THE ELEMENTS OF VISUAL RHETORIC

Will Kurlinkus English 22699.7.12

WYSOCKI & LYNCH

v Writing for specific audiences who have specific visual tastes, needs, ways of reading, and associations with symbols, colors, and layouts. v Use a focus group to judge how your intended audience will read an image. v Every object has been designed to create a visual argument (bottles of shampoo, aftershave, or medicine). v How do ethos, pathos, and logos work visually? What is easiest to achieve them?

WYSOCKI & LYNCH

v Ethos: What colors and fonts create a feeling of trustworthiness? Which ones dont? What does it mean for something or someone to look professional? v Pathos: What sorts of images evoke which emotions? What emotions do you want your audience to feel and/or associate with your product? v Logos: visual arrangementthe most important element draws attention first. Where is important text placed? What is the most important text? How are different fonts used?

COLOR THEORY
v Hue: what color is it? v Saturation: How much color is in it? Moving from white to the fully saturated hue. v Brightness: How light or dark is it? Moving from black to the full hue.

Saturation Brightness

COLOR THEORY
Blue highlights in the mac interface
v Dominant and Highlight: Rather than working with infinite colors, many of the best visual designs balance themselves by choosing one dominant color (most of the page) and one highlight color (adds a dash of color to the dominant). Designers then work off of a couple of shades of each.

Blond hair highlights

COLOR WHEEL
Primary Colors: Red, Blue, Yellow Secondary Colors: Mix of 2 Primary Tertiary Colors: Mix of Primary and Secondary Cool Color: Add blue to a hue Warm Color: Add yellow to a hue Color theory and makeuphttp:// www.youtube.com/watch? v=63pogF_ZiQk

COLOR WHEEL
Three Color Harmonies 1. Analogous hues: hues next to one Another on the wheel.

2. Complementary hues: hues across the color wheel.

3. Monochromatic: variations in lightness And darkness on the same hue.

COLOR HARMONIES

OTHER COLOR SCHEMES

Triadic Scheme Tetradic Scheme

Split-Complementary Scheme

Square Scheme

RULE OF THIRDS

RULE OF THIRDS

LAYOUT THEORY
v Vector: A visual element (usually a diagonal or arrow)that leads the eye from one place to another.
Triangles in layouts usually act as vectors. Vectors can be what people in the image are looking at. Doesnt always have to be a vector.

v Actor: The object from which the vector originates. A person in the image is looking at something. v Goal: The object towards which the vector moves. The object that person is looking at.

LAYOUT THEORY
v Zoom/Social Distance:
Closeup=intimate. Longshot=Impersonal.

v Gaze:
Demand: Person gazes directly at audience asks the viewer to do something. The person in the add is doing the looking. Commanding. Offer: Person looks at the audience but in a softer, less demanding way. Offers themselves up as an object. The audience is doing the looking.

LAYOUT THEORY
v Angle
Straight-on/Frontal angle: involvement. This is part of our world. Oblique/Side Angle: Detachment. This is not part of our world. It is foreign to us. Camera angle looking up: The object in the image is powerful. Camera looking down: The object in the image is passive and weak. Eye-level: the object and viewer are relatively equal.

LAYOUT THEORY
v Layout as a Whole
Left Side: Information that is already assumedUsually text. Right Side: The New Information (the key information)Usually Image. Top: Ideal, promise, the fictional, the hope, the wish. Bottom: Real, the actual, the factual. Images are often triptych. Layed out in threes. And the middle element branches the new and old or the ideal and the real.

DONALD NORMANS THREE ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

Good design is visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Good design is beautiful, useable, and memorable. Good design relationships go through three stages: enticement, relationship, and fulfillment.

SCOTT MCCLOUD
Closure: The fact that a reader/viewer/audience is only supplied with and can Only take in so much information and, thus, fills in the gaps. We like patterns And will find them anywhere we can.