For our final project, me and my group member, Maryna, chose to focus on raising awareness regarding graffiti and street art around the world. We chose this topic to show our readers that that graffiti and street art is mostly viewed by the public as an act of destruction by the individuals who paint them on street walls. We wanted to explain that this is not always the case when it comes to street art in all its forms. Street art such as graffiti, large murals and sometimes tagging can beautify certain areas in neighborhoods and tourist attraction locations.

We chose two distinct genres to approach or topic, which is a genre for a general audience, and a genre for a professional-based audience. For the general-based audience, we chose to write an opinion piece in a magazine. We chose this genre because we wanted to reach our general audiences in a way where we could explain our cause, our views of our chosen topic, and why it is important for people to understand the important of graffiti in our environment. For our second genre, which is a professional-based genre, we chose to write a case study. We chose this genre due to it being an important choice for our topic where we wanted to reach a more professional or an authoritative audience to convince or explain how graffiti can be beneficial in different cities in the world. We gave examples of cities that embraced graffiti and street art and created official policies to manage graffiti rather that simply removing them.

When we first started our project, we decided to each focus on one genre because we believed that consistency was important for this project. We both outlined what we thought each genre should focus on for our organization. For our first drafts, we were struggling with organization our ideas in each of our genres. For instance, for our case study genre, we wanted our case study to concentrate on the different legal policies around the world regarding the management and the laws toward street art, and more specifically, graffiti. For our first draft, me and my partner did not point out each country/city general and governmental policies toward the management of graffiti. For our final draft, on the other hand, after further research toward each country’s legal background evolving graffiti, we were able to provide more detail about each of them in a sensible manner.

Planning and doing our presentation went by smoothly, thankfully, due to not work on this project alone. My group partner was very helpful, and we were easily communicating with each other during the entire project that we were working on. Of course, deadlines made the whole process together for us to to each taking other classes at for our summer session, but we somehow we were able to manage and do as best as we could do for our group project. Both genres were written and edited multiple times until we were confident enough to preset our project to our class.

Practicing analyzing different genre texts using DOCSV made everything easy to analyze the whole semester. When I first got introduced to DOCSV, I admit I was very intimidated and thought that it would make analyzing texts a bit more complicated. But after multiple practicing using the genre toolkit provided, I realized that DOCSV is an important tool to always remember and use for future genre analysis of texts.

Before starting this project, I imagined that organizing and preparing my resume and cover letter for my future job would be a simple task. In the past, I attempted to create a resume, yet did not know what information that seemed necessary or wasn’t necessary to mention for a job company/organization to view. In this class, we were required to search for a job that fit our needs and skills. This process made building the resume and writing the cover letter much easier because it gave us a clear understanding of what each job organization were looking for from their future graphic design employees.

While researching for job ads that focused on my field of study, I came across many job ads that had similar requirements, yet different values. For instance, almost every job ad I came across asked for a portfolio to review and wanted specific skills that related to my field. In terms of skills, each job ad expects their future graphic design employees to acquire computer skills, especially in the use of computer programs such as Adobe and MS Microsoft. In terms of qualifications and/or character traits, the most common qualities were having a couple years of experience, team work with my peers, and the ability to work under pressure.

Writing the cover letter, on the other hand, was a bit more difficult than preparing the resume. Seeking for job ads certainly made this process easier, however, due to it being a completely new type of writing genre that I ever had, I wasn’t confident enough when trying to write my cover letter for my future employer. Yet, the cover letter samples that was given in class served as a helpful guide when trying to write a clear and affective cover letter.

What I learned about both genres is that the most important approach to write a successful or affective resume and cover letter is to first search for job advertisements and pick the jobs that I feel would work best for me. After this important step, I then begin to build my resume based on the job ad requirement while writing a cover letter that further explains and expresses my interest of wanting the job and my qualifications.

