Whole Brain Post

Whole Brain Post

By Anna Rajala

I was in a graphic design class this semester, and so we did a lot of work on design software, creating arguments through images and design. One of my assignments was an unpopular unimportant opinion poster. Essentially, the prompt was to make a poster going against the grain on an issue that hardly matters. I decided to talk about how much I don't like Oreo's. Because I'm not very good at art, I approached my assignment from the perspective of creating something that was fun to make and had a lot of elements and color. However, that wasn't really the point of the assignment or the class. I wish I had added more left-brain analyzing to the project; good design requires detail-orientation and making sure every element has a specific purpose. The assignment was about being creative, but the creativity was found in forming an argument but making it attractive. The important part was making an argument. I didn't realize before this class that design is a form of rhetoric, and that images should be very intentional, like every sentence in an essay. Without ordered data or some other kind of information, there's no purpose for design, but without design, few people will be able to understand the information being presented: in this case, left-and-right-brain thinking need each other to be successful.