.
While being a credible source is important, it is just as necessary to have a reasonable and audience-appropriate argument so as to present our topic in the most appealing way. Our visual uses logos through providing true information in a clear format. What really gives our visual strength are the photos. We worked hard to find and present pictures that would speak to our audience of not-so-in-shape college students. Using pictures of people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders participating in CrossFit, it logically reinforces our point that CrossFit is a program that anyone from beginner to gym-rat can benefit from. The information is succinct, keeping to simple sentences with the text used sparingly to highlight just the main points. The clean lines and simple color scheme give the idea that the program is organized, controlled, and professional, making it seem as though it can be relied upon to be truthful and important.
As college students ourselves, we understand that exercise and weight-loss can be extremely emotional things. Because many of our age group have negative experiences attached to gym training, failure of diet or working programs, or a sense of simply not be able to do anything about their bodies, we wanted to counter act those preconceptions by making our visuals bright and happy, with a focus on the positive psychological effects CrossFit can have. Mostly this was done through colors and photographs. The bright blue and white are cool colors that signify peace and purity, while making the blue an electric blue shows positive energy. Keeping the black to a minimum and using it mostly as a header, it reduces the dark and too intense feel that could cause nervousness or fear in a viewer.
The pictures, as stated before, were carefully selected to show the most positive aspects of the workout program for those who are not athletes or body builders. We made sure to show full figured women successful doing the program, as well as non-muscular guys and people of widely varying ages. One picture in particular reinforces the aspect of community that exists in CrossFit, which gives people the feeling of not being alone in their struggles.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Elle:
I think we worked very well in relation to this project, and we all managed to play up to our strengths. For example, I felt as though I did not contribute enough in relation to finding the sources, but I feel as though I made up for that by taking over the design portions due to my own design background. We were able to communicate well both in class and through email, as well, which assisted in us being able to successfully work this assignment.
Jessica:
This group was definitly succesful in that we were all eager to do our part. As Elle says, we played our strengths. I was able to research and create much of the annotated bibliography with Mea, as well as answer the Ethos/Pathos/Logos question in the joint essay. This mad eup for the fact that I was mostly unable to help with the visual aspect, which prompted me to look for pictures to use as headings on the website and find the right theme for the site. We all communicated in class and through email, which kept eberyone up to date on what we were planning and working on. Everyone was considerate of what the others wanted to do or where thinking, and no one dominated over the others. I am not sure what we could have done differently, as we worked as best we could under the contraints and scheduals we all had. No group project is ever perfect, but I am completely pleased with how everything has turned out and am confident that my partners have as much understanding of the assignment and content as I do.
Mea:
Working as a group is not always easy, but when group members equally share ideas and value each others thoughts, successful collaboration takes place. I believe we all equally contributed our ideas, visions, and concerns throughout the planning and designing process. We communicated through email and used class time productively. The group Weebly was helpful to organize all of our plans. Jessica did a great job researching articles on the web for the annotated bibliography and really helped keep our ideas on track. I helped by finding a video and a useful CrossFit book at the book store and pulling out the most appropriate information to help reach our purpose while getting the first draft of the design plan in the works. Elle, with her design background, did a wonderful job capturing our ideas for the visuals. We all helped to find the images which we thought best suited the visual aspect. Since Elle took the time to bring our visual to life, I took the time to make the prints to pass out to the class to aid our advocacy. Once we had time to further discuss our ideas, review our annotated bibliography, and find our main goals and purposes, we reevaluated our design plan and all took the time to add more to our plan. As a team, we were laid back, worked at our own pace, while still maintaining communication in order to be prepared to reach deadlines.
Our visuals support these linguistic claims because our pamphlet has multiple visuals which show CrossFit members being motivated, supported, and guided. If you were to walk in a traditional gym and snap photos, you would most likely walk away with pictures of gym members working out on a machine, alone. If you were to walk in a CrossFit gym and snap photos you would walk away with photos of team members giving each other high fives, cheering each other on, and performing the same intense workout, side by side, striving for the same success.The group workouts, which are held by a trained instructor, are a team effort and many of the pictures reflect exactly that. The one photo shows a group of CrossFit members huddled together with their arms wrapped around each other. Another photo shows a CrossFit member being spotted and guided by a trainer. When pushing yourself to reach new goals and better your health; you are not alone while in the CrossFit community.
Write about the context. In what was does your visual argument appeal specifically to the audience you identified? That is, how do your design choices persuade your audience?
Our visuals appeal to our college classroom because many of the pictures show women and our college classroom is dominated by women. Many of the pictures also show a similar age bracket of people. The visuals appeal to our audience because we purposely chose photos that show women with different body types. This helps to show that not just "the fit" person can perform intense workouts like CrossFIt which will help to not discourage our audience.
Write about how you implemented your design plan.
Our design plan was a constructive way to flesh out our ideas. Referring to the design plan kept us on track. Our medium slowly came to life with the thoughtfully chosen visuals and the strategic planning for how to best reach our audience.
THE PROCESS
The most challenging part of the visual aspect of the assignment was probably determining how we were going to go about doing it, and what we were going to include. Originally our intentions were to use Glogster in order to present our videos, content, and images—although given that only one of the three of us had any experience with the website and we were unsure about how to properly include it into the website. Overall, however, given some design experience in our group, the switch to using InDesign to develop the visual image was less of an issue than learning how to use a different program entirely.
In relation to effectiveness, we aimed to riff off of designs CrossFit gyms tend to use—very bold, dark backgrounds, and a bit gritty—but a toned down version to attract a wider audience. The bright cyan was chosen instead of the normal red because it's bold, and exciting without being too intense-seeming—definitely a more welcoming color, without loosing its intensity. The fonts, colors, and design aimed to be fun and young, with the intention of drawing in an energetic, college-aged audience. We kept this theme going throughout the flier and brochure, and once there were done the website was updated to attempt to match these designs.
ETHOS, PATHOS, LOGOS
Ethos means credibility, and so we wanted to portray our information in an accurate model as how our audience would see it presented in the real world. For that reason we chose a pamphlet and flyer combination. Pamphlets are a common sight at most gym desks, as they are capable of containing a significant about of information in a compact and visually appealing way. But those are for when the subject has already found their way to the gym, or in our case, warehouse. The initial spark is often by a commercial, word of mouth, or by flyer. Seeing as a commercial was a bit beyond our price range, we found that a bold flyer modeled after the official CrossFit flyer designs would be best to both gain that interest and show the credibility of our information.
Our personal character comes through in our slight alterations to the CrossFit template. Most CrossFit designs are a dark mixture of black, blue, and red. This is used to relay the intensity of the program and the gritty results it produces. We felt that this was too intimidating for our more laid-back audience, as most college students would be put off by the ‘blood and dirt’ representation. Instead, we removed the red and focused on the black and electric blue colors, which more show the energy that we want to project as well as maintaining the idea that the program is a higher intensity than a traditional gym. WE expanded the white space to make the text stand out more, and added in a green that is similar to the color of many equipment pieces found in the gyms.
The thick typography serves two purposes, to make the text easier to read and to make it more impactful on the reader.
While being a credible source is important, it is just as necessary to have a reasonable and audience-appropriate argument so as to present our topic in the most appealing way. Our visual uses logos through providing true information in a clear format. What really gives our visual strength are the photos. We worked hard to find and present pictures that would speak to our audience of not-so-in-shape college students. Using pictures of people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders participating in CrossFit, it logically reinforces our point that CrossFit is a program that anyone from beginner to gym-rat can benefit from. The information is succinct, keeping to simple sentences with the text used sparingly to highlight just the main points. The clean lines and simple color scheme give the idea that the program is organized, controlled, and professional, making it seem as though it can be relied upon to be truthful and important.
As college students ourselves, we understand that exercise and weight-loss can be extremely emotional things. Because many of our age group have negative experiences attached to gym training, failure of diet or working programs, or a sense of simply not be able to do anything about their bodies, we wanted to counter act those preconceptions by making our visuals bright and happy, with a focus on the positive psychological effects CrossFit can have. Mostly this was done through colors and photographs. The bright blue and white are cool colors that signify peace and purity, while making the blue an electric blue shows positive energy. Keeping the black to a minimum and using it mostly as a header, it reduces the dark and too intense feel that could cause nervousness or fear in a viewer.
The pictures, as stated before, were carefully selected to show the most positive aspects of the workout program for those who are not athletes or body builders. We made sure to show full figured women successful doing the program, as well as non-muscular guys and people of widely varying ages. One picture in particular reinforces the aspect of community that exists in CrossFit, which gives people the feeling of not being alone in their struggles.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Elle:
I think we worked very well in relation to this project, and we all managed to play up to our strengths. For example, I felt as though I did not contribute enough in relation to finding the sources, but I feel as though I made up for that by taking over the design portions due to my own design background. We were able to communicate well both in class and through email, as well, which assisted in us being able to successfully work this assignment.
Jessica:
This group was definitly succesful in that we were all eager to do our part. As Elle says, we played our strengths. I was able to research and create much of the annotated bibliography with Mea, as well as answer the Ethos/Pathos/Logos question in the joint essay. This mad eup for the fact that I was mostly unable to help with the visual aspect, which prompted me to look for pictures to use as headings on the website and find the right theme for the site. We all communicated in class and through email, which kept eberyone up to date on what we were planning and working on. Everyone was considerate of what the others wanted to do or where thinking, and no one dominated over the others. I am not sure what we could have done differently, as we worked as best we could under the contraints and scheduals we all had. No group project is ever perfect, but I am completely pleased with how everything has turned out and am confident that my partners have as much understanding of the assignment and content as I do.
Mea:
Working as a group is not always easy, but when group members equally share ideas and value each others thoughts, successful collaboration takes place. I believe we all equally contributed our ideas, visions, and concerns throughout the planning and designing process. We communicated through email and used class time productively. The group Weebly was helpful to organize all of our plans. Jessica did a great job researching articles on the web for the annotated bibliography and really helped keep our ideas on track. I helped by finding a video and a useful CrossFit book at the book store and pulling out the most appropriate information to help reach our purpose while getting the first draft of the design plan in the works. Elle, with her design background, did a wonderful job capturing our ideas for the visuals. We all helped to find the images which we thought best suited the visual aspect. Since Elle took the time to bring our visual to life, I took the time to make the prints to pass out to the class to aid our advocacy. Once we had time to further discuss our ideas, review our annotated bibliography, and find our main goals and purposes, we reevaluated our design plan and all took the time to add more to our plan. As a team, we were laid back, worked at our own pace, while still maintaining communication in order to be prepared to reach deadlines.