For my multimodal project I chose the topic of trading schools as my focus because I felt that it was a relevant subject in the current state of how things are now in this country.  Education makes up the foundation of every human’s future, a person’s success in the school system going from pre-school to college level determines your ability to perform outside of those boundaries when you finally leave them.  How well your final scores are in high school determines what colleges and universities you have access to, and how well you do in those facilities determines how good of a chance you have in finding a good job in the workforce.  Thus, having options about where you can finish your education becomes imperative in allowing people from different backgrounds and circumstances to make the most of what they can afford to give to their education and give themselves the best chances of survival outside of the confines of a school. 

My readers are anybody from any age that still have yet to receive a formal certificate or degree of any kind and need one in order to advance in their lives for the sake of finding better jobs.  It affected my decisions on how I wished to market myself towards my audience, presenting myself in a tone befitting on someone from some sort of a commercial who is trying to convince you to buy their product over that of what the competition offers.  My one stance was that I believe trade schools offer an alternative route for people to complete their education if college simply doesn’t work out in their favor for whatever reason.  In this day and age, it is essential for everyone to have more than just a high school diploma if they want any chance at being competitive in the job market.  It’s difficult to fins a job as is, when college/university is too difficult or inaccessible of an option, your best shot is at a trade school that offers you specified training in a certain skill for cheap, and can get you into the workforce in two years or less.  The worst thing you could do for yourself is not have credentials, because that more or less guarantees the you will never have a good paying job that won’t have you living from paycheck to paycheck.  Everyone deserves a chance to live comfortably from the work that they do, it doesn’t make sense to limit someone’s options in how they can craft their future. 

I chose an infographic for my audience and argument because I looked at it as the most attractive way to display the information I wished to convey to them.  An infographic is colorful, appropriate for all ages, and tells you what you need to know in a very condensed and time saving manner by not overwhelming you with walls of text.  I find it as a very compelling way to get a point across depending on how you organize the text and guide the reader on what you want them to read first and last.  I’ve always found infographics much more accessible to absorb information than reading paragraphs of text. 

Looking back at my creation, I like the simplicity of it, the biggest thing to point out about it is the formatting of the infographic took on the compare and contrast motif, where I put facts about trade schools on the left and facts about college on the right.  It became a very good way of organizing information for people who looked at it to know what it was that I was talking about and what I was trying to convince them of.  I would have wanted a more artistic approach to make it more appealing to the eye, but I didn’t have the creativity or skill to do that.  It could have ended up being a very beautiful piece of work had I had the know-how. I didn’t add my source directly onto the inforgraphic for visual reasons but I got my information from a research article from author Imed Bouchrika on Research.com, who speaks upon the differences between trade schools and college, comparing and contrasting them in order to give readers a proper rundown on options that they have when seeking to finish the final stretch of their education. I did not use my second source that I had collected from my previous project because it was more of a narrative on the effective decline of community college enrollment. I felt that it was less appropriate than the source I used for the inforgraphic, which focused on the displaying of facts between the two types of educational institutions for the sake of showing the differences between them.