Visual Text Run Ins

I never really noticed how many visual texts I run into on a daily basis. In my two hour period. I left my room and went to the rec. My log looked like this:

Love wall Decoration – The audience is anyone in my room, and the purpose is to serve as decoration.
Sparkle wall decoration – The audience is anyone in my room, and the purpose is to serve as decoration.
Amazon Prime shipping box – The audience is the post office and myself. The purpose is to advertise their service as well as let me know what the package is.
Cheetah Girls movie dvd case – The purpose is to inform someone looking for a movie which movie is inside, and to look appealing so someone will watch and buy it.
McDonald’s water cup – The purpose is to advertise where the product came from.
Prescription label – The audience is me and the pharmacist, and the purpose is to inform me of instructions and possible side effects as well as information about it.
Wine bottle label – The purpose is to inform the buyer of the kind of wine in the bottle, including location, kind, year and brand.
Mail – The information on the envelope lets me, my housemates, and the mail man know who the mail is for.
Wrigley Field house sign – The audience is anyone who drives by, and the purpose is to inform them of the name of my house. It loses its context if the house sign wasn’t in Oxford.
Garbage can Rumpke logo – The logo advertises Rumpke’s services.
License plates – The purpose is to register cars and to differentiate the cars of the same make and model.
Sign for a church – The purpose is to promote the church and the audience is anyone who drives past. It also serves as a notification as to where the church is on the road.
Sign for Campus Avenue Building – This is for potential Miami students as well as current students and administration. They know where the building is.
Police car decal – The audience is all the people in Oxford and the purpose is to know they are safe as well as to know not to break any laws in the presence of the cop car.
Sign for Parking Garage – The sign is mostly for high school students families so they know where to park, as well as students and faculty who park their cars there.
Sign for Miami Recreation Center, “Welcome to the Rec” – The audience is anyone going into the center and it is intended to make them feel welcome and in a nice environment to exercise.
Calories, Muscles, Quick Start, (etc.) – These are the labels on the elliptical cardio machine. It informs the person working out of necessary information like the calories, heart rate and level.
Repeat.

Advertisement

This advertisement caught my eye for many reasons. I noticed the background of Paris and the pink of the flowers and ruffle-trimmed dress. It was feminine and seemed classy and romantic. Givenchy is high end and Amanda Seyfried is a famous actress. The two are similar and fitting. I liked that it didn’t feature someone who is always in the media, but an actress who is less prominent to the public eye. She is still recognizable, yet maybe not the first person you think of when you hear “actress.”

Her blonde hair is styled in a girlish way with the soft waves. Her make up isn’t over powering and her pale skin adds to the photo. It seems to be spring, like love is in the air. Paris is the perfect backdrop as it is known as the city of love. Just enough skin is showing where it isn’t too revealing, yet still suggestive.

I originally found it in a Marie Claire magazine. It is full of advertisements, fashion tips and beauty products, so a perfume ad is not irregular. This is a commonly occurring format for an advertisement. The product is small and in the corner, as the subject takes focus. The medium is appropriate for the message, as discussed in the Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz and Walter reading.

This advertisement is directed towards successful women that can splurge on items such as designer perfume and fashion magazines. It is romantic and is intended to make the woman wearing the perfume feel irresistible.

Topic Proposal

As of right now, I have a few ideas for my project. I’m debating on the environment, Greek life or health. The environment and health are such large topics I don’t know which direction I would take yet. I love polar bears so maybe global warming. I love learning new health tips and tricks with foods and workout. I’m a vegetarian and enjoy healthy eating. Greek life would be an easy topic because it is a prominent aspect of my life and something new is always happening. Whether its someone getting into trouble or doing something awesome and philanthropic. Blogs and the news are areas for current conversation I think. Many people are interested in these

I was also thinking I could do fashion trends. I’m a fashion design minor and would have fun exploring current trends. I’m not sure if it is very applicable to the project though. I could do “fashion victims” and how the workers in underdeveloped countries working in sweat shops are the true fashion victims. Accidents happen all the time and it goes practically unnoticed in our media. Many large brands use these sweat shops such as Zara and Mango. They offer cheap clothes and a wide variety. This is pretty applicable to college Miami students.

Recently I got involved with the Red Sand Project which is a movement started by a NYC artist to raise awareness to human trafficking. I could also go in that direction. The idea is to put red sand in the sidewalk cracks to symbolize urgency and that most people sold into human trafficking come from an unstable household (cracked sidewalk). I could do something cool with the visual aspect of the project with that. A lot of people are unaware that this is such a large issue. It is even scarier that I-75 is a huge route used, only a few miles away from us at Miami.

My interests are so spread out I’m having trouble narrowing it down to something I can commit to all semester. I don’t want to do something that requires a ton of extra research but I don’t want to pick one that’s boring and not exciting to work with. I want to be creative and have fun with this project. I feel like there are so many things that I am passionate about but nothing I want to turn into a school project. I’m hoping the conference will assure me of a topic selection and inspire me to go outside of the box with this project.

Meme

Covino & Joliffe and Alexander & Losh Readings

The Alexander and Losh comic was easy to read, and easy to understand. It included a interesting new way to learn something in an engaging way with pictures, words and practical examples. It seems like it was directed towards a younger audience, perhaps high school age. I could see it being published in a textbook maybe, a reference handout or online. It focused on the differences in uses of ethos, logos and pathos. At the end it used kairos, without having to explain it. The audience has to infer that it is synonymous with time. This one made rhetoric easy to understand and apply to everyday life.

The Covino and Joliffe article seems like it was directed towards college aged students or beyond. It was very wordy, and required focus and concentration to understand the concepts. This portrays rhetoric as a philosophical act. To be honest, I lost interest and found myself only focusing on the underlined sentences, while thinking about other things during the rest. This may have originally appeared in a scholarly research journal. It was definitely more thorough and thought out.

Reflecting on the two readings, I feel badly that I preferred the comic and found the article boring. I wish I would have opened the article first. I think I would have paid better attention and understood it better, but I think I was lazy after reading the comic and took the easy way out. They seem like two extremes, but in the end I learned something from both of them.