Marc Andre Lam: Midterm Portfolio – #1 Alt Text Comic

Alt-Text COmic: Burger With Cheese

 

Project Description 

Using alt-text to describe a comic of a day in my life.

Documentation 

This particular assignment was created using images from one day in my life. I tried to pick a day where I had taken a lot of pictures, and this day was one where I was photographing different parts of the city for a graphic design project in another class.

A dark green sign laid on top of a gray fence, reading "Brooklyn Heights Promenade"
Brooklyn Heights Promenade Signage
Manhattan skyline photographed behind a black fence
An image of the skyline I considered for this project
A park bench in front of a black fence, overlooking a park and the Manhattan skyline
Another image I considered
A city street crossing at night. The street sign reads "Bedford St."
The original “end of day” photograph I chose

I didn’t have that much to show for the middle of the day besides the one image of the park, so deciding between how to capture the beginning and end of the day was most of the process. Part of it was also seeing which image would be the easiest to write alt-text for; the last one in particular felt pretty terrible to describe in alt-text.

Reflection Questions

What is the theme of the work?

The theme of this work is the sort of simple joy I find in the weekdays, when sometimes it’s hard to be super enthusiastic or happy about much due to the grind of school and work. The pictures I chose are the innocuous things I take pictures of because they give me this small bit of happiness during the day, and I’ve used the alt text to reflect this.

How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?

The pictures themselves are simple but quite nice, I think. Especially the first two pictures, which are well-lit by the daytime, and in the case of the first one, include a quite picturesque landscape in the background. The alt-text doesn’t try to encapsulate all of these details, but give the reader a feeling of the atmosphere and what I was doing.

Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?

I think the captions, which I kept brief, complement the pictures well. In the case of the last one, I wanted to make a contrast between appreciating parks and the quite gluttonous meal that was in my camera roll; I think the caption definitely helped do that. The alt text also complements the caption in this regard.

Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?

Sense of smell and the things beyond the frame of the picture, also the style of alt-text which is not quite as “objective” as it could be.

Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work? Who is this modality not accessible for?

This project is only written in English, so non-English speakers wouldn’t be able to get the meaning of the text.

Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population? (You don’t have to make this part, but think about it and write about it).

With my quite rudimentary Spanish, I could try piecing together a version of this in Spanish. I also think this would give a different tone to the piece, which might be fun to see.