ENGL 106 Unit 2

Visual Rhetoric Glossary

Alignment: the placement of text and graphics so they line up on the page. Use alignment to create order, organize page elements, group items, and create visual connections. In general, good alignment is invisible. Alignment often occurs along the left, right, and middle margins. Balance: arrangement of the elements on the page so that no one section is heavier than the other. Often balance is symmetrical, but its possible to achieve balance asymmetrically or radially. Color Theory: use of the color wheel to determine the relationship between colors they can contrast, blend, or create a specific kind of affect. Primary colors and colors across from each other on the wheel tend to contrast, and colors next to one another on the wheel blend. If you want text to show up on a colored background, choose contrasting rather than blending colors. Contrast: the measureable amount of difference or dissimilarity in a designs page, screen, frame, etc., occurs with size, color value, (See hue, saturation, brightness), type (Size, value, font, color), etc. Focal Point: place or object in a composition that the eye tends to go to first (either through a rhetorical use of such principles as contrast and alignment or the constructed reading practices of a culture Negative Space: space around the focal point of a composition or the space not actively being used by the various objects within the frame, page, or screen. Proximity: amount of visual space between two or more objects. This can make them appear wholly related or unrelated. Repetition: multiple instances of shapes, sizes, placements, colors, etc. that will not only provide visual unity but set the possibility for contrast. Rule of Thirds: compositional rule of photography that states that a frame can be divided into nine parts by drawing two horizontal lines and two vertical lines through it (in a tic-tac-toe fashion) and that focal points at the intersections of these lines will have more interesting tension and energy (as opposed to those at the direct center or horizons of the frame).

Adapted from L. Pinkert