I am
extremely pleased with my remixed fact sheet and I personally think it is much
better than my original fact sheet. I did a major overhaul on the design and
because of that, I believe it better suits my audience. Undergraduates at Pitt
are my primary audience so I thought, what better way to grab their attention
than putting my fact sheet on a red solo cup. The red solo cup is an iconic
symbol associated with college drinking so it would certainly stand out for
undergraduate drinkers. I think the design also makes the document feel less
formal even though a majority of the facts are the same.
The design
change did come with its challenges though. The reduced surface area of the
fact sheet forced me to shrink the font sizes a bit and eliminate the space
after a heading and before the text began. I also had to shape the text to fit
within the confines of the cup. Although it is traditionally frowned upon to put
text on top of an image, I believe that text is still fully legible and the
image does not detract from the readability of the document.
I also
altered the language of the document to try to convey a more casual tone and
increase the likelihood that someone will read the full document. I kept the
same question/answer format as my original fact sheet but I tried to word the
questions to make more of a personal connection. I utilized more personal
pronouns (I, you, etc.) and possessives (your, my, etc.) to help the reader connect
with the material I was presenting. This addition of a more human element
hopefully developed my pathos in the document.
I played
with the order of the facts a bit and decided to start this fact sheet with my
statistics, then work my way into the medical amnesty policies. I think this
establishes my ethos more quickly and increases the logos of the fact sheet. I
tried to convey an understanding and realistic tone when presenting the
statistics so as not to scare the reader away from reading the rest of the
document. I left the text from the Code of Conduct unabridged so that it
doesn’t seem like I am trying change the meaning of the law. It is text heavy
but I think it was important to leave it alone so my ethos does not decrease.
Lastly, I
eliminated a lot about other schools’ medical amnesty policies. I kept the one
law from Carnegie Mellon but eliminated some of the other facts. This was done
to conserve space and to keep the document focused on Pitt as much as possible.
Having now conducted my interview, I was able to present a little bit of
information from that. Because of the interview, I have tweaked the action step
of my project. I have come to understand that Pitt is actually powerless to
make the changes I am proposing so the new course of action encourages Pitt
officials to lobby on our behalf to change the current law in Pennsylvania.
Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of this new fact sheet and it would
most likely be the one I would use if I were to actually distribute it to
students.
Fact Sheet Remix
I think this is cute, I think the whole solo cup deal will attract peoples' attention and - I think in class you were talking about this - I do like some of the subheading changes. It makes it more personal and more "why should I care" and "how does this affect me." In my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThough, the "But are you really safe?" heading sounds just a little funny... Because you say x number of people are, due to alcohol, hospitalized and also DIE, and then you ask "But are you REALLY safe?" I think, don't people usually do that when you present statements that makes the person think opposite of what they "REALLY" should be thinking? For example, let's say you had 30 cops stationed outside your house to protect you. So you feel safe. And I could use "But are you REALLY safe?" if I go on to say that the police outside your bedroom are actually Russian assassins plotting to kill you. Does that make sense? By telling someone percentages of deaths then asking “are you really safe” makes me feel like, well, you DID just tell me about all these people dying and being hospitalized... Does that make sense? It's not a big deal, but if you were going to use it in your final project maybe you'd want to think about taking five minutes to do something with it if other people would notice it too?...
I also like that you say drink up (which college kids are probably like "YEAHHHHH!", right?) but then right after that you say "let's face it, underage drinking happens," and so all at the same time you don't come off looking conservative and lame (to like the students?) but then you also don't come off looking like some immoral reckless corrupting evil hooligan (to the adults?)
I liked your remix, I think it'd be cool for you to do something as creative as that in your final project.
In my humble opinion.
Thanks for your comment! You definitely made a valid point about the "are you really safe heading". I didn't mean it that way , but since it is something you noticed, I now understand how it could be construed that way. That will be something I will be looking out for more. I would love to continue with the solo cup idea for my final project but I'm thinking it is going to be overkill. It was tough to format just the fact sheet and it was something I was trying but was pretty sure was going to fail. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked. I think I will try to incorporate the red solo cup into my final project in someway, but I don't think it will be in the same manner as this fact sheet.
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