Do you ever think about the significance of different colors, shapes, textures, pictures, and words are around us? It is absolutely incredible how important these things are for us and how they are used in our society. This image- text juxtaposition assignment showed me how effective these elements are to us, especially when we are using it in persuasion and rhetoric. In this essay, I will be talking about how I created my image, as well as discussing its constraints and the important elements from Jena Cohns article used to create it.
In my image, you notice how the cow is the biggest object there, so therefore your eyes are immediately drawn to it. The second largest thing in the image is that plastic bag that the cow is eating. Making those two things the biggest objects in the picture helps it stand out. It helps us figure out the meaning of this image. This picture wasn’t originally what I had chosen in the beginning. And my phrase was a bit different too. My phrase in the beginning was “saving the planet”, but then changed it to “saving the earth” because it sounded more relatable.
I had started off with an image of a man who was throwing trash away in front of a trash can and not directly into it. It worked fine but I wanted something that caught the attention of an audience better, and that first image was a little boring. I then found a picture of someone holding a cigarette, and throwing it onto the floor.
This image worked…but I still wasn’t satisfied with it.
Then, after I got some feedback on the draft assignment from my professor, I decided to go with an animal image, because animal images draws attention. I had a picture of a squirrel, but the colors in the image were very dark and dull. I wasn’t going to go with the squirrel, but found the picture of the cute cow and decided to use it. It has more color and had a lot of the elements from Cohns textbook. The reason this picture is persuasive is because it uses pathos. It uses emotion. Doesn't it make you sad seeing animals eat garbage?
I chose the words “save the earth” to put over this image so that it could persuade people to stop littering. The main goal for this image was to point out that trashing the earth is not okay. During our feedback discussion in class today, I got feedback about my phrase, and how I should make it bigger over the picture. I also was told by my group members that my image juxtaposition did a good job on having good juxtaposition. I wasn’t sure about my phrase, but was told that “saving the earth” while an animal is standing in piles of garbage sounded good. After I fixed the size of the words on my image, I was left with the final product.
For my Image- text juxtaposition, I used different sources of information to help me create an image that is both appealing and persuasive. For example I used the information I got from Jenea Cohns article Understanding Visual Rhetoric, Quentin Viergges’ essay Exigency: What Makes My Message Indispensable to My Reader and more to come up with a successful image- text juxtaposition. Cohn talks about how color, shape, size, line, space, value, and texture can help the audience understand the different parts of an image. Cohn states that visual elements can “help us break down different component parts of images so that we can start to puzzle out what an image might do for us as viewers and readers.” It is not meant to help us see the purpose of the image exactly, but to break it down into parts to be able to come up with a meaning.
The image I created is persuasive and has meaning due to the different colors, shapes, and sizes used. Colorful my picture is full of many different colors that catches the eye. Like Jenae Cohn states in her textbook, Understanding Visual Rhetoric, color helps the reader “distinguish what’s important or what should be emphasized”. Color helps identify what is important to be looking at. My picture has many different colors that help make this picture understandable and uses colors to make different objects to stand out more than others. In the background of my image, there is a dark blue color from the ocean and overall the background has a darker tone to it.
This makes the light brown cow that is closer to the front stand out. Your attention is drawn to the cow, and then drawn to the garbage the cow is eating. And then you start to see the meaning of the image.
A lot of the shapes used in this image are the pieces of trash. You see a lot of these shapes on the floor and even in the cow’s mouth. The different shapes in the backgrounds on the floor draws attention to how bad littering is getting.
Recycling, throwing trash where it belongs, and not littering is something that is really important to me.I dont like it when trash is left on the floor where animals could get hurt from consuming it or getting caught up in it, and so I decided to to an image- text juxtaposition about it.
The existence of my image is solving the problem of people littering the earth. The main idea of this image– text juxtaposition is for the audience to realize how bad littering is getting and how its affecting the earth. I believe my image helps the audience understand that it is time for people to actually start caring about littering and saving the earth. That is the overall message of this image and I think it does a good job giving off that message.
I think the main constraint I had doing this image was creating it with interesting word choices as well as the font it can be. I made it on WORD so I didn’t have amazing choices of fonts. My group said that it would look even better if the words were bigger and if they stood out more than it is right now. At the moment I just have my phrase in white boring times new Roman font. I fixed it up with better font now. I also couldn’t think of a good phrase to put over my image so “save the earth” was the only thing I came up with. I didn’t think it was good, but my group actually said that it was good, it definitely contradicts with each other and fits well for the assignment.
Overall I believe my image- text juxtaposition worked fairly well. This assignment will help me look at different images in a more in depth way. It will help me analyze different rhetorical images, commercials, ads, and pictures a whole lot better.
