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The Confection Project

In image-editing software, design an image that visually summarizes, analyzes, and interprets a complex idea, theory, or extended narrative in a single eye span. The image should be designed to work as a particular visual genre: for example, as a postcard, an academic poster, a book illustration, an art work, etc.

In Chapter Seven of his book Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte provides numerous examples, and discusses the techniques and history this genre of analytical design, calling it a "visual confection."

Software Used

1. For this project, you will need to use a image editor. If you do not already have access to a good image editing program like Photoshop, you will need to purchase and download Affinity Photo for $49.99. For Mac, download the app from the App Store. For Windows, download it directly from Affinity.

[Note that purchasing this software is much less expensive than requiring you to pay a full-access lab fee for access to Photoshop in a lab, as previous students have done. You will also be able to keep and continue to use the Affinity Photo after this class is over.]

2. We will also use Google Sites (available through your UMD Google account) to insert the image onto a web page and publish it. The project will be turned in by publishing that page to the web and sending the page URL to a particular Moodle forum.

Audience

You can assume the viewer of your confection is acquainted with the concept being visualized, having read the book or article, taken the course from which the concept is taken, or otherwise studied it. As Tufte observes, visual confections are based on ideas that have been elaborated in writing, and you should pick a topic that has been developed fully in words.

The design and details of your confection will serve to help the viewer to better remember the concept, to interpret it in a particular way, and to understand it more fully. Imagine students of the concept taping your confection above their desks, or propping a postcard of it against a coffee cup while studying, to remind and inspire them.

A Concept Visualized

Your confection should bring together words and images to visualize a complex idea: an argument, a multifaceted definition, a set of detailed choices to consider, the cause-and-effect relations in a process or story, and so on. This concept could be drawn from a book, magazine article, or online analysis.

It would be best to choose a concept that you personally know and find interesting and useful. A novel, movie, or television series could also serve as a "concept" if your confection is visualizing an interpretation of that narrative's meaning or structure, rather than just the plot. An album of music could be a concept if the songs (and their sequencing) suggest larger, interrelated ideas that constitute a unified whole.

It is not only permitted, but highly recommended, that you use someone's else's published analysis or interpretation for your visualization.

The confection should include a title and indicate the source of the ideas, either as part of the design or in a caption included in the image file.

Genre

Conceive and design the image to work as a particular visual genre and for a particular audience: that is as a poster (popular or academic), as a postcard, bookmark, frontispiece or poster-insert for a book, illustration for a magazine article, etc.

Confections Are Not Collages

Tufte advises us to avoid creating a simple collage, which combines images in suggestive but diffusely intended ways. Instead, aim at producing what Tufte calls a "miniature theatre of information" that makes "reading and seeing and thinking identical" (138, 151).

Image(s) Should Dominate

Your confection may include some supplemental text, but the explanatory weight should be carried mostly by the confection itself, which should be one (perhaps multifaceted) image. See the many examples in Tufte's Chapter 7.

Commentary

You will write a commentary on your confection project, which should be printed out (lines double spaced) and turned in by the due date/time specified on the course schedule. The commentary should do the following:

  1. run at least at least 250 words [500 words for students in WRIT 5260]

  2. Briefly expain the original concept, including its author's name.

  3. thoughtfully analyze how the project fulfills the assignment's criteria and purposes i.

  4. discuss how your conceiving, creating, and revising the project illustrates some of the large issues, questions, and conflicts, etc. raised by the class's subject matter, texts, examples, and discussions

  5. present your analyses in formal, well-written, grammatically correct academic prose.

  6. usefully quote and cite Tufte at least twice

  7. compare or contrast your confection to some aspect of at least two other confections, either from the Tufte book or from the examples in class.

  8. use critical terms from the assignment, from class readings, and from class discussions. These critical terms should be employed thoughtfully and correctly, and be highlighed in bold.

  9. cite and document all outside refereces in your writing (including online resources and our textbooks) using MLA citation and documentation format, including a Works Cited section at the end of your commentary.

What is a "Concept"?

Examples of "concepts" can sometimes be identified by certain key kinds of words. See the italicized terms in the examples below:

Resources, Examples & Possible Non-Examples: