Robin Mosteller

INTE 6710 ~ Creative Designs for Instructional Materials Project 1: Presentation For Speech/Song Design Document
Robin Mosteller
February 17, 2013

1. Overview
When I began looking for a speech or song I thought about the topics I find most interesting. I looked at the lyrics to my favorite songs and people I found interesting. Initially, I thought using a famous speech would be best but realized that I did not really connect to any of the speeches I found. So I looked for other sources of speeches and came across TED. I spent hours listening to various speeches on TED. I also looked initially at speeches at the 3 minute length and then expanded to longer speeches. As I was watching the speeches I realized that the speeches I initially found interesting already had great graphics and I did not think I could add to the presenters graphics. Eventually I selected part of Bryan Stevensons speech entitled We need to talk about an injustice. The speech is over 20 minutes in length but I found Bryans message powerful and lacking visual images. When I started looking at the transcript I realized that the section I felt I could add meaning to with images and graphics was the part dealing with the likelihood of being convicted if you were a young black man compared to a white man. As a math teacher statistics make sense to me. Also, most of my students are reading books related to the civil rights movement in the United States so there would be a connection to their background knowledge. I felt I could easily communicate the shocking nature of the statistics to the audience of the video. I will start at a part in the speech that is about 6 minutes in and continue until about the 10th minute of the original speech. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative. He, and his team, work to correct injustices in our judicial system specifically in the state of Alabama. I feel that his message is something not often spoken about and therefore worth bringing to a larger audience. My goal for the presentation is to raise awareness in the injustices in the criminal justice system. Many people do not know that race and poverty have a direct link to a persons treatment in the justice system. My audience will be students in 7th grade language arts. Although this is not my content area I know IO could have the language arts teacher show the presentation and then make connections to the statistics in my math data unit. 7th grade students at my school read the book Warriors dont cry and get a basic introduction to the civil rights movement in the United States. With this audience in mind I want to make sure that the graphics are simplistic but instinctual. For real-life pictures I want to make sure that the stories do not have to be explained, since middle school students dont have the personal knowledge of the civil rights movements. In order to make the video I will be using iMovie. I have not used iMovie before so I am hoping it will allow me to create the quality of video I wish to create while being user friendly. I am hoping that I will be able to edit the video and accurately match the images to the audio cues. Graphics will be created in publisher or other similar software.

2. Design Decisions
INTE 6710 ~ Project 1 Page 1

Robin Mosteller

As stated earlier my goal for the presentation is to raise awareness in the injustices in the criminal justice system. In order to do this I made several design decisions that I felt would add meaning. The first decision I made was to use black and white photos with an orange accent color. Secondly I decided that I would limit the use of text. I wanted the numbers to speak for themselves and not need a lot of explanation. I wanted to create a connection to the prison population on slides that did not directly mention prisoners since that was the main concept of the speech. When making decisions about specific pictures to include I used the suggestion that we might find our own decisions easier to make if they are guided by the needs of specific people: our readers, our students, our customers (Heath & Heath, 2008, p. 126). This idea helped me select images that students could relate to without having to have background knowledge of specific events. I also tried to edit my individual slides to the basic information in order to allow the senses to concentrate on making connections between what is seen and what is heard. Medina says Far from being a camera, the brain is actively deconstructing the information given to it by the eyes which made me want to simplify the information so that the eyes could deconstruct the image fully before moving on to the next image (Medina, 2008, p. 230). Design Decision #1. Achromatic (+1) themes. When looking at the overall theme of my presentation I started thinking about the message I wanted to achieve. I wanted people to identify the disparity in the statistics between whites and blacks in prison in the United States. I thought that the use of color orange as the accent color would allow a connection to the clothing most prisoners wear which is a vibrant orange. Although initially I thought about having an orange element in each slide I decided that using less of the color and only in critical parts would follow the Reynolds reading when he said never use more color when less will douse color with a clear purpose and informed intent (Reynolds, 2009, p. 65). In the graph of the incarceration rates I wanted the eyes to focus on the United States. I thought about how using one color boldly will put the emphasis on that part of the data and selected to use my accent color on the United States column and leave the rest gray (Reynolds, 2009, p. 132). I also wanted to use orange for the text since text and symbols in the same or similar colors will appear related (Reynolds, 2009, p. 78). This relationship allows me to make connections that are otherwise not apparent and to allow a larger emphasis on the text. If the text had been black or white or a shade of gray the text would not have stood out visually. In addition the way you use color helps to unify your presentations, stress important points, and balance the elements (Reynolds, 2009, p. 91). I used this idea to guide the use of color on the childs prison suit. The color allows people to see that this person who is visually very young is a prisoner and not just someone in what could be construed as scrubs. It was important for the viewer to know that he was a prisoner in order to understand that we sentence young children to death. Design Decision #2. Text highlights the most important questions or statements of the speech and is used sparingly. I wanted to highlight what I saw as the most important messages with text in order to follow the advice that simplicity is the key to using type effectively in your presentations, and a fundamental tenet of simplicity is excluding the nonessential (Reynolds, 2009, p. 38). Text is used at nine spots in my presentation to minimize the nonessential. Since I intend to have my presentation shown in middle school classrooms it was important to make the text large enough for instant reading while offering visual impact (Reynolds, 2009, p. 35). This is especially apparent during the last three slides where it says our problem, our burden, our struggle. The font is large enough to see it at the back of a room. I decided to overlap the pictures and text in order to allow students [to] learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively (Medina, 2008, p. 210). This
INTE 6710 ~ Project 1 Page 2

