Saundra Best

Dr. Paul Muhlhauser

DTC 355

October 6, 2011

Crashing Down

I recently wrote a blog, and designed a comic describing one of my most funny, yet embarrassing moments in life. While writing a blog about an embarrassing story, and designing a comic about this story are both effective ways to communicate my ideas, I found designing the comic more difficult than expected, as the comic limited the amount of information I was able to convey in my blog. The comic became a story of its own, as I struggled to incorporate my original story, with limited use of images and words.

During the first paragraph of my blog, I talk about how I’ve been in the restaurant business for nearly ten years, and how I will be describing an embarrassing story at work, as I have many. I found it unnecessary to include this information in my comic, because it did not seem important for the viewer to know my purpose behind making this comic. You don’t see authors of comics describing why it is they chose to tell a particular story, unless the author is being asked or interviewed by someone. It just seemed like useless information for this type of medium.

In the second paragraph of my blog I referred to my place of employment as Lenny’s. Anyone who has been to or knows of Denny’s most likely figured out that when I said Lenny’s I was talking about Denny’s. When I began my comic, I found it to be much easier to go ahead and use the logo for Denny’s than to make up a logo similar to it, using the name Lenny’s, since most people would already know what restaurant I was implying. Therefore, I simply used the Denny’s logo to start off the comic, so that the reader would know that the story takes place in a restaurant.

During the third paragraph, I describe to the readers of my blog some of the “restaurant terminology”, to help the reader understand restaurant lingo, so that they feel as if they are an insider to the situation at hand. In the comic I did not use such terminology, as I would have had to do a lot of extra explaining of what a “20 top” was. I simply showed an image of a couple of people waiting for a table, then a hostess announcing “Ronald! Party of 20! Your table is ready”. Many people have heard this expression while waiting for a table at a restaurant, so I hoped this would be understandable in my comic.

In the fourth paragraph of my blog I talked about being in the “island”, which is more “restaurant terminology” and describes a place where servers get waters and condiments. At this point I was able to find an image that closely resembled what I had written in my blog, which was very exciting, as I had struggled to turn my words into images thus far into the comic. I also found an image of a girl carrying a tray of waters to the table, and an image of a large group of people gathered around a table. At this point in the story the verbal and visual communication for both the blog, and the comic seemed to be lining up rather well. Now comes the tricky part.

In paragraph five, I talk about how “The table was located in the middle of the room. It looked like a really long rectangle, with people gathered around the sides, and the ends of the table. At one end, there was a baby in a car seat, which was set on top of a foldout devise, so that the car seat was the same height, as the table”. I was able to find an image with a large group of people around a table. I had to Photoshop the baby at the end of the table, which was kind of hard to see. So I added a thought bubble by the baby’s head saying, “Hope she notices I’m not strapped in”. I wanted people to think of some kind of “strap”, without describing too many details or giving away too much information. I think it might have been a bit confusing to understand the meaning of the image in the comic. However, in the blog it was easier to describe this part, as I was able to share more details about the situation.

During paragraph six in my blog I go into detail of how I am backing around the table with my tray of waters. I was not able to show in the comic that I was approaching the baby with the tray of waters. So instead I used the parley effect, which is used in comics when dialogue is occurring between opposing sides in the comic, there is an effect of intense close-ups on the face of the character who is speaking (Mulhauser DTC355). I showed a close up image of the baby with another thought bubble warning to “Watch out for the strap! Don’t trip!”, so the reader would hopefully understand that an accident was about to occur. Then I added the image of a black silhouette of a woman falling backwards, with the expression “Ahhhhh”. This indicated the notion of someone falling backwards, followed by a close up image of a woman lying on the floor with broken glass on her stomach. I’m not sure if the readers of my comic will understand the situation as fully as the readers of my blog.

In paragraph seven of my blog, I explain why I had landed on my back, and how the parents had not strapped their baby in, and how I had accidently tripped. I had to leave this entire paragraph out of my comic, as this was too much information, and wasn’t necessary to include. There was no need for images in the comic at this point in my story, as it would only confuse the reader.

In the final paragraph of my blog, I was able to accurately portray in the comic the ending of the story. I was able to explain through images, and a limited amount of text in the comic, that my friend had come over to help me, as well as, deliver a final message of the story, which was, “Always walk forward and watch where you are going”.

I may not have been able to fully utilize my story in my comic, but I did use the C.R.A.P. principles. In the comic I used proximity, with the speech bubbles and thought bubbles. I made sure that the bubbles were in proximity with the character so that the reader would know who was talking, and would be guided to the next speech bubble. Robin Williams describes proximity in his book The Non-Designers Design Book, as “grouping related items close together, so that they become one visual unit rather than several separate units (Williams 13). I also used a different style of speech bubble to show a woman speaking vs. a man speaking, which shows repetition throughout the comic. I used black and white images to show good contrast, and alignment with the speech bubbles. I liked the look of the speech bubbles breaking the panels in the comic. Foss, Foss, and Trapp describes rhetoric in their book Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric as “the human use of symbols to communicate” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 1). I have to say I used rhetoric to the best of my ability in my comic.

Overall, I feel my story was much more understandable in my blog, than in my comic. While reading my comic you wouldn’t even know that I had written it about myself. I found designing the comic to be much more difficult than expected, as the comic limited the amount of information I was able to convey in my blog. The comic became a story of its own, as I struggled to incorporate my original story, while having limited use of images and words.

Works Cited

Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, Robert Trapp.Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric.Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 2002.Print.

Williams, Robin. The Non-designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit, 2008. Print.

DTC 355-Comic Notes