Jessica Merrick
2/10/18
Intro to Digital publishing
The Catholic Charities of Baltimore
The Catholic Charities of Baltimore is an organization that uses religion and faith as well as service as a way to give back to the Baltimore, Maryland community. This organization has a website that informs and persuades many individuals to donate, volunteer, and give love and support the immigrants and others living in poverty. With many programs, religion and the community, this organization supports the people in need and those who are or wish to be religious. Catholic Charities uses a website to spread the word in which sheds a light on the situation as well as gives an overall aesthetically pleasing design to the Web.
The authors of Catholic Charities have a great way of expressing their way of persuading and informing others of the site as well as drawing their audience closer. Although the author is not obvious to the viewer, it’s pretty clear that the creators of this idea play a big role in the making of the website. The primary author is the Catholic Charities of Baltimore. According to the website Catholic Charities, they were “Inspired by the Gospel mandates to love, serve, and teach…” This is why the Gospel mandates would be the secondary author since, of course, they inspired the people of Baltimore to make Catholic Charities become a thing. Another secondary author would be religious members, specifically those who are Catholic. Although it’s all implied, I believe that the website does support the authors’ reputation in helping those in need and, for those who may not realize the first time, to draw closer to God. The audience is intended for immigrants, specifically, who are in need. According to Catholic Charities, the secondary audience are those in which the community “serves and supports children and families in crisis, people living in poverty, individuals with intellectual disabilities, our new neighbors in the immigrant community and older Marylanders”.
The genre of Catholic Charities has a creative way of informing the purpose of their website. A website, one of the best ways for individuals to find out more information about something. Now that we are in an era where technology has evolved so much, many things nowadays are on the Internet. And as long as the website has easy access, many people can go online and find out about Catholic Charities. The genre is of a website created by a non-profit organization made up of volunteers who support those who are in need and are looking to better their relationship with God, which brings us to the purpose of Catholic Charities. There are obvious reasons as to what the purpose of the organization is and then there are less obvious signs. The basis, to support and aid immigrants who are in need, to spread the word about the way of Catholic living, and to give back to the community. The organization includes 80 programs for those who are interested in developing hobbies in the community. The secondary purpose includes those who are interested in volunteering, for those who wish to become religious or have a stronger bond with Him and those who wish to make a change in the Baltimore, Maryland community.
The Catholic Charities website uses context to help gain easy access that gives people the chance to donate, sign up to volunteer, and read about the purpose of Catholic Charities. It can be used for those who have internet access and a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. The website uses linguistic,visual, gestural, aural, and spatial modes. It also uses good forms of color, font, informational architecture and media. These are called affordances.
As you can see from the image above, the Home Page uses linguistic, visual, and spatial modes as well as the affordances listed. We see linguistic from the words. The three small sentences at the bottom are used to describe what the purpose that each colorful button symbolizes. Now let’s focus on the buttons at the bottom for a moment. They are three different colors, the left green “Missions”, themiddle blue “Impact”, and the right orange ”Programs”. They are all different colors to bring attention to the viewer’s eyes. Each button also has an image in the center. This shows the visual mode because they are using an icon to represent what the category is about. The font and color of the text are simple but effective. The black text is just a small overview of what the mission, impact, and programs are. The spatial mode comes from how each category is aligned. It has plenty of space in between and if you were to have a grid present, you would be able to see that the alignment is the same as well. This is effective because it gives the viewer a sense of organization when going through each category. In other words, they won’t have trouble finding the next category. Now, the sentence in the box at the top of the page that says “Hope is Just the Start”, they change the font and color of the text. The font is bigger and white for it to pop outat the reader, especially if the background of the box is darker. Again, simple, but effective. Now, the box at the top with the woman on it has dots at the bottom of the box. This is to show that there are different events going on in slideshow form. This is a great example of informational architecture because it informs the viewer of what’s going on as you swipe left or right.
Another part of the Home Page on the website uses media such as Latest News and social media. These outlets are good for exposure to the community and website. The page above shows the Latest News, what’s happening in the community, and so on. The second image shows social media outlets that viewers can further do research on about Catholic Charities. YouTube especially is good for looking at videos of members of the community who are a part of the organization. Just simply click on the YouTube icon shown in the image. Social media is a way to spread the word and bring notice to something, good or bad.
The Catholic Charities of Baltimore is a non-profit organization that helps immigrants and other individuals in need of aid, love, and support in the Maryland community. They use social media and have a website in order to spread the word about making a difference in Maryland and to help those discover and draw closer to God. Their website uses different modes and affordances in order to draw the viewers’ attention to the aesthetic appearance as well as inform and persuade many people to be a part of this amazing way to give back to the community and make Maryland a better place.
Works Cited
Arola, L. Kirstin, Sheppard, Jennifer, Ball, Cheryl, E. Writer/Designer, A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects, 2014.
Catholic Charities,
https://www.catholiccharities-md.org. Accessed 2018.
“Home Page”. Catholic Charities,
https://www.catholiccharities-md.org. Accessed 2018.