Last Fall, I had an assignment to create a brand for an issue we felt passionate about, we were designing for change. The issue I chose was environmental, specifically the declining populations of bees and other pollinators. The main principle that Duncum mentions that I used in my project was “multimodality”. The project was to design a campaign so we started with a logo then designed posters, a magazine, posts for social media, t-shirts and a presentation. The concept of a campaign for change requires more than just a visual image. Text is as important as the visual elements and that’s why we made designs in so many different formats. According to Duncum, elements such as music and text can completely change the meaning of the visuals. The example he used was a picture of happy children with bright and cheerful music. This invokes a feeling of peace and happiness and goes along with the picture. But then he says to consider what would happen if the music was replaced by something that evokes a feeling of threat. Now the whole narrative of that image is different. It’s the same story with my campaign. I could simply use an image of a bee with the logo but without the context people might think it is simply a cute picture or perhaps it’s an ad for honey. But as soon as I add the text, the meaning changes. Now it has a more serious tone and is meant to make people aware of the issue and also serves as a call to action. This is most apparent in my magazine spread, and back cover (attached). Multimodality gives meaning to the visual components and helps create a stronger design. It’s also an important principle for a brand or campaign such as this because the same concepts can be shown in many different media. This strengthens the campaign because the designs can appear in a lot more places, such as on social media, in a magazine, on a t-shirt, etc. Multimodality is also how we consume most media these days, as Duncum points out. Television, movies, print, most of the things we see on the internet, all have components of multimodality. As a designer, everything I do is made to be seen by the most amount of people as possible, multimodality is essential for creating designs in the 21st century.
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