Framing: The first project of the class was to create an infographic to inform a specific audience about a topic of our interest. I decided I wanted to make my inforgraphic about an environmental issue as that is something that is near and dear to my heart. Specifically I decided to focus on plastic pollution. The infographic serves as a “jumping off point” for the rest of the class – it organizes and presents information in a very readable and understandable format and gives context to the rest of the projects of the class. Infographics are based on logic and helps to show an issue is a real and important issue by appealing to the logical side of the brain.

Goals: The main goal of the project was to make a logos-based argument about the dangers of plastic pollution and provide facts and statistics showing that plastic pollution is an important and time-sensitive issue.

Audience: The specific audience of my infographic is Americans between the ages of roughly 10-50, although the infographic is applicable to all people. I picked Americans to focus on in this infographic because I felt I could better judge what was important to Americans specifically, as I have lived here my entire life.

Reflection: The focus of the class is writing with media; infographics are a great way to introduce an issue as it presents a lot of information in a very clear and concise manner. The information is easily accessible and often the facts and statistics presented are usually pretty shocking to most people not well informed on the issue. I think that is true of plastic pollution. Everyone knows pollution is a problem, but most people have no idea of the scale of the problem, and I think are surprised after learning how much pollution plastics alone account for. In my infographic, I wanted to use facts and statistics that both were very shocking and relevant to many people. Furthermore, I wanted to provide context for many of the statistics I used as I felt that when working with big numbers, many people don’t have a good conceptual benchmark of for example what a million tons of plastic looks like. Overall, I felt that my infographic accomplished its purpose of informing readers about plastics pollution and provided not only statistics, but also pictures and design elements that helped to enhance the overall project.

Infographic: