Author: Jianys Berrios

https://dtc-wsuv.org/jberrios20/The-CMDC-Handbook/

Group Members:

• Jianys Berrios
• Stratton Slater
• Chrys Robb
• Benjamin Peterson
• Courtney Minden
• Jessica Unruh
• Rich Te
• Ryan Doherty
• Sorya Baxter
• Thea Hieronymus

As of right now, we are on track with the deadlines that Courtney (Co-leader) and I have created. We should be getting all of our content finished tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 29th) so that we can begin creating the HTML and get started on the stylizing process of the publication. I have already written up an introduction, credits, and responses from the students section of the publication. I plan on beginning the process of collecting media to implement within the publication with some of my group members tomorrow or later this week.

I am a team leader, editor, and multimedia designer for the final publication project. As a team lead, I have created a structure for the group to follow. Meaning that, in collaboration with my co-team leader, I have created set deadlines for each stage of the publication project along with organizing what kind of content will be implemented within the publication. As an editor, I am currently working on writing out the introduction and part of the program information section of the publication. Finally, as a multimedia designer, I have selected the color palettes and typography that will be used within the publication, along with creating a sort of idea as to what the publication should look like. There hasn’t been any discussion as of yet on any other design aspects, such as imagery or videos so that is yet to be determined.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/bpeterson21/dtc338/multimodal-site-final/index.html

I was the managing editor, multimedia designer, and creator of communications for the Multimodal project. I worked to establish a mode of organization for each chapter within our publication project, meaning that I created a baseline template for the group to follow for their assigned chapters. I also worked to create deadlines for my group members and I to follow in order to finish the project in a timely manner. Additionally, as the multimedia designer I, along with the input of my team members, looked for color palettes and typography that would best suit the publication look that we were going for. I also worked to design a logo/favicon and title image for the publication. As far as editing goes, I worked on writing the ADHD chapter within the publication along with working with my team members on writing out part of the introduction and part of the Dyslexia chapter making sure that everything looked good. Finally, as the creator of communications, I worked to design a promo poster with my group members for the publication as way to gain outside interest in the project.

“Visual hierarchy in website design helps guide a website visitor in a logical progression from most important content on a page to least important content.”

After having read A Really Simple Guide to Visual Hierarchy in Web Design I was able to have a better understanding of the importance of incorporating visual hierarchy within web design. As the quote above states, the purpose behind visual hierarchy is to guide your website visitors through your web design in a logical manner so they may understand the content in its entirety. In keeping this idea in mind, I think that when it comes to what design ideas I would like to incorporate within the multimodal project I want to keep three of the hierarchy methods mentioned in mind: Size, typography, and color.

Within the guide, it states that “In size hierarchy, the most important content is the largest of takes the most amount of space on a webpage, followed by the second most important content and so on.” For the multimodal project, I want to ensure that I am using size hierarchy in a manner that will invoke to my audience what content is most important to their understanding. Without this incorporation of size hierarchy, I feel as though the website visitor will get lost within chunks of information if there is no distinction.

Now, for typography, the guide states that “Typographic hierarchy is all about formatting the typography of your content in such a way that your website visitors can clearly see what’s most important.” This is very similar to size hierarchy in that we are wanting to create a distinction within our content, but what’s most important about typographic hierarchy is enhancing the readability and usability of the content. Given that the subject of my multimodal project will be to educate other on different types of learning differences along with the resources available to combat them I want to ensure that my website visitors can read the content.

Finally, the guide discusses that the usage of color within your web design is important as it will allow for important content within your web design to stand out. Although this may not seem as important as the typographic and size hierarchy I believe that this could be useful within the multimodal project. For instance, I could possibly use color hierarchy when inputting my statistics within my web design to make them stand out. This will ensure that my audience not only sees this information but knows that this is a key part of their understanding.

I don’t personally listen to podcasts or watch video blogs, but for the sake of this blog post, I did find a video blog by Weylie Hoang on Youtube about her seven-day road trip from California to Oregon. In watching this video blog some of the things that I noticed is that not only did Hoang discuss her itinerary on her seven-day road trip, but she also discussed some of her own personal thoughts on mental health and well-being. This addition of added dialogue through the use of voice-overs made her video blog really engaging. Additionally, the use of multiple short video clips showcasing her and her partner, things she was doing, or just the scenery really made the video interesting and engaging. I also noticed that she added background music as well so that we are just listening to the sounds of the video clips which works to create an experience for viewers.

Now, in the discussion of my thoughts about publishing audio in the form of podcasts, video blogs, and audiobooks I find that they can make the experience more engaging for viewers/ listeners viewing/ listening to these publications. When we use audio to tell a story, particularly in podcasts and audiobooks, we can create an immersive experience for listeners and allow the ability for these listeners to paint of picture in their mind of what it is that they are listening to. However, when it comes to video blogs we can use visuals and audio to create a very interesting story and experience for viewers. I believe that these forms of digital publishing can be very effective, especially for those who wish to listen or watch rather than read.

A book is a volume in the space. It is the true ground of the communication that takes place through words – its here and now.

With the multimodal publishing project, my group and I have decided that we would create a publication that describes the different kinds of learning differences while also providing ways and resources to help combat them. After having read this quote I feel that going through with this project communication should be one of the most important aspects of our project. How we choose to communicate our publication is important as it will decide how our audience will understand that information and absorb it. With the publication, I want to make use of the space and really think about the words that we fill that space with and how our message will be communicated. Within books, communication of the ideas involved is key as they are the very thing that you want your audience to understand. In communicating our own ideas we will not only be able to teach our audience about the different kinds of learning differences that one could have, but we will also be able to educate them in ways to help those who have these learning differences or even how to help themselves. With this project, we will be able to communicate to an audience on an issue that is important and affects a variety of people including myself. Now, in designing the project I would like to create an experience that both communicates our ideas and creates an immersive experience for readers through use of educational videos.

http://dtc-wsuv.org/jberrios20/death-of-poe-publication-project.epub

When I look at the phrase “screen reading” I immediately begin to think of someone reading a digital text rather than a printed one. In my opinion, the use of this phrase also describes what reading is like for most people nowadays given that there is more accessibility with digital texts than with print. Now, when it comes to multimedia, hyperlinks, interactivity, and sharing I find that they have become essential parts of the way in which we use texts today. However, although I believe this to be the case I cannot entirely dismiss the idea that they are distractions that take away from the immersive experience created with traditional texts.

This can best be explained through the contrast between deep attention and hyper attention. As explained by Hayles in “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”:

Deep attention…is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods… ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single stream and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom. (Hayles 187).

It is when we read texts in a digital format that we find ourselves experiencing hyper attention, whereas with non-digital texts we experience deep attention.

Now, when it comes to my reading habits while using the web and mobile devices I find myself being more accustomed to reading digital texts. However, I do find myself in this case experiencing a sense of hyper attention at times. Whereas, when reading non-digital texts I feel a sense of deep attention at times, but for some reason, I would still choose to read digital texts over physical texts. Although, I think that this may stem from the fact that as a university student, especially during the pandemic, I have needed to become more accustomed to reading digital texts. I think that there should be some incorporation made within digital texts that allow for students to engage a bit more with the reading, whether it be images or videos. An example of this would be a reading that I needed to do for my DTC 354 (digital storytelling) class titled Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. In this book, rather than using long paragraphs of text to explain concepts, comic strips of images and texts are used to create an engaging experience for readers.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1064

In this novel written in 1842 by Edgar Allen Poe a disease known as the “Red Death” plagues a country causing its victims to die in quickly and in a gruesome manner. With the disease bringing rampage throughout the country the prince, Prospero, feels hopeful that this plague will soon end. In his naivety, the prince decides to lock the gates to the palace in order to fend off the “Red Death” ignoring its spread. It is during a masquerade ball thrown by the prince that he and his guests are visited by a mysterious character who is a victim of the “Red Death.” Filled with fear the prince tries to get away from this man, but to no avail, he and his guests succumb to the plague allowing for the disease to bring about its lasting reign of terror.

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41445

In this novel written in 1818 by Mary Shelley a young and gifted scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein filled with grief from his mother’s death becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing life back to non-living matter and creating the perfect specimen. Through this obsession, he succeeds with his experiment giving life to a being of his own creation. However, as this creation comes to life he is filled with the horrifying realization of what he has done. He was not able to create a perfect specimen, but rather he created a hideous creature. Plagued with the rejection the creature has faced by his creator and mankind he sets off on a frenzy of revenge, murder, and terror. Although, the question remains who really is the monster?

As we look to the past, we find that the historical context behind books has changed immensely through what the idea of a book entails, the content of a book, and the form in which a book may come in. However, although the progression of books has changed over time the ideas behind the codex of the book remains to this day. The codex has allowed for us as content creators, readers, authors, and publishers to build upon books as more than just an object composed of pages of writing, but rather an immersive experience in which we can develop and build upon already created and new ideas. Today the concept of the book has surpassed those before it, building upon the capabilities and understanding of the digital world and digital publishing. Additionally, it is with the rise of artificial intelligence over the years that we are now capable of creating a book in which authors, artists, and artificial intelligence can collaborate with one another. In doing so, we have created an immersive and digital experience for readers within the digital world and brought about new changes to digital publishing. Along with increasing the accessibility behind books. Today publishers cannot only express their ideas to their readers, but also create an immersive experience in which readers can interact with books rather than simply just reading them.

Over the years the content and form of books has been transforming and evolving to build upon the ideas of authors and meet the needs of publishers and readers to, as said by book historian Frederick Kilgour, fulfill society’s ever-increasing need of information (Borsuk 3). As stated in The book by Amaranth Borsuk:

“Different technologies of the book exist side by side throughout its history: tablet and scroll, scroll and codex, manuscript and print, paperback and e-book. Looking at the changing object of the book gives us a deeper sense of the history or relations between form and content that help define it,” (Borsuk 3).

In the past, many authors and artists have used the medium behind e-books to create their own “immersive cinematic and game-like reading” experience taking advantage of the digital space created by such a medium providing books with an even greater importance (Borsuk 224). Today the concept and form of a book has far exceeded those within the past, as we now have books in which readers can have a more immersive and interactive experience using artificial intelligence and holograms within tablet format. The idea that helped to create books today was developed from an idea that originated from Galician school teacher Ángela Ruiz Robles:

“Who patented a mechanical book in 1949 that would use electricity and compressed air to create an illuminated interactive page. While the project was never realized, Robles continued to develop the idea, patenting and prototyping her Enciclopedia Mecánica (Mechanical Encyclopedia), its successor, in 1962 to condense the number of textbooks young student would have to carry,” (Borsuk 231).

With our technological advances over the years, it is through the collaboration of authors, artists, and artificial intelligence that we have created books within a tablet format that projects holographic images while you are reading immersing you within the text.

With the development of books over the years the mechanical reproduction of such texts has revealed to us that the form a book takes in turn can shape the content of that book (Borsuk 111). According to Borsuk:

“The mechanical reproduction of both texts and book objects in the industrial age and the start of the twentieth century helped solidify the codex as an efficient, portable, marketable object, available in hardbound or paperback covers, and distributed through networks of bookshops, libraries, and book fairs worldwide,” (Borsuk 111).

Now, with that in mind the question remains, what is the technological production process behind today’s books? It is, of course, through writers that the texts for today’s books are written, but once that process has been completed artists work to collaborate with such writers in creating images, diagrams, or sketches for such texts. It is then that artificial intelligence takes that art and converts it into three-dimensional images that can be projected through the screen of a tablet. As stated by Borsuk “When digital books make the interface a visible and integral part of the narrative, we begin to see the extent to which any book is a negotiation, a performance, a dynamic event that happens in the moment and is never the same twice,” (Borsuk 247). It is then that content creators, authors, or publishers then publish these works digitally giving them a platform and allowing for them to become easily accessible to readers around the world.

With these technological advances in place in the process of digital publishing and creating books today, we have allowed ourselves to think of the form and content of books as more than what the codex intended them to be. In his work “Twenty Minutes into the Future” George P. Landow states that “We have already moved far enough beyond the book that we find ourselves, for the first time in centuries, able to see the book as unnatural, as a near-miraculous technological innovation and not as something intrinsically and inevitably human,” (Landow; Borsuk 64). The form that a book takes place and the content within it, especially now, allows for readers to have an immersive experience with the digital world in allowing them to interact with the text through holographic imagery that can be interacted with. As mentioned in Jessica Pressman’s work “The Aesthetic of Bookishness in the Twenty-First Century Literature”:

“The book will not become obsolete with new reading platforms, but rather, will change and develop new incarnations and readerships; it will continue to serve certain kinds of literacy needs and literary desires – specifically, those related to its book – bound physicality and potentiality,” (Pressman; Borsuk 64).

The development of books and digital publishing up until this point has allowed for different ways in which readers can interact with the text, but it is with this new formatting of digital books that the interaction between readers and the text has reached a whole new level.

Now, although there are many positives that can come from how books are created today in that they provide a more interactive experience between readers and the text, there is something to be said about what can be lost in this process. Being able to interact with holographic images while reading a text can be very helpful and effective in allowing for others to understand the text that they are reading better, such as students and teachers. However, there is a creative loss that comes with the use of holographic images within such texts. Although, the process of an author collaborating with an artist to create imagery for their book creates a sort of an artistic integrity for the author in being able to create a visualization of their ideas, the reader loses their ability to use their own visualizations for the text. When a reader chooses to read a creative digital work, they are provided with holographic images of what the author intended for characters or settings within that story to look like. This particularly takes away from the creative freedom of readers when interacting with such texts as they can no longer visualize their selves what they believe a particular character within the story may look like as you would have been able to do in the past. Additionally, there is also the loss of non-digital texts as everything now is within a digital platform.

In conclusion, it is through this exploration between the digital and non-digital forms of books within the past and now that we are able to understand how the format of texts today can be seen as both an advantage and disadvantage within the digital publishing world. Content creators, authors, and publishers have now created an immersive and interactive platform for digital publishing. These texts today exist for authors and artists to collaborate in truly immersing their selves within the creation of these texts and their content. It is also with these texts that readers are now able to interact with the text and get a more immersive experience from what they are reading along with having the ability to access such texts from anywhere. We can allow ourselves to explore even further the digital world and the importance and influences behind digital publishing. However, the downside of this is that there no longer is any imaginative implementation that can take place for readers in interacting with these texts taking away from their enjoyment of these books. Although historically there is always a give and take with the development of anything, especially books. In the end, we can say that “Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book,” (Mallarmé; Borsuk 134).

Work Cited:

Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book. The MIT Press, 2018.

In his essay Post-Artifact Book, Craig Mod discusses what makes the pre-artifacts and post-artifacts different from one another and their importance in shaping digital publishing. According to Mod, he states that “This is the post-artifact system. A system of unlocking. A system concerned with engagement. Sharing. Marginalia. Ownership. Community. And, of course, reading,” (Mod). It is through the post-artifact system that we as readers are able to look at books as not merely isolated vessels from which we obtain our information and knowledge but to look at them as more of a shared interface in which we can engage with one another. Additionally, with the post-artifact system, there is also participation in the production of “digital marginalia,” as Mod calls it, that allows for everyone to not only participate but also create a new experience for future readers within that text. Now, in reflecting on my own growing up with the web as a source of information and entertainment keeping this reading in mind I was able to realize just how easy and accessible it is to find the information that you need for anything. Additionally, not only was the web easy to use and accessible for finding information, but it also created more of a collaborative experience with others as you are connected to the whole world right at your fingertips. The web certainly makes life easier, but I also feel as though there is a loss in being able to actively want to learn things since you can just find the answers to everything so easily, but this is also not to say that I don’t want the web because let’s be honest without it we would struggle immensely.

