The Complexity of Public Relations

When my class was first assigned the daunting task of creating a campaign as a public relations team for a local organization, I believe I speak for us all when I say I could smell the fear. As a large and diverse university, it was intimidating to think of how a group project between prospective lawyers, bloggers, and food critics would cohesively build a project with a common goal. Despite this anxiety, presentation day came and my peers nailed it.

While watching them present their campaigns to the class, I found myself instantly tying the key terms, like design, circulation, audience, and assemblage, to the projects. Each of the presentations were designed so differently, because you obviously can't use sparkly backgrounds with attorneys, nor should you use pictures of puppies to increase a divorce attorney's clientele. Students showcased their abilities to create visually appealing texts, with evidence of circulation, the process of design, and explanation on how the overall assemblage could be considered successful.

Some of the campaigns were inspiring, like the campaign done for the non-profit animal shelter. Other campaigns were exciting because they encouraged people to vote. Many of the teams faced difficulties just as mine had! Time was the most common restraint in regards to circulation. Although we all had to have an idea of how successfully the texts circulated, many of the results will not be seen until after the projects are graded. In addition, some groups had communication difficulties with the organizations. For example, the team working with a women's voting group had difficulties because the women were in their 60's and didn't understand the implications of social media, emailing and constructive critique, and timely responsiveness. Despite these issues that each group encountered, the process was to evolve with the situation and exigence, and deliver an adequate and fitting campaign. The mentality in the Editing, Writing, and Media major consists of mindfulness to literature, but also an understanding that this major exists because English is evolving, so we must be able to as well. Watching my classmates present helped me understand that my team's campaign was successful despite it being so different from what any other team was doing. More importantly, the presentations solidified my understanding of the key terms and how they should be applied to every day texts, whether they are info-graphics containing voting information, or gifs designed to appeal to our emotions.

My Theory of Composing

When challenged with acting as a small business's public relations team, two other girls and I took the project by storm by appealing to our career goals and meeting up with a Tallahassee lawyer, Halley Stephens. We created artifacts which would solve a certain problem, or more specifically, texts to serve a certain exigency. To complete this process, I have applied the key terms from my class to my personal theory of composition. The three terms are a process for every text, even a business flier for Halley M. Stephens. Specifically, I had to look back on my notes constantly to ensure that I would not forget valuable information, such as, the what, the why, and the how. When determining what to write, there needed to be a reason to write, this is also known as the exigency. Halley’s problem was that her firm was new, her list of clienteles was short, and her logo was unrecognizable to most of the public eye in Tallahassee. For my designs, we determined that the logo needed exposure, so through writing, we appealed to families seeking legal help by providing ethical and family-related pathos appeals. For example, exhibiting her extensive experience and awards was one of the design’s attempts to establish Halley’s credible and trustworthy identity to the public. Moreover, fliers are completely visual, so through composing, I allowed additional elements to come together from individual and unconnected details to a visually drawing and stimulating image. Furthermore, the brightness of the colors and elements provided unique experiences to different audiences depending on whether it was the simpler version, which defines civil litigation and emphasizes specific words to catch the attention of perhaps busy individuals, or the less revealing version, which more simply calls out the audience and provides a web address and address. Next, editing is the final part in my theoretical process of composition. By applying the lenses of audience-consideration, product design, and the exigence which started the whole thing, the product’s I’s are dotted, and it’s t’s are crossed. The text is edited based on how well the purpose of the text is being fulfilled through its design and how much the intended audience participates with the text’s circulation. In conclusion, my theory of composition is one similar to that of evolution because it seems to keep growing. I once I thought that editing and composition were the same thing, and that editing was a identical process despite the text. Now that I have had to use multiple forms of media to create an artifact that’s sophisticated but appealing, I see that writing is the creation of material, but the composition is the artistic writing to effectively deliver the material.

The Romantic Side of an Aspiring Law Student

So far in my studies, I have established that writing and composing are different, but belong together in order to create a text. The writing is the brainpower, the diction, the syntax, and the metaphors that bring ideas to life, but composing is the art of working those ideas together and bringing them to a specific audience. In composing, often times we find this romantic writing-idea called remediation. To me, remediation is the process of using somebody else's text, and redesigning it for a new purpose. It is definitely a whole new use of writing and composing because one is told to take this, use it, play with it, and send it off with something new. For my second major project in WEPO, my goal was to remediate Lady Antebellum's song, Need You Now, into a painting that would emphasize the social issue of imposed gender roles, while simultaneously appealing to those who have recently experienced a breakup. What I find interesting about life is that we have been molded to expect that males and females play certain roles in specific situations. For breakups, the males are supposed to party and find a rebound girl, while the females are expected to eat ice-cream and watch ridiculously romantic movies. For my painting, I chose to exhibit that -like in the song- the female and male are often experiencing the same heartbreak, and have both immobilized themselves.

I feel that a painting is an effective design because I had to find a more creative way to convey emotion than the song already had. Paintings can portray people, their experiences and their feelings by using certain colors and added media, so I felt that this was the best way to show somebody who had recently been through a breakup assurance that their ex-lover’s heart was just as broken. Furthermore, the first time I was asked if I saw my class’ key terms reflected throughout the project, I firmly thought, “No.” Now that I have a greater understanding of these terms through practice, I understand that they are woven throughout the entirety of my composing process. My materials were first thought to simply be paint, but I ended up adding photo clips and pieces of tissues, which changed the entire design. The audience was constantly in mind, so I had to continuously think of ways to further my appeal to them. From this project, I feel that I can draw upon Shipka, because I did have a goal, but the final product drifted so much from my original idea that I ended up learning more from my deviations than anything else. I learned that reuse should be played with like molding clay; ideas are created as the process moves forward, and the design acts as parameters that those ideas must fit into.