Tools for analyzing Visual Rhetoric
for your Romancing the Consumer Project
The following tips provide a rhetorical supplement to the Five Concepts for Visual Messages discussed on pages 33-36 of the Student Guide:150-250:
Pattern, Figure-Ground, Direction, Chunking, Color
• What does the ad encourage you to do? How, most prominently, does the use of romance conventions add to persuasive effect?
• What elements of romance convention does the visual communication draw on?
• How is each romance element employed to reinforce the persuasive strategy of the ad?
• Does the visual appeal mostly to the emotions or to logic or to credibility [the other two means of persuasion may serve to reinforce a focus]?
• What do you see first and why?
What is in the foreground? In the background? What is in or out of focus? What is, or seems to be moving? What is placed high? low? to the left, center, or right?
How does placement of elements serve the persuasive strategy of the ad?
• How is any written material placed and treated? How does the text and its placement serve persuasive strategy?
• How are light and color used? What effect(s) are they intended to have on you? What about video? Sound?
• What is surprising about the design of this visual communication? Compare its use of romance conventions and visual elements to others in the set your team has chosen.
• What did I forget to ask you to consider?
adapted by Jim Noland from "Visual Argument Tips" by Allison Greenwald