“Engaging with the book as an idea brings its material form back into the conversation in ways that can be productive, exciting, perplexing, and at times problematic.”

                     – Borsuk 113

When thinking about a book and engaging with it as an idea you begin to unravel the different forms and structures of books along with the content being communicated by a book and where the meaning behind all of this comes from. In the context of digital publishing, we start to think of the idea of books in a digital format which further elaborates the form and structure of a book as we can now reach an even wider audience through global platforms with this format of publishing. It is with digital publishing that books can evolve and grow as being part of a new platform broadening upon this already formed idea of books. Now, in keeping this quote in mind, what is it that could become of digital publishing? Well, as we continue to discuss the book as an idea and allow ourselves to dive deeper into these discussions on format and content we will find that digital publishing could one day become the very format in which we discuss these matters. Who knows maybe one-day books in a physical manner may no longer exist in the future and be structured solely for digital formatting. Digital publishing could even one-day lead to viewing the idea of a book in a far different manner if we were to involve artificial intelligence in the creation of these formats.

Ever since I can remember I have always had a love for stories as they can take you outside of your reality and allow you to explore new and imaginative ones. There are many books that I have read in my lifetime and there are many from different genres that I have enjoyed immensely. However, I would have to say that when it comes to books my favorite genres are usually those that are within the fantasy and young adult fiction categories. Now, in keeping that in mind I would have to say that as of right now my favorite book is the Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard.

Something that I love about this book aside from its beautiful storytelling is the cover. I remember when I was going through the bookstore on my nineteenth birthday and looking at all the book covers trying to find something interesting that I could read and the minute I saw the cover of this book I knew that this book was going to be good. The cover, as you can see in the image I have attached, is very minimalistic in its use of color and background with just merely using the image of an upside crown covered in blood. This use of imagery alone already gives you a sense of what the book will entail. I mean how could you look at this beautiful book cover and not want to know what this book is about?

Now, aside from the beautiful cover of this book, there is something to be said about its content as well. Just to give you an idea as to what this book entails it is about a world in which its characters are divided by blood, particularly the color of it. Within this book, those who contain red blood are merely viewed as commoners and those with silver are essentially the elite of society as they possess powers that can be compared to those of gods. Our main character, Mare Barrow, within the story is a red-blooded member of society who works for the silver palace and even though she may have the blood of a commoner she possesses a power far greater than those of silver blood. This disrupts the balance of power between the red and silver allowing her to conjure a plan to take down the elitists. Now, although one may view this book as a non-living object everything about it from the beautiful cover to its content allows for the imagination to run wild.

Hello everyone! My name is Jianys (G-ann-iss) Berrios and I am 21 years old and currently in my fourth and final year as a senior at Washington State University Vancouver. I am currently working towards obtaining a B.A. in Digital Technology and Culture along with the goal of obtaining a certification in teaching once I have completed my degree in the hopes of becoming a secondary-level visual arts teacher.

Now, there are many areas of digital publishing that I find interesting but I would have to say that I really enjoy digital publishing that takes place through social media platforms in the form of videos. Some social media platforms that I really enjoy are TikTok and Youtube, which are of course the most notable social media platforms within today’s society but when it comes to TikTok I like how you can cater content to a range of groups with just a short video that can last up to a few seconds or minutes. As for YouTube, it is essentially similar to TikTok in that you can cater content to different groups through visual means, but I enjoy how informative some of the content can be through YouTube as well compared to TikTok.

I am interested to see how and what we will learn in taking this course, along with exploring the different types of digital publishing, create an impact/importance within media today. I am also interested in learning more about the different kinds of programs that can be used within digital publishing to gain an audience.