Visual Rhetoric

http://www.stanford.edu/~steener/f03/PWR1/whatisvisrhet.htm

I thought that this post was really interesting, because it brought me back to my senior year in high school when I was looking for colleges. I remember, as a lazy high schooler, coming onto a college website, and the first thing I would do was go to the photo albums and see what the school looked like. If I didn't really like the photos, I would dismiss the college. It's probably not the best way to look at colleges, but, especially at schools that were far away, it was the only visual I would get of the college. Images are incredibly important while trying to promote your college. In these Stanford photos, they try to portray a strong learning environment while showing that their students are real and laid back and just like you!

I think it's funny, though, that this web page is discussing visual rhetoric while the page itself isn't exactly visually pleasing. Although it is simple and easy to read, it does not show great prowess in the area of web page design. If I was a student looking at this page and trying to decide if this is a school I was interested, I might be put off by this page, just because of its aesthetic. There's nothing horribly bad about it, but it isn't visually interesting and almost portrays laziness.