Picturing Texts On The Web

According to an excerpt from, Picturing Texts accessed from Professor Steven D. Krause’s ENGL328 material reserves located at emuonlin.edu, it says, “Words, images, and other graphics all function as acts of communication.” The excerpt lists concepts that should be considered when working with visual and verbal texts. Balance, classification, comparison and contrast, description, emphasis, metaphor, narration, pattern, point of view, proportion, and unity are some of the key concepts that writers and readers consider when creating or reading a text.

I have been visiting a website for many years that I feel has a lot of these concepts. It’s called, “The Well” however it's only available by subscription. So, to be fair to those that cannot access the site, I have chosen another example of a well designed website that doesn’t cost anything. It has been around for a while and gone through several changes over the years, it’s called “Wired News”and it is located at the following address: http://www.wired.com/.

The front page (at least for today) is a good example of balance, pattern, and proportion. There is white space bordering the web page. A black task bar sections off the header and this ratio of header to body seems to be an example of the theory of the Golden Mean. The various sections are located in the body below the header and they are divided into four equal sized columns with each column sectioned off into equal units. This pattern helps the reader to quickly identify different sections of the website and the scale and proportion of images and text are equal in weight, which further emphasizes balance.

The web site also uses classification to organize the various topics and content. The first column has a graphic that corresponds to the second column’s categories and content. The graphic is linked to its section and the image helps to create interest while helping to describe the section. For example, the section by GeekDad is about the retro games for the Nintendo Wii gaming system and it has a old school (retro) cartoon monkey dressed in a Mariachi outfit holding a photo image of the Wii game controller.

The commercial advertising units are placed to right side of the web page and have also been placed to create balance and symmetry from the left to the right side of the page, the direction that our eye follows when reading and lets the reader know that the advertising is necessary, but it is not the most important item on the page.

Emphasis is seen on the web page by the size of the font and the placement of the text. The size of the font is varied so each section can be distinquished and identified easily. The colorful graphics that are linked to some of the articles, also catch the readers attention and draw the focus to those areas on the web page.

My favorite part of Wired.com is the section called, “WEBMONKEY” and while it too has changed over the years, it still has a tutorial section that uses graphics, images, and words that use charts, graphs, and videos to help teach the reader about various topics.I believe this is a well designed site that incorporates all of the visual rhetoric concepts and it’s also a good place to make the most of a computer.