Week 5's Readings

 Writing and Designing in the Public Sphere

Week 5's module centers around the concept of "visual rhetoric", which is commonly used to describe the concept of influencing people's minds and beliefs via the usage of different symbols. In today's world, where humanity's attention span is rapidly dwindling and dwindling, big and bold symbols are one of the main things that can draw an audience's attention, regardless of the medium or career utilizing them. Something displaying visual rhetoric has these three concepts in mind: symbolic action (featuring a tenuous and arbitrary relationship to the concept it is trying to symbolize, such as doves and peace, as displayed in the image above), human intervention (which requires human action to transform non-rhetorical objects into something rhetorical, such as doves quickly becoming associated with peace by the masses), and the presence of an audience, whether authentic or pretend (or online, as is the case with this graphic). Colors, lines, and textures are some of the primary ways one can utilize "visual rhetoric" to their advantage, with different qualities communicating different ideals to an audience. For instance, pink is highly associated with romance and feminine pursuits, while something that's red would imply violent, energetic, or danger, if one were a road worker. Organic shapes (such as circles and squares) imply order and efficiency, organic shapes (such as inkblots) imply spontaneity, and abstract shapes (such as business logos or cartoons) represent ideas and concepts (Steffen n.d.). 

To bring in a more recent assignment as an example, while working on my infographic, I knew that I wanted to find someway to recreate the chart of participation law created by Mayfield, while still making good use of the limited space the base provided me. As noted above, I primarily used organic shapes for the backdrop, to serve as an organizer for the tier list of increasing power and participation, and used abstract shapes (namely the animated graphics being provided for me) to help illustrate each action and the difference between "collective" and "collaborative" intelligence. I also utilized colors to, not only prove my point, but also to make my presentation easy on the eyes for my prospective audience. Keeping those values in mind, I made the background of my infographic light blue (to symbolize both efficiency and to prevent my audience's eyes from hurting), while making the circles dark green (in order to stand out against the light blue background), sticking with a general cool-colored aesthetic that makes the white typography stand out, along with preventing eyestrain (as mentioned before). The usage of a gradient also helps with displaying the gradual change that comes with the gain of power in the digital community, that is being displayed on the original graph. This also happens to coincide with one of the values being displayed in one of Steffan's presentations: graduation, or the usage of a gradient to communicate a point. What are some of the most iconic instances of visual rhetoric that you can name? What colors or shapes would you always associate with a particular brand? 

Sources:

Foss, S. (1989). Sonja Foss‬ - ‪Google scholar‬. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zdHYorAAAAAJ 

Steffan, V. T. (n.d). Visual Rhetoric in Digital Artifacts [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from visual rhetoric.pptx