Considering Visual Elements

In this post I will be assessing and deciding on the visual elements I could utilize in my project to make it more effective to my audience. I hope to make it pretty enough to where part of my rhetorical job is already done before I even begin writing. And because its nice when the final piece is visually pleasing.

Sission, Cari "For the Love of Goats" 11/06/14 via pinterest

• What color choices best represent the visual/rhetorical tone of my project?

I think that for this genre I should just stick with a standard black font and a white background. I haven't found any of the posts on the Memory Wipe section of the website that don't follow this convention so I think it would be weird for me to change that. Adding different colors could help me play on the emotions of the audience (red is shown to produce feelings of anger etc) but I think overall the benefits of black and white overpower the benefits of color.I think that I will be able to keep my audience focused on what I am saying and not the "pretty swirly font" by doing this.

• How might I use font in my project to create emphasis?

I want to definitely use a big bold font for my title. This will be used to state in a bold and clear way what my plans are for my writing. Since there aren't headings in this genre, I think the best thing to do would be to stick with a standard size (12 point Times New Roman for example) font that will fit the conventions of the genre. If I make it bigger or smaller it might negatively impact the overall readability of my piece and I wouldn't want to risk compromising my audience's interest by doing something like that.

• Is the theme or association the image produces relevant to the theme of my argument?

I plan on using an image of the front of the Koko's Kitten book at the beginning of my piece. This is again one of the conventions of the genre. I think this works well to create the desired affect since what I am largely going after is the nostalgic impact. I think that seeing this opening image my audience would already be falling into my rhetorical (for lack of a better word) trap of pathos. I can imagine someone looking at the opening picture and going "Aw" nostalgically and being tempted into reading the whole thing. Plus the cover of Koko's Kitten is like uber cute, I mean who doesn't want to see a gorilla cuddling a kitten, amiright? I also think that a closing image of Koko and her kitten would be effective at the end of my piece. 

• Is the feeling or tone associated with the picture invocative of the visual rhetorical tone of my argument?

Yes, definitely. I think that by starting off the piece with this picture I already get my audience in the right frame of mind for reading my writing. They will be feeling the nostalgic tone before I even start writing and I think that will be really helpful. And the picture at the end would be a sort of mic drop effect where its just like "now think about THAT" which would be really cool I think. I'm all for the mic drops. 

• Do your eyes more easily from section to section in the order you intended?

At least in my outline, yes this is true. I want to break this piece up into small to medium sized paragraphs since this is one of the conventions of this genre. I think this will help create the desired flow of information in my project. If I was to make my paragraphs too long in a project like this my audience might be easily lost or bored in the sheer volume of the text. 

• Do the different visual and textual elements come together as a whole?

I think all of the different visual aspects of my project will come together nicely to create the desired effect. I think by putting the pictures at the beginning and end of my piece and perhaps even a few in the middle, I am interspersing more pathos into my piece, It will also be a way to sort of spice up the black and white text and background. This combined with the paragraph length will help to keep my audience engaged for the duration of my argument.

• Are the imaged placed and sequenced in the most convincing way?

I think that the organization I have planned is actually very strategic. I will be sure to put certain pictures at certain intense moments in my piece for maximum impact and the pictures at the beginning and end will serve as sort of introductions and conclusions in themselves. I mean of course I will include a real intro and conclusion as well but the images will get my audience in the right frame of mind as I guide their emotions (dance for me puppets!). They will be an intro to the intro and sub-conclusion if you will, and the middle images will be sort of focusing pictures. I think that these images will be a very subtle way of guiding my audience to what I am trying to say in my argument.