Hassett’s Rhetorical Design Functions & the Zillow Website

According to Hassett, business document design needs special attention to four “basic rhetorical functions”: alignment, invitation, credibility, and persuasion. Since business document design has come to include digital writing and design, I thought it would be especially useful to analyze a website with these points in mind. I’ve chosen the popular realty website Zillow, which

Photo of Chip and Joanna Gaines sitting on their porch with a dog.

Passive Consumption of Images: Examining Instagram “Reality” in the First-year College Writing Classroom

“No visual perception is a pure apprehension of objective reality.” Charles HIll, “Reading the Visual in College Writing Classes” Hill recognizes the “epistemic power” of images and argues that college writing courses should make an effort to expose students to the complexity of visual communication in order to study and analyze it—largely because United States

Hidden Communications: Understanding the Effect of Typography in an Email Advertisement

The study of typography is something that concerns both print and digital designers. Asa Berger focuses his chapter on Typography on two principles, effective communication and reader pleasure, while outlining the specifics of design within typography. I’ve chosen an email advertisement from Territorial Seed Company to analyze using those principles of design. The email is

Lester’s “Visual Cues” in Lowe’s Video Advertising

Using Lester’s Visual Cues, specifically the information on colors, I wanted to examine a video advertisement by Lowe’s and examine it for the basic principles he discusses of the objective, comparative, and subjective methods, and sociological uses of color. Regarding colors within the video, there are two different color palettes that play out between the

The “Evocative Power” of Visual Argument: the “Condescending Willy Wonka” Meme and Blair

“The visual symbolism must register immediately, whether consciously or not. The arguer must know and relate not only to the beliefs and attitudes of the intended audience, but also to the visual imagery that is meaningful to it.” J. Anthony Blair, The Rhetoric if Visual Arguments In J. Anthony Blair’s “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,”

A Woman is Meant to Appear: Rhetorical Analysis of the Jours Aprés Lunes Children’s Lingerie Advertisement

“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself…From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.” (John Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 46) John Berger, in his seminal work, Ways of Seeing, proposes that in art (and all of the visual forms