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"Bad" Design Activity
Assignment by Courtney Mauck, Bedford New Scholar 2021
This assignment is typically used in a first-year writing course, in my case, ENG-1510: Writing & Rhetoric I. This assignment pairs well with Writer/Designer (my textbook of choice) but can be used without any textbook.
The overall goal of this assignment is to give students a “fun” activity that allows them to critique and analyze multimodal design choices through creating intentionally bad designs. This activity can be done in face-to-face classes (individually or in groups) or in online classes (via discussion boards or virtual meeting software).
Context
In this week’s discussion board post, we are doing things a little differently. Rather than write a typical post, you will demonstrate your understanding of design choices by composing a poorly designed poster, advertisement, or infographic using free software such as Canva or PiktoChart.
In Writer/Designer, the authors remind us that “One of the ways we can better understand how writer/designers communicate meaning through multimodal texts is to examine its design elements” (p. 44). However, as we all know, design elements are not always used effectively. In creating your poorly designed project, you should consider their six key design concepts: emphasis, contrast, color, organization, alignment, and proximity.
Instructions (for Students)
- Pick a topic of your choosing for the assignment. If you’re comfortable, choose a topic to inform us about that will help us get to know you a little better. This might be your favorite hobby, a cause you are passionate about, or something interesting about your hometown. The options are endless, so don’t take this too seriously.
- After choosing your topic, compose a poorly designed poster, advertisement, or infographic using free software such as Canva or PiktoChart.
- While composing your project, consider the six key design concepts defined by Writer/Designer: emphasis, contrast, color, organization, alignment, and proximity (pp. 44-50). In an attempt to better analyze and understand good design choices, I am asking you to consciously make bad design choices.
- Once you have created your poorly designed poster, ad, or infographic, either download the image/PDF or take a screenshot of the image.
- Post your image to the discussion board for this week. Don’t provide any context/explanation for the image, except to indicate whether it is meant to be a poster, infographic, or advertisement.
- Then, for your peer responses this week, respond to the design choices in the images your classmates created and discuss why those design choices are ineffective as good design choices (but effective for this bad design assignment, right?)
Keep in mind this is a low-stakes activity. It’s okay if you’ve never made a poster or infographic before—the purpose is conscious (bad) design choices rather than perfection.