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Before starting this project, I experienced some doubts about interviewing someone who is currently working in my field of study. I have never interviewed anyone for anything in the past, which made me feel scared and worried that I might fail to achieve and complete this task successfully. The process of finding the right person was a bit difficult at first as I had a few people in mind to interview for this assignment. Since the assignment required me interview someone who is currently working in the field I’m studying for, I decided to interview a person who currently works in one of the design firms I am planning to apply for after graduation. The design firm is located in my home country, which is why I felt at the time that the person that I picked would be the appropriate choice for me. The person I interviewed is a Graphic Designer named Sarah Al-Husseinan. She graduated a year ago and currently works at Tajalla Creative Agency located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

 When I first started with the project, I wasn’t so sure about what type of questions would be appropriate to ask for my first interview. However, the struggle of coming up with interview questions was quickly resolved after my class peers and I participated in an activity where we had to all brainstorm ideas of questions that we thought was relevant to ask a person in an interview. This activity was extremely useful and gave me an idea on what questions would be applicable to ask in an interview.

Writing the profile after completing the interview was certainly the most complicated part of this assignment. Writing a profile about someone is a type of writing that I have never encountered in the past. All my English composition courses that I took before were focused on various writing genres such as narrative writing, journal entry, poetry and essays. Writing a profile about someone was my first and was very informative and beneficial for me at the same time. However, I mostly struggled with the writing process of the profile. The introductory paragraph was the easiest part for me, but when I began to write about the interviewee in detail, placing the interviewee’s quotes in the appropriate context was difficult for me. Thankfully, after continuous writing, I began feeling more comfortable with the genre and felt more confident in writing the profile in the appropriate manner.

The DOCSV analysis report was quite different than previous projects I’ve ever worked on. Most of the previous projects that I’ve worked on that required a text analysis was done in an essay-style format. I had to point out what an author of a particular piece did or use to get his/her point across a reader. The DOCSV was slightly similar yet required me to focus on some other different elements of a text piece that was used by the author to create his/her work.

The text that I analyzed with my peers is of an infographic type of text titled The Reasons for Becoming Vegan. The infographic focuses on reasons for becoming vegan that included many informative information regarding the benefits of becoming vegan. Generally speaking, what I learned about this genre of the text is that it included many elements that included specific features that fit the general aspects of this genre. Infographics are usually, informative, yet presented in a simple manner. However, what stood out the most from this genre, in my opinion, are the number of graphs, images and colors used in this infographic. For an individual to immediately know or identify the text as an infographic, they usually look at elements of design featured in the text.

Using the DOCSV analysis, I also learned that the author used other important elements that proved to be highly effective to explain his/her main topic successfully. For example, one effective element the author used in the infographic is the organization element where he/she tries to separate each idea and/or issue by using features such general to specific and/or explanation to clarify his/her points in a manner where the reader could understand the context of the topic easily and gradually.

Although some parts of the genre seemed easy for me to identify when analyzing the infographic, I stilled experienced some difficulties in other parts of analyzing the infographic text. For instance, one part that I struggled to accurately identify from the infographic are features related to the content of this genre. In the DOCSV analysis toolkit, various examples of element features were provided followed by a brief description of each feature to help guide us through the analysis process. However, I was still struggling with the process of identifying the features that seemed fit to describe the content of the infographic.

Throughout this course session, I hope to enhance my abilities to analyze a genre while using the DOCSV genre analysis toolkit as a guide. I am looking forward to surpassing these challenges and other challenges to better my abilities to write and analyze successfully for my future career.

Link to the mentioned infographic:

https://onlybuyvegan.com/vegan-infographics/

8 Vegan Infographics to Get You Vegucated on Veganism

My name is Mishael Binghaith. I am currently a senior at SDSU majoring in Graphic Design. I originally came from Saudi Arabia where I live with my parents, four of my siblings, and my two dogs. I have been living in San Diego for about five years with my older sister, Nora. I chose to move to San Diego, where my sister was already a student at, after graduating high school to expand my learning experience.

I first started school here at a community college for three years before transferring to SDSU last Fall. Due to my shy and quite nature, I believe that starting at a community college was the best choice for me because It gave me the opportunity to learn in a community-based environment where classes are smaller, and students are less. This helped improve my ability to communicate with others easily and increase my confidence in time.

SDSU, at first, was not my main choice when I came here. However, after deciding what educational path I wanted to take, and researched more about the schools that offered art majors. I finally came to the conclusion that SDSU would be a better choice for me because it offered plenty of art majors to choose from that other schools in San Diego did not offer.

My hobbies are drawing and photography which also what led me to choose Graphic Design as my major.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton