Multimodal means that there is more than one mode. A mode is a way of communicating. Multimodal does not mean that it has to be digital. The modes are used to try to reach out to different audiences. An example used is how music can be strongly linked to emotions, so in powerpoints or other digital forms of communicating the author will use music to try and connect to the audience. Certain music has different tones so you could add any kind of feel to enhance your communication. There are five major modes that introduced that can easily help readers understand multimodal texts. Linguistic mode refers to the language used which is include word choice, organization and delivery. Visual mode refers to the use of images and other characteristics like color layout size and perspective in an effort to attract attention. Aural mode refers to the use of sound to communicate through speech, music, silence, tone, and many others. Capital mode is all about the physical arrangement of the communication which includes aspect like organization or arrangement. Gesture movement refers to movements that can be used to help communicate like facial expression, hand gestures , and body language. While this all may help with writing, there is a lot of other things that come into play for designing the form of communication. When designing there are also five major things you should keep in mind: emphasis, organization’s, contrast, alignment, and proximity. Most of these are pretty easy to understand but they all impact the audience’s view on the writing. Emphasis stresses words while contrast highlights difference between elements or ideas. Alignment is used to lie ideas up and proximity is how close they are. All of these relate back to organization which is a major part in organization and writing.

I found this essay interesting in the way it was structured. Most essays that are trying to inform us of something are boring and full of information. It was almost as if his essay had more information in it since the author didn’t have to worry about trying to convince the audience. Every sentence had some meaning to it and related to the topic. The use of multimodal communication makes this essay easy to follow and understand what the author is trying to say. It was a good, easy, read which i think was aided by the images and other forms of organization. This essay was a good representation of the information being said. This piece used multimodal communication to help understand what it was which was strong. This make it different than some other informative texts, because this one catches your eyes. There is not much analysis to be made from this reading since it has the major elements it needs.

This reminds me of the common saying, show don’t tell. This author had this idea in his head and he showed it to use. Through case studies, visual images, organization, tone, style, and so on, this other uses multimodal communication to full extent. I will incorporate this more often into my text because i feel that is what i’ve been missing. I always have the ideas but don’t know how to connect them in a way that is interesting to the reader. Obviously certain forms of communication are used for certain situations, but multimodal communication has endless amount of possibilities.