Childrens Literature and Literacy

Graph paper and a pencil are your best friend as a tool when designing memes. Even when using w photo editing software you can think faster on paper. This is especially true when just learning the software.

When thinking about a design if you also have to learn a new procedure it will slow down the learning of both. Good writers pre-write. Period. As you get more experience you may internalize, or do some of this pre-writing in your head.

Ask your self. Have you ever seen an artist or writer who didn't carry some kind of journal?

Use you thoughts to answer

• What is the purpose of your meme?
• Who is the audience?
• What story do you want to tell

Take a second and sketch out an idea.

You can use Google Images and search “blank meme template”

Pick one that matches your purpose and audience.

Right click on the image and save the image. You will want to make sure you know where downloaded files go on your computer. This is usually a Downloads folder. When you choose “Save As” you name the file and can see the path, or where the file saves.

Here are some examples

Here are two quick twists on the “reality versus expectation” meme trope.

In the off RAMP you have what people would have as the “Expectation” outcome the drive takes a hard left towards logical reality.

You can flip it around and have the off-ramp be a stupid or risky hard turn as an “Expectation”

In this example from “The Office” we see two of the same realities with an “Expectation” of being different. Pam drops a truth bomb by saying the two things are the same.

Think of the two parts to your meme. This is common to almost every meme, a dualism of two targets with the same source. the thing you compare two in the metaphor. In Left Exit 12 the highway is often a metaphor for a decision.

In Pam's example two things people say are different are the same.

In “Batman Slapping Robin” you get slapstick, violent comedy with exaggerated but harmless fights and injuries, version of “reality versus expectation.”

Robin would state the expectation and Batman the reality.

The bike fall is the fool me not twice but three times versions of expectation versus reality. It also falls in the decision metaphor kind of meme like doing the same thing over and expecting a different result but having reality make you fall back down to earth.

This is also an “in frame” meme to use a comic book phrase. There are a sequence of steps. You have three steps in the meme.

In the meme you could have things get progressively worse. You can also have frame 1 be a problem, frame two the wrong solution, and frame three the result.

You can also be incongruous, and blame someone else for your problem, that you clearly caused in frame 2.

Often people may label the different parts of the bike.

Search the internet for Bike fall meme and explain what you think it means.

In the disaster girl meme. You exaggerate the solution to a problem or respond to a problem with utter chaos. So if your parents say it is nap time you burn down the house.

When you make a meme sometimes people label the girl and the house as different targets, or subjects of the meme.

Can you find other ways disaster girl gets used as a meme? What is the metaphor? What is the source? What is the target? Does the meme compare one thing or label the girl and the house? Why? What does this do to the metaphor.

In grandma finds the Internet the mem is used to highlight someone learning a very basic technology skill and getting amazed. The expectation is this is a very normal thing for most people but Grandma has much bigger amazement in her reality.

In the laughing Leo meme you highlight a lie. The narrator, Leo is telling a story about someone gullible. The target of the meme is out of frame but you often mention this in text. For example someone may put Customer Service over Leo or at the bottom of the image and write,

“I told them wait time was only going to be ten minutes, and they believed me”

The most interesting man meme uses a Call and response set up from a commercial. . It follows with a I don't always do something (which is often something the person does alot) but when I do this thing I do it with an exaggerated answer.

“I don't always make memes” would be followed by “but when I do they are the dankest.” Dank is often slang to mean a good meme.

In the roll safe meme the artist wants to convey an obvious solution to a problem or a very basic fact. You may add, “If you set an alarm you get up early.”

In the one does not simply meme you add a bit of arrogance to explain the complexity of a topic or challenge of a task. You might write, “One does not simply” at the top and then add “define a meme at the bottom.

Come up with your idea. Choose what you want to make fun of and pick an example above.

Right click on the image and save the image. You will want to make sure you know where downloaded files go on your computer. This is usually a Downloads folder. When you choose “Save As” you name the file and can see the path, or where the file saves.

Go to Pixlr.com and make an account. You can use GIMP or Photoshop as well.