As I read Jo Mackiewicz’s article “What Technical Writing Students Should Know About Typeface Personality”, one little phrase caught my eye.

This made me laugh a little. Sure students are not bound by corporate style manuals, but they are certainly not as free to do as they like creatively as the sentence implies. Mackiewicz is talking specifically about technical writing students. He says they must learn how to select appropriate fonts, but he also says there are not constraining style guidelines. This is not exactly true, and it made me thing about students in general—particularly middle/high schoolers. I think that often even basic guidelines (essentially this is “right”, this is “wrong” for an essay) can make it difficult for a student to think-outside-the-box (sorry..ironic cliché) when required to do so later on— when the student needs to be ‘stand out’ to apparently be successful. 

I did a quick Google search. 

Google will deliver what’s asked of it, but I think the results are still interesting.

 I got a ton of teachers’ requirements for assignments—and they’re nearly all Times New Roman size 12. My question is: why!? Why are teachers scared of letting students pick their own font? Kids nowadays are so tech-savvy, I think they can be trusted to know not to use Curlz MT. Students are taught that a very specific “look” for their essay is correct. So going outside of that can be uncomfortable—something I experienced when doing our first assignment. Suddenly having the freedom to present my info in any format? Woah.

 

I have always liked the covers of Western Horseman magazines. I am a long time subscriber and enjoy the images and quality of the front covers. I am using this opportunity to apply the Kress Van Leewan tool to the January 2013 cover of Western Horseman.

The magazine definitely makes use of the centre of the cover. The image of the horse and cowgirl dominate the centre and right of centre. The dog at the bottom is nice addition for readers. The cover designer really knows the audience of the magazine and that most horse owners also love dogs.

The ideal/real elements on the left side of the cover hold true form with the large bold lettering for the “Get it in Gear “feature article. Readers will get  information in the article from an expert (which is ideal) and the nitty-gritty address label, date and website url is listed. http://annhanson.com/event/40694/january-2013-western-horseman-cover

The cover does not have new information on the right side as Kress and Van Leewen charge unless the image of a cowgirl versus a cowboy is considered new. Perhaps many of the magazines subscribers would find the cowgirl image “contestable” or “at issue” as Kress and Van Leeuwen write in Reading Images. The magazine uses the very top of cover to introduce new information on veterinarian decline which fits into the Kress and Van Leeuwen page composition tool.

The covers of Western Horseman magazine are deep, authentic and beautiful. Always. A visual rhetoric analysis of the monthly magazine reminds me of the consistent quality and appealing art in the pages.

The theory that revolves around the concept of the given, ideal, new, and real is one that I consistently sea whenever I look at an advertisement.  It’s a rhetorical theory that is evident it not just current adds but older ones as well.  For example, the add below is an old coca cola advertisement. The heading “Thirst asks nothing more” is considered the ideal portion of the advertisement.  It would be ideal if you had a coca cola because your thirst doesn’t want anything else other than a coca cola.  Moving in a clockwise motion the image of the coca cola being poured into a glass can be seen as the “new”.  The coke being poured is a brand new fresh glass of coke.  The wording “ice-cold” on the side of the machine help reinforce that the coke product is fresh and new.  In terms of the “real” portion of the bottom of the article there is a small black and white picture.  The difference between this picture and the color image above is that the color image is a drawing while the picture below is a real person drinking a coke.  The last portion of the advertisement is considered the given and is located on the right side of the ad.  The given fact here is that coca cola is “delicious and refreshing”.  The add indicates their confidence in their product and encourages further use of coca cola products.  Even in old advertising these 4 rhetorical aspects of advertisements are consistently reflected.

Maybe it’s just me, but when we were looking at the different styles of political ads, I couldn't really tell the difference between a “good” or “bad” campaign poster. I felt like I was looking at a slideshow of posters that were all variations of the same thing. Same color schemes (red, white, and blue…shocker), same format, same look. I’m not sure why the look of these posters would sway a person’s vote to a particular candidate.

Mackiewicz says, “There are no good and bad typefaces; there are appropriate and inappropriate typefaces.” Now I understand why these posters contain a clear (appropriate) typeface. A campaign ad using Old English type or something like that would look out of place. But beyond those obvious differences, I don’t know what makes a font work well.  Take the above posters for Obama and Romney. Sure, there are stylistic differences but to me, that doesn't make one better than the other. All I notice is that they are different.

Mackiewicz also goes on to say, “…distinguishing between serif and sans serif typefaces is crucial, since failing to do so may affect how well a document meets readers’ expectations.” That is a very dramatic understanding of typefaces. I enjoy the enthusiasm Mackiewicz has for the subject but I don’t want to go overboard on analysis of font. Yes, there are instances where that may be true, but is that the case in these campaign posters? I see Romney decided to go with a serif font, but if he hadn't would we possibly be talking about President Mitt? I hope he’s not kicking himself over that one.  

One thing that has stuck with me from the readings so far this semester was the Phillips articles claim that advertising has steadily relied more and more on images to sell products. Various ways of using images were examined and some of these are quite sophisticated, occupying different arenas of richness and complexity. The typology of visual rhetoric provided shows nine distinct types of images as visual rhetoric. Furthermore, according to Phillips the more complex the visual structure and the richer the meaning operation, the more successful the ad will be. When comparing such complexity with old advertisements, it is obvious to me that marketers have adopted a lot more refined toolkit. When I think of old advertisements, there is usually an image of the product or a person using it accompanied by some sort of tagline and a large block of text explaining the product. Modern ads utilize artificial images to convey the products capabilities. For example, the tide ad where the cup of detergent contained an image of clouds is a sophisticated metaphor that needs no additional information other than the name of the product. Reading text to be convinced is both time consuming and by no means guaranteed. By utilizing visual methods of persuasion, the target audience absorbs the message quickly and almost unintentionally and is thus persuaded much more readily. It is easy to see why advertisement has steadily shifted towards using sophisticated images rather than text to sell products—it affects us almost without our consent.