Robin Mosteller

meant that I need a way to make the text stand out and not just blend into the slide. Since I wanted to overlap text with pictures I decided, to use boxes of solid or transparent color between the image and the text to separate the text from the image and bring it forward (Reynolds, 2009, p. 54). I used a transparent white box that went horizontally across the pictures. I used this strategy in order to have consistency in the video. Design Decision #3. The third major design decision was to use basic graphics to represent statistics. I originally selected this speech due to the statistics and needed a way to represent the statistics without too much detail. The first statistic that Bryan Stevenson mentions is the number of incarcerated people in the United States compared 1972. I decided to use circles to represent 3000 people so that the increase can be seen without blending into one giant circle. Since studies show that if the drawings are too complex or life-like, they can distract from the transfer of information I felt that using circles instead of people would be the better choice (Medina, 2008, p. 238). For the incarceration statistics compared to the world I used a bar graph with a selected number of countries. Although there was data for more countries then what I included I felt that too much would be overwhelming. I chose a bar graph because graphs, such as bar charts, can be very useful for complex comparisons (Reynolds, 2009, p. 129). For the remainder of the statistics I used basic images such as an outline of an airplane or a stick figure man. I stayed away from cartoony images but felt that reducing the images to two different colors would all me to follow the advice to reduce the amount of information in order to make the idea stickier (Heath & Heath, 2008, p. 46). Researchers have known for more than 100 years that pictures and text follow very different rules. Put simply, the more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized and recalled (Medina, 2008, p. 233). I used the same visuals to represent the different statistics so that the viewers are not focused or wondering why there are different images for related statistics. Design Decision #4. I wanted to use motion in order to direct viewers to specific parts in the photographs and also to keep peoples attention. Animation captures the importance not only of color and placement but also of motion (Medina, 2008, p. 237). I used the motion specifically to zoom in or out on slides where I wanted the viewer to concentrate on something. For instance in the slide of the child in the prison jumpsuit I zoomed out to show his face but did not originally include it because I wanted the viewer to see the jumpsuit first. The most common communication mistakes? Relating too much information, with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots (Medina, 2008, p. 88). I hope the motion will allow me to have connected the dots to the presentation without overwhelming the viewer. I also used the lack of motion to give meaning to importance to specific slides. This change, although not glaring, will allow a user to view the slides as different subconsciously. Specifically at the end of the video when the childs face is shown I did not use motion.

Design Decision #5. When not using graphics to represent that statistics I wanted to use black and white photographs. I felt that black and white photographs would provide emotionally arousing events [that] tend to be better remembered than neutral events (Medina, 2008, p. 79). I also wanted to provide concrete evidence of the abstract concepts mentioned in the speech. One example of this is when Bryan Stevenson is talking about comfort. The photograph is of a young girl standing with just a pillow. I hoped the irony would show that comfort for the middle class white is not what comfort is for poor or people of color. This concrete evidence will allow the message of comfort to persist similar to the Fox and Grapes fable (Heath & Heath, 2008, p. 99).

INTE 6710 ~ Project 1

Page

Robin Mosteller

I also chose to have the images take up the entire screen. Reynolds says, full-bleed images offer ultimate impact (Reynolds, 2009, p. 100). This also allowed the images the space needed to allow the emotional side to come through despite the use of statistics that makes people think analytically

Bibliography
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2008). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive. New York: Random House. Medina, J. (2008). Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School . Seattle, WA: Pear Press. Reynolds, G. (2009). Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

INTE 6710 ~ Project 1

Page