CPE Reflection
I approached the critical photo essay assignment with some apprehension at first. I attribute this to the fact that I hadn't yet found a topic that "fired me up," as the young people say. A few exceptions appeared here and there, with the Baron reading and, of course, the Wysocki article where she discusses Kant. Those two had a few sparks for me while reading, but nothing figuratively slapped me in the face with excitement. However, once I had a rough idea going, everything began falling into place. I essentially tossed out my annotated bibliography because of the topic refining and turned my attention to my three philosophers, Chomsky, Strawson, and Wittgenstein (who I intend to study more of over winter break, wish me luck!).
After I fleshed out the work of these philosophers, some feedback from Professor Downs implored me to dig deeper, which is where it dawned on me to explore Instagram. In all honesty, this arose from the fact that I was thinking about how freeing it was to be off of it for a whole month or so, at least at the time of my topic refining. To make a long story short, the process for locating my topic was long and bumpy, but once I found it the project went smoothly and my apprehension faded away.
This assignment was different from other writing projects in that I hadn't explored visual components heavily before in writing. An example would be in Professor Schlenz's class, where I used some basic, and I do mean basic, design functions to make an essay look somewhat more aesthetic for a journal or something other. I toyed with font and a border around the Word document. Nothing extensive, and I loathed people that put images in essays back in those days. It seemed like a type of distraction that hideously unaligned the text and off-put the vibe of reading the words. I avoided images and distractions like the plague to achieve a maximum level of "black-and-whiteness" with my academic writing. So this assignment was unlike any other I had attempted, and that too stressed me out to some extent.
Once I realized where I was going, I just had to think of a slick design, something relatively modern and relevant, not too flashy with an edge of class. I sketched some ideas down for how I thought the assignment should look. I've attached an image below of my sketches for reference.
It occurred to me that I should explore Instagram specifically for design and build off of what most people find familiar when using the app without thinking about it, like how modern psychology shows us that people associate certain colors or shapes with logos and designs that they see on a day-to-day basis. I thought it would be clever to utilize the familiar in that regard, and set up each screen like posts of an Instagram account. After I lined up all the pictures and did some swift editing, using Word, the Snipping Tool, and my phone's screenshot function. Not entirely "clever," but a decent demonstration of ingenuity at least.
The design moved along and I didn't find this particularly difficult. The information was the difficult part, that is, arranging it in an aesthetic way that readers enjoy looking at. In this regard, the group feedback from Kas, Amanda, and Jay was helpful for shoving those misinformed design ideas out the window. I quickly took their advice and developed something more appealing, and easier to read for that matter. By my second draft I was chunking all the pieces together and sifting through information at a productive rate. Then an obstacle appeared in my path.
Oh obstacle. Obstacle: connecting the dots. How was I going to connect the ideas of these philosophers with a modern invention like Instagram's communication? That was the tricky part, and I'd even argue that I didn't solidify that connection as well as I would have liked even when I turned it in and said goodbye forever. Professor Downs' feedback on my second draft was positive, but I wanted to listen to what he was saying about essentially "drawing a connection" between Instagram and the suspiciously specific philosophers. I was also lacking a research issue, as it turns out. This was certainly the case, but I knew that while writing the Wittgenstein posts, naturally, a strange type of thesis was born from how I was thinking about the decay of communication through Instagram. I wanted to build on that since, naturally, these things rarely seem to occur. At the end of the day though, I was ready to call the project and be done. My final draft edits were relatively minimal, some adjustments here and there, sliding around of shapes, etc. Nothing too drastic seeing as Professor Downs thought it was swell work to begin with. That was encouraging, but I knew it my heart that the amount of work had paid off. Without "tooting my own horn," it looks good, and if I was a random person, the design would catch my eye with its style.
