English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The week got started off with a fast pace group work as we all hurried to learn different softwares to use for the brochure. I had difficulty with the software due the facts that I did not have Microsoft Publisher. The group helped me download it and learn how to use the software. The group worked together to make the first draft of the brochure with picture and text that was well worked together. In chapter 24, I learned that copyrights must be presented on an image if used, so a made sure the group was aware of this.

In chapter 24, Using visuals to inform and persuade, visuals play two roles. The first role is to present information and arguments. The second role visuals play is to include design elements that convey relationships between images and surrounding text. Meaning visuals speak louder than words, but especially help illustrate to the surrounding text. Images as arguments are visuals that can stand alone from text. I found that there were several different forms of visuals including but not limited to photographs, illustrations, charts and graphs, and design and layout elements.

The work was still smooth this. The group decided that we should use Ms office publisher to create the brochure. I didnt know how to use it and thus spent 2 days in trying to work with it. I had started creating the software. There was a communication gap in the end. I guess the internet was down, for which Faheem and Alex weren't able to post any comments on the wiki page. I thought the project wasnt ready and thus started a brochure and sent it to everyone to add something. But then the next day Alex posted the brochure that he had created.

This week our group did a good job of communicating with eachother. Everyone did their part to finish the first draft of both brochures. This week my end of the deal was to write the content for the caring for you pet brochure. I did not think this was going to take that long, but it actually required quite a bit of time. The content was fun to write because it was something I did not have much knowledge about, so therefore I had to research the information. The other group members also did their part to contribute in their areas as well.

This week’s project activity was much more creative than last week. Since my writing part was information for donation, I researched about CFRC and had a short call-interview with Danna Tirrell, the person in charge of the Christmas day dinner event.

This week my group worked on putting together and revising out first brochure draft. We had divided the work equally in our group. My main propose was to gather and organize the information for the Christmas dinner brochure along with Bill. After getting to know what our parts were I went ahead and opened all the files and links for our project on the English website. After looking at the examples and understanding them clearly. I Started to brain storm for some ideas regarding what we could put in our Christmas dinner brochure.

It seemed that dividing up the work worked better for our group. We divided the work into gathering information, designing the brochures, and revising the work. Since one of our members is really acquainted with pet he volunteered to work complete the pet brochure. On the other hand, Maria worked on the design of the brochure while Roy created the information brochure for the humane society and I was responsible for revising it.

After reading chapters 24 and 37, I felt our group did a good job following the principles outlined in the Thompson Handbook. In chapter 24 the book describes that the visual content should give the reader evidence of something that is mentioned in the text. One example of this in our brochure is a picture showing a gentleman handing out food. The photo illustrates the text above it, which describes what kind of volunteers the CFRC needs. The pictures we used also helped to show who our intended audience was. The brochure's purpose is to get volunteers for the Christmas Dinner.

This week seemed to be smoother then the last week. Now that our group is acquainted we began the week by dividing up the brochures. Because I work in the animal field I decided that I would make the best contribution completing the pet brochure. Maria did an excellent job finding a design that was appealing yet not too distracting. She also helped me in some of the writing and formatting of the brochure. We worked great together and got a draft sent to Roy by Wednesday evening. Roy and Gwenda worked on the information brochure on the humane society.

This week has been very busy creating our first draft of general information brochure. Since I was responsible for designing the brochure, I started brainstorming last weekend about the big frame. I searched for various brochures that are already made to get some ideas and broad a perspective. I focused on the organization of information, the way to place each section effectively. Also I searched for the pictures I will be including along contents that can match to the background colors as well.