project #2: visual conventions of a community...

Here is the (very brief) brief Denise posted for project number 2...

Project 2 : An Initiation

1. Read : assigned sections on "discourse communities" from Shaping Information: the Rhetoric of Visual Conventions (Kostelnick and Hassett). (This and other reading reference posted here.)
2. Identify : existing visual conventions of the community you have selected to study in seminar.
3. Design : An Initiation to ________ , introducing new visual conventions that might logically follow, or interrupt, if such is the more compelling strategy. Any media, any point of delivery.

Again, my community for the semester is DiscussCooking.com.

After completing the reading assignment and analyzing the website my community uses, here are the visual conventions they favor:

• Forum structure
• Website navigation
  - Bread crumbs
  - Drop down menus
  - Multiple paths and options
• Avatars
• Signatures
• Emoticons/Smileys
• Buttons
• Banner Ads
• Side bars
• Modularity
• Search function
• Logo (at top left)
• Patterned background (checked tablecloth)
• Icons
• Photography
  - Of food
  - Of people
  - Of places
• Calendar

This also made me think about the visual conventions people with an understanding of cooking
would use:

• Mise en place (everything in it's place)
• Cookbooks
• Recipes
• Measuring systems (cups, spoons, etc.)

From here, I started to think about ideas for my initiation: What do I want to initiate this community into? I thought it could be interesting to somehow show the community how the food they discuss every day effects their body. Not necessarily for shock value...more for informative value. I wanted to approach this as a way to display unknown (or just non-considered) information in an interesting way.

Some initial brainstorms—could show:

• How the body processes the food in a given recipe
• Which organs are effected by the food in a given recipe
• How quickly the body will metabolize the food in a given recipe
• How the food in a given recipe breaks down into components that are processed differently by the body

Here is an initial sketch—my first idea for this project. I'm riffing off the idea of mise en place (french for everything in it's place), which is a technique chefs and cooks (and TV personalities) use when cooking. You prepare all the ingredients according to the recipe, measuring out everything into containers, arranging all the items by step or procedure within the recipe, before you start cooking.







































I wondered if using mise en place as a metaphor could help users of this site understand nutrition information.

Feedback from the critique convinced me to move in a different direction. Denise thought I could push my idea in a more unexpected and surprising direction. I agree.