Multimodal Design: Academic Musings (Part One)

Theorists tend to agree that a world ‘on the visual space of the screen…will have far reaching repercussions’ in terms of how readers obtain meaning and understanding and which will require ‘a new form of representation, [a] new theory’ (Kress in Snyder, 1997). Walsh (2006) also considers ‘the context of changed literary practices’ in her article titled ‘The Textual Shift’ and explains that ‘reading [in a multimodal environment] involves a different process than the reading of words’. Schriver (1997) agrees, and in context of multimodal communication indicates that document designers need to resist what Johnson (1994) calls ‘romancing the hypertext.’

So, the convergence of technology into multimodal websites means designers will need to ‘understand the semiotic potential of each mode.’ Got it? OK, put more simply the internet brings words, pictures, audio and video together into a new medium of communication. People ‘read’ this medium differently (ie, to a text book) and new theories of understanding are therefore needed. Part two to follow…