Context

 

As the technologies of visual representation have become cheaper, more accessible, and easier to use over the past 200 years, information-heavy genres like instruction sheets, manuals, and textbooks have all increasingly drawn on visual elements to help clarify and communicate their message—and perhaps entertain readers/users along the way. Many people are visual learners, and need information displayed visually to best comprehend relationships among many concepts. 

 

This assignment gives you the opportunity to design information visually—information about the course’s subject matter itself.  Moreover, it offers the opportunity to learn important skills that you can bring to other courses or your work life: design skills, information evaluation and management skills, and an application of PowerPoint or PhotoShop to produce posters for the classroom, academic conferences, industry, or your personal life.

 

For tips on RESEARCHING your subject, go into Blackboard Course Documents and find "Timeline Project Research Tips."

 

 

Genre

 

Timelines are a prevalent genre within the larger category of information graphic, and are widely used for many purposes. Your timeline will cover the history/development of a specific technology, product, or practice relevant to visual culture.  In other words, you will research and learn about course content while also developing some of the skills you need to be an effective visual communicator. 

 
  1. As with all assignments in this course, your group will need to undertake two kinds of research: research to help you effectively complete the task (understanding the genre), and
  2. research to help you accurately develop the content (understanding your topic).

 

In this case, you need to understand both how to design and print an effective information graphic and how to develop a timeline that focuses on a particular technology—its relation to movements, events, and cultural or national obsessions or problems, and its significance to visual culture. You may focus on a mainstream technology like “film,” but if you choose such a large and prevalent technology, I would recommend that you narrow your topic to something like “Horror Movies: The Blood to Bucks Relationship.” You can also research and design a timeline appropriate to your career or major, although that timeline still needs to be connected to visual culture and language:

·       A timeline on business cards for the business major.

·       A history of novel-to-film adaptations for the English major.

·       A history of computer software (from Autocad to SketchUp) for the architecture major.

·       A timeline about tools of visualization in the medical fields for the nursing major.

 

Of course, there are plenty of non-career or non-major-related topics, good for everyone:

·       A history of citizen journalism.

·       A history of Facebook. (Keep in mind that, while FB itself is not very old, the fundamental genre or type of communication may very well go WAY back.)

·       A history of blogs.

·       A history of the handheld digital device with screen.

·       A history of the computer game.

·       A history of album art.

·       A history of “the coffee table book.”

·       A history of the billboard.

·       A history of the digital camera.

·       A history of television advertising.

·       A history of television cop shows.

·       A history of the personal computer.

·       A history of museum exhibit design.

·       A history of industrial design as a field of study.

·       A history of space photography.

·       A history of comics.

·       A history of sound volume manipulation in television commercials.

·       A history of war coverage on TV.

·       A history of wedding photography.

·       A history of the men's fashion magazine.

·       A history of graffiti and/or a particular established graffiti artist.

 

 

Audience

 

The primary audience for your timeline is me and your classmates—we want to learn more about visual culture and we are relying on you to teach us something!  Your secondary audience will be the many people who see your timelines hanging in the hall of the English Department—we have an impressive collection growing there. Chances are we might not know a lot about your specific topic, so make sure you provide enough textual background so we understand what your timeline is about, and the social/cultural/technological significance of that subject.

 


Planning

 

Getting started: form a group of 3 or 4. Figure out how you are going to communicate with each other. Keep in mind that you'll all fill out anonymous evaluations of your groupmates at the end of the project—so take care that everyone contributes equally and discuss any problems openly but courteously with each other to head off weak evaluations.

 

Look over this planning list and follow it or make your own planning/task/goal list. You might consider these basic steps (in this order):

    1. Select a tentative topic and appoint each group member to research some facet of that topic. Each person, for instance, can take a particular span of time in the timeline, or a particular facet of your subject over the whole span of the timeline. Go beyond Wikipedia, and consult a variety of sources. (You'll need a MINIMUM of five, not counting Wikipedia.) Do both "surface research" and a little "deep research." Remember that you can use books, magazines, reference materials, interviews, the websites of appropriate organizations, etc. CLICK HERE FOR TIMELINE RESEARCH TIPS. Remember that you are not just gathering facts; you are analyzing WHY THEY MATTER. I.e., you are appraising their significance to the rise of visual culture.
    2. Meet outside of class, after everyone's done some research, and compare notes. Fine-tune and finalize your topic choice. Look for themes in your notes—good timelines usually have one. You want to gather facts, yes, but more importantly you want to discover what *matters* about the facts. For example: a timeline of political messages printed onto clothing might focus on the idea that college students have consistently been the initiators and innovators of such clothing. And this might be linked to the even larger idea that college students generally have been driving developments in visual culture since the 1960s. I don't know if any of that is true; just made it up as an example :) Keep in mind that you really shouldn't be thinking a lot about design at the very beginning. Instead, everyone in your group should be doing research. That's the first task: get informed, find material.
    3. Go to the TLMC (Technology Learning and Media Center) in the IACC to ask for help if no one has undertaken a poster project before.  Bring in your assignment, explain your project, and ask what you will need to do with technology to finish the project. Start planning early; this is not a project you will be able to finish in a week. You can also get ITS information about large printing projects online. Explore the ITS site and look at Help Desk › Services and Support as well as Desktop Support. You can click here for info on posters and plotting.
    4. Now gather some information about the GENRE. I.e., timelines. VIEW SOME SAMPLES by going into Blackboard > Project Assignments & Resources. When you study samples, look at design, content, themes, purposes, audiences, techniques.
    5. Design your timeline. Try some sketches and storyboarding as a form of drafting. Consider trying Xtimeline as a drafting space: http://www.xtimeline.com. Pay attention to fundamental design principles, as discussed in class and class materials.
    6. Remember that a timeline in a sense presents an argument or contains an often implicit thesis. So be aware, in your design, of your targeted audience and of ethos-pathos-logos. (You remember those from English 120, right?)

