Assignment

Home is a school assignment from UWP 012 Writing and Visual Rhetoric, a UC Davis design program course. We were asked to create a multimodal composition that analyzes the genre conventions of any form of visual rhetoric we wanted, preferably one we’ll use in our future careers.

We were allowed to choose any way of presenting the project, so long as it included at least two modes of communication (visual, linguistic, spatial, etc.). The end goal of the project was to create an analysis that could possibly be used by other students who are learning to create media within our chosen genre as a tutorial.

Because of my major specialization being UI/UX Design, I chose the home pages for financial technology companies, and I chose to present it in the form of a website as practice, as well as to show how what I’ve learned about the genre can be put into practice.

Process and Timeline

The process of creating this website was very much a learning experience for me, as I had to use many tools that were new to me. I’ve used a combination of Webflow (though I challenged myself not to use any templates, working only from a blank page), Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, and more.

Throwing myself into the deep end for this project, it was an extremely intensive process to finish within the 2-week project timeline, especially juggling multiple other projects. When given the assignment, I made the decision to make it as expansive as possible, especially with the home page, knowing it would be worth it if I was able to finish on time. Time sinks included making the design responsive to smaller screen sizes and creating a brand for the project itself, with creating all assets (except for direct screenshots of pages) for this project myself. Though I allowed myself contingencies in case I could not finish by the deadline, using time management and careful planning allowed me to finish the project 5 days in advance.

Using the knowledge gained from this project will allow me to move on with others much quicker, so I’m glad I took the initiative by fully fleshing it out.