2.4 Explore, Practice and Apply

Overview: Explore, Practice and Apply

Activities found on this page are designed to provide opportunities to explore, practice, and apply concepts presented in chapter 2.

Explore

Explore Activity 1:

  • Obtain a document or documents supplied by professor. If you have perfect vision, impair your vision perhaps by dimming the lights at night or using a friend’s or family member’s prescription glasses.
  • What do you notice about the readability of those documents when you’ve limited your eyesight?
  • What organizational elements do you especially appreciate when trying to make sense of the document when you’ve otherwise hindered your ability to read?

Explore Activity 2

  • Take any multi-page assignment you’ve done in MS Word that also includes non-text elements like photos or use a document supplied to you. Run an accessibility check on it using the accessibility checker in Word.
  • Attempt to fix the issues identified by the accessibility checker.

Explore Activity 3

  • Navigate to a font tool such as Font Space which is a font generator and text changer. Explore the features available through this tool.
  • Navigate to Metaflop which is a font generator and text changer. Explore the features available with this tool.

 

Practice

Practice Activity 1

Watch an educational, tutorial, or procedural video on a topic you find interesting. As you are watching it, document what you are learning by sketch-noting. Feel free to pause the video to think about how you can visually best represent your learnings and key takeaways. You can do the same with an educational, tutorial, or procedural podcast.

Practice Activity 2

Navigate online to Kern Type.  This is an interactive game designed to help you practice and improve your kerning skills, which is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in typography. Challenge your accuracy skills. Try the game and see how accurate you are in addressing kerning issues in typed font.

Practice Activity 3

Obtain sample documents, websites, or social media posts provided by your instructor. Analyze each sample and discuss what works well and what doesn’t based on the content and audience. Suggest improvements and explain why certain fonts or layouts are more effective in each case.

Apply

Apply Activity 1

Create a simple infographic on a topic of your choice  using text, icons, and minimal images. Focus on choosing the right fonts, spacing, and layout to make the information clear and visually appealing. You can use tools like Canva or PowerPoint to design your infographic.

Apply Activity 2

Refer back to the Apply 1 activity from Chapter 1 – creating a slide deck presentation. Reopen this slide presentation and using the content learning from this chapter, review the font you originally used in this presentation. Carefully select an alternative font style for the text areas of slide decks. Change the text areas with the new font selected and resave the slide deck. Consider the following questions:

  1. Which new font did you select?
  2. What learning did you apply from this chapter to select the new font?
  3. Did the learning from this chapter influence your font choice? Why or why not?

Apply Activity 3

Many multimedia creators argue that they are not creative or graphic designers. However, there are many online resources that provide beautiful templates as a starting point. As a result, multimedia creators can focus on developing their story’s narrative (text) and key messages and use the following tools to visual their ideas.

Select two of these creative tools to review and explore their features. Document three key features of the tool as well as suggest three reasons a multimedia creator may choose this tool for help in creating a multimedia presentation. Identify if a user needs an account to use the tool. Include also if there are costs associated with access to the tool.

Attribution & References

Except where otherwise noted, this page is created by Marie Rutherford, CC BY-NC 4.0

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

DRAFT - Multimedia Communications Copyright © by Marie Rutherford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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