Visual Rhetoric

As I walk down the halls of UVU I am hit with a barrage of visual rhetoric. There are ads with reds, yellows and blues, soft colors that lure you in and bold colors that inspire. Since we discussed visual rhetoric in class I analyze EVERYTHING! Questions come to mind such as: Why is he pointing at me? Does he really want ME or is his target audience older people since his hair is gray. Maybe he’s targeting patriotic people with his stars and stripes hat. I notice how ads have "hot" women dressed in sexy clothes (or lack thereof) to try to sell products that have absolutely nothing to do with women or sex for that matter. Or how companies pay celebrities endorse products that they would never actually use. I remember hearing of a Carls Jr. add that had Audrina Patridge in a bikini eating a fatty burger. I can almost guarantee you she never actually EATS those burgers because if she did she wouldn’t look the way she does.

Honestly, before we talked about visual rhetoric I did noticed how odd advertising was, for instance, when they would get attractive women to talk about a computer game that would typically cause attractive women to run for the hills. But now that we have deeply discussed visual rhetoric I over analyze things every color, every piece of text, every item in the scene. Why is that water bottle there? Why does the model have a wedding ring on? Why did they put the women on the left not the right?

It has become a fun sort of “game” for me to try to figure out the “why”. I’m sure my analysis is not always correct but they are good enough for me J