 

 

When finished, you group should turn in:

 

  • A poster of at least 24” X 36” about some aspect of visual culture over time. Be sure your group names appear on this (discretely). You will probably want to print your final hardcopy version in the IACC multi-media lab. Ask at the Help Desk about this.
  • An electronic file or photograph (posted to our Blackboard Drop Box) of that poster.
  • A group evaluation (see below).
  • A separate Works Cited page with a minimum of five sources (not counting Wikipedia!). Be sure to put everyone’s name on this.

 

 

Other Miscellaneous

 

Your timeline should have an argument or theme to it.  E.g., “The history of the billboard is the history of telling people to stop and go at the same time.” Or, “American political documentaries of the last century nearly always challenge the status quo in some way.” Or, “Dilbert’s history is characterized, above all, by its concern about dehumanization in the contemporary workplace.” Or, “The ag-tech newsletter has gone from small-town café gossip to glossy, graphic, digitally-produced multi-page tomes for the contemporary farmer.”

The significance of your timeline's argument or theme should be apparent. For instance, how does it matter in terms of visual culture that a cartoon can challenge social norms? Or that the contemporary farmer is increasingly bound up in high-tech visual culture? Or that massive public images (billboards) are inherently contradictory?

Your timeline should be an exercise in working with words, images, and shapes, so try to think about how you can use all three.

 

 

Grading Rubric

 

Key elements of the timeline

Comments

Content

  • Your topic has been well researched.
  • Your research includes facts about the subject's development over time, and information about how or why that development matters to our understanding of visual culture.
  • Your timeline demonstrates a good understanding of poster-making mechanics.
  • The text is well-written stylistically and mechanically. It is edited for clarity, concision, and elegance, and it is proofread for surface errors.
  • Sources are documented in some way (a separate page is fine).
  • Your timeline in some way enhances our understanding of visual language or visual culture, and tells us something more than the obvious or what we already know.

 

Remember, this genre requires writing; timelines require significant amounts of text, and they usually have an implied argument or at least offer insight about the topic at hand. 

 
Visual Design

  • Your timeline demonstrates a good understanding of visual design, as discussed and illustrated in our Power Points.
  • Your timeline uses meaningful shapes (e.g. arrows, overlapping circles or boxes, parallel lines, etc.).
  • Your timeline uses effective spacing and proximity.
  • Your timeline clearly directs the viewer's eye through placement, color, shape, contrast, and awareness of typical reading patterns.
  • Your timeline uses aesthetically and emotionally appropriate colors.
  • Your timeline uses purposeful fonts.
  • Your timeline uses appropriate visual styles (realistic, abstract, or iconic).
  • Your timeline has visual interest.

 

 

Overall Effectiveness

Your information graphic is creative, strikes “responsive chords” in the viewer, and also clearly meets its purpose.  It avoids relying on stereotypical (especially if potentially offensive) images or ideas.  The electronic copy is easily accessed and viewed. The project has an informative and catchy title, names of group authors, and date of submission.

 

 + _______/ 15

 

 

 

 

Grade Definitions

 

A = 14-15. Excellent in all areas.  Perhaps room for some small improvements, but timeline mainly demonstrates excellent research (multiple sources, informative), strong grasp of basic design principles, and persuasive rhetoric.  Does of good job of illuminating its topic; goes well beyond the obvious. And it just looks good!

 

B = 12-13. Good to very good.  One or two noticeably weak areas while the rest are very strong, or all areas are more than competent but lack the “zing” factor (need creativity and/or insight).

 

C = 10-11. Acceptable. Significant room for improvement in most categories, or one or two areas are exceptionally poor/unacceptable even though the rest are sound. Proofreading and editing of text may be problems.

 

D = 8-9. Mostly unacceptable.  Elements might be missing, nature of assignment misunderstood, analysis exceptionally weak, writing inappropriate for 300-level class, research perfunctory and surface only. One or two elements might be acceptable.

 

F = less than 8. Incomplete and/or virtually all elements are exceptionally weak.

 

 

 

 

Group Member Evaluation

Evaluate your group members and yourself according to the following scale and give this form to me privately. Everyone in your group will receive the same grade. However, when there is a clear consensus that someone in the group didn't carry their share of the burden, I may adjust that person's grade separately. (The group will not be penalized for one person’s poor contribution.)

Follow this scale:

1 = Excellent. This person contributed extra inventively, thoughtfully, and actively to the group's work.

2 = Good. This person contributed well to the group's work.

3 = Fair. This person contributed somewhat to the group's work, but missed one or more sessions, and/or failed to carry out some assigned work, and/or was passive and unhelpful at times during either the planning stages or the presentation.

4 = Poor. This person did not contribute adequately to the group's work. He/she failed to show up for some planning sessions, did not contribute ideas, did not carry out any needed activities (or only carried them out very minimally), and otherwise left the group mostly in the lurch. The person wasn’t altogether absent for everything, but, if you blinked you may have missed them.

After assigning each group member a number, feel free to add any explanatory comments you deem necessary.

Your name: _____________________

Name of Group Members

Numerical Evaluation & Comments

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Thank you!

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