Today’s class assignment included digging through our bags to find at least ten examples of multimodal texts. I found:

1. Burts Bees Lip Balm (V, L, S)
2. A Vera Bradley Wallet (V, L, S)
3. A Nalgene water bottle (V, L, S)
4. A packet of Barbie tissues (V, L, S)
5. A couple of Organic Throat Coat tea bags (V, L, S)
6. A pink highlighter (V, L, S)
7. Glasses cleaning wipes (V, L, S)
8. 2 textbooks (V, L, S)
9. A daily planner (V, L, S)
10. A keychain (V, L, S)

After gathering all of my example texts and labeling them according to their modes of communication, I realized that they are all using the same three modes: Visual, Linguistic, and Spatial. They were all created in the same time period, each with their own brand’s label clearly visible, making them all pretty similar types of communication. They are all advertising their company or place of origin, with a different design for each advertisement. Some of the brand names are small, barely visible in the picture above, while others are larger and easily recognizable. The textbook is the least similar example, because it is advertising material rather than a company or place. The other nine examples have a brand name as their primary linguistic text, making the purpose of the forms of multimodal communication clearly advertisement to consumers.