Journal Five-Visual Rhetoric

Four basic design principles are alignment, proximity, repetition and contrast. Alignment is known as items on the page that are lined up with each other. In order, for you web page to have good alignment choose one alignment, the left side, right side, or center, and use that one alignment on the entire page. Mixing alignments makes your page look very unprofessional and weak. In addition to vertical alignment, horizontal alignment is also important because the text sits on an invisible line called the "base line" which is horizontal. If a page has a lot of information on it, it should follow strict alignment in order for it to be clear. For instance, elements should be moved away from the extreme left edge of the web page and italicizing caped words make a web page also look weak.

The second basic design principle is proximity, which is the relationship that items develop when they are close together. One has to be very conscious of the space between elements. Items should be grouped together that belong together. For instance, a headline with a sub-line, captions with pictures and subhead with text. Headlines should always be close to what it is related to or the audience of your web page would be in a sense of confusion. Also, never hit two returns between paragraphs because it will make the paragraphs look like they do not belong together. 

The third basic design principle is known as repetition. You repeat certain elements that tie all the disparate parts together. On a web site, navigation buttons should be the same color, style, illustration, format, layout and typography. Many logos can also make web pages look repetitive.

 The last basic design principle is contrast, which is what draws your eyes into the page and pull you in. All pages should have a focal point. To provide contrast and create a focal point make your logos BIG. The focal point should be the biggest and first thing you see on the page.

After reading basic design principles, it made me think a lot about my page. However, I think that alignment is not that important in this type of web page. The way that our papers are aligned and the colors, text and pictures that we use should give a sense of our personalities and also a feeling of the paper that was written. However, color is very important in a web page.  Color gives an overall feeling and personality for the site. If the site is dark, the audience may get a sense of gloominess and/or anger while viewing the page. But if the page is full of color and brightness, the audience will feel the tone of happiness. 

Journal Four-Thinking About Audience

After reading Trask's and Knier's essays, I noticed a great deal of difference between the two. In Trask's essay, Tourist, Stay Home, it seemed to me that her audience was someone on a higher authority, someone she is trying to explain her anger to. For instance, some government of some type or some one who is able to listen and change some of the way Hawaiians have been brought up. You can tell that the tone of Trask's essay was very informative as well as serious and somewhat angry. She explains in her essay "Through the overthrow and the annexation, American control and American citizenship replaced Hawaiian control and Hawaiian citizenship. Our mother-our heritage and our inheritance- was taken from us. We were orphaned in our own land...We are not happy natives". By this quote you can definitely feel the tone of seriousness and anger. However, in some ways I also felt that Trask was also trying to use a little sarcasm here and there. For instance when she quoted "Most Americans have come to believe that Hawaii is as American as hot dog's and CNN." Trask's essay was highly argumentative but she used a tone a seriousness, anger and sarcasm to get out to her audience. 

On the other hand, Knier's essay was a lot different. His audience was definitely his teacher and his peers in some sort of class. The reason why I liked Knier's essay was because he knew exactly who he was writing to. For instance, he was informed about his general audience and his demographics so therefore his essay was right on point. The content and style of his writing was sarcastic as well as informative. Knier gave his audience information about how and why he likes walking around Best Buy and love being around electronics. However, to make his essay more interesting he used sarcasm when he said things like "So me and my money went across the street". Both tones of the essays were informative as well as sarcastic. However, Trask's essay was a lot more serious, argumentative, and appropriate for her audience while Knier's essay was just another type of essay he would write in class for his teacher. 

The audience of "The Bride and Prejudice" are definitely young teenagers. The movie seemed more like a real life fairy tail sort of movie. The bold font in the preview with the sparkles around it made it seem like a fairy tale. However, all of the color and laughter during the preview made the movie seem like a comedy. So the tone of "The Bride and Prejudice" would definitely be a romantic comedy. However, "The Pride and Prejudice" was more like an older type of movie. It still has the same audience and it still looks like a romantic movie, but it seemed a lot more serious than "The Bride and Prejudice". The dark colors and the time era of the movie made me think of the tone as just a romantic older movie.