Blog #6: Logo's

Starbucks is one of America’s most popular coffee shops today with over 14,000 stores located in over 42 countries.  Starbucks is famous for their rich coffee, delicious Frappuccino’s and mouthwatering lattes.   Whenever you walk into a Starbucks location you immediately catch attention of the Starbucks famous logo. 

The Starbucks logo made itself as famous as the stores themselves.  A lot of people are often confused about what the figure in the middle of the circle is.  Some speculate that it is a normal human being, or some may think the figure is a mythical creature.  Those who guess mythical creature are correct! The figure in the middle is a siren from Greek mythology.  Historically, sirens lure and captivate men for their great looks and sensuous ways. To go along with that, the siren was half fish, half woman. 

So you may be saying to yourself, “Well if the siren is used to lure in men and captivate them…why is a siren being used on a Starbucks logo?” The answer to that question is that Starbucks used it not to lure in customers because of her sexual appeal, but because Starbucks wanted to show that their coffee was irresistibly good and people would want to come back time after time again.  The simple green,white and black colors used in this logo exhibit the calm nature that you feel when you walk into a Starbucks.  Their are plenty of comfortable couches with soothing music to relax to with a nice hot cup of coffee after a long day at work.  If the logo were hot pink and black however, Starbucks would not have the same atmosphere as they do now. 

Personally, this logo works for a lot of customers.  We can see this all around us, for example in New York City.  Almost everybody rushes into a Starbucks before they have to get to work because it is convenient and extremely satisfying.  This logo without a doubt communicates successfully with Starbucks mission and image.  When people think of Starbucks they think of the quality of drinks, the friendliness of the staff, and the excellence of the organization as a whole. 

Blog #5 SPE 370

For this blog post, Sony audio products are being advertised.  The trope being used in this advertisement is a metaphor.  In our class the definition of metaphor was "a device for seeing something in terms of something else".  Metaphorical advertisements are used to gear ones mind toward a certain topic or product.  In this case that product is the Sony headphones. 

As people look at this advertisement, they can clearly see that the rule of thirds is being used to shoot this photo.  The bright pink line with text, the headphone picture and the trademark "Sony" title are used to anchor the photo down.  This photo is also very balanced, in that the boy and the woman are of equal distance to each other.  There clearly is more emphasis one the little boy who is sitting behind the woman because he is kicking her seat, he is sitting in a very awkward position that catches audiences' eyes and the large megaphone to replace his head shifts peoples' attention. 

The tenor in this photo in the little boy and the vehicle in this photo is megaphone and the video games in the little boys hand signifying he is being extremely loud and obnoxious on this tight airplane.  The metaphor is very easy to see in this ad.  This ad is saying that even though we all know that planes are very tight and cramped, and it can get loud with kids playing video games and shouting with impatience, these Sony headphones will drain out any external sound possible.  Audiences can tell that these Sony headphones work good because people can look at the woman on the plane being annoyed by the little boy, yet she seems calm and relaxed because she has the headphones on. 

SPE 370 Blog #3- Fonts

After taking the font quiz, my font that was prescribed to me was "Party LET".  In the description of this font, it says " Hey, what's going on tonight? Any good parties? If anyone would know, it's you. Your reputation as a diehard partier is legend, and you won't let anything stop you from having a good time."  After reading the description of this font I've actually never heard of until today, I can say that this font fits my personality and accurately describes me.  I love to have a good time and NOTHING can ever stop me from "party rockin'."

I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm a "diehard partier" and that I have a "legend" in Kutztown (although it probably would be pretty cool to go down in KU history somehow) but I definitely know how to have a good time and this social time I get to have are results of my hard work in school and at work.  I'm the person that encourages everyone at "gatherings" to let loose and have a great time. Unfortunately, I can't copy and paste the font to show how it looks.  Its characteristics include swirled edges, many gestural lines, and many contour lines.  The gestural lines suggest that this font is easy flowing, relaxed, and is most importantly, crazy. 

As different media forms and the advertising industry grew, people needed a type of font that was easy to read and also looked presentable as well.  Criticized for being overused, yet seen as a classical type of font, Helvetica started to be seen on ads, signs, logos, etc. In McCloud, it talks about the different ways in which words and pictures can combine in comics to make a larger effect on the reader.  The one category that would best fit with the font that was assigned to me after taking the quiz would be duo-specific panels.  Duo-specific panels is when both the words and pictures send essentially the same message.  In the book the example shows a man with a stern face on, and he looks very irratable and not friendly.  The panel says " Grim-faced, George lifted his lollypop".  When it says "grim-faced" in the beginning, the font looks dreary and depressed.  My font, Party LET, could be used in an example as well.  "Having an amazing time at the party, George lifts his lollypop." In this example I just made up, "Having an amazing time at the party" would be in the party LET font to symbolize that it was a very good party.

The reason why we can have these crazy and outgoing fonts nowadays is because font setting isn't done by hand anymore, we now have immense technology that helps us with this.  Laser printing and digital technologies have made way into fonts.

In conclusion, a font can say alot about itself.  When I was done my quiz, I did it again but I put in answers that would never really be from my personality.  The font I got was Helvetica and it was extremely bland, boring and had nothing special to it.   This shows that the way a font looks is especially important because of the role it plays in text.


***I found a perfect picture to show everyone what my font looked like right before I submitted this! Score!

Lines in Cartoons

For this blog post I chose this old cartoon of Mickey Mouse which was probably done in the mid 1900's.  I chose this not only because Mickey Mouse is a famous icon but this picture also has many concepts from class included in it.

First off when looking at Mickey, you can tell that the artist drew this picture so it looked like we as the audience was looking at Mickey from the side. This effect that artists use is called looking at a picture from a two point perspective, or viewing objects at a changed horizontal angle.  Mickey's eye lines are also very visible in this cartoon. You can tell that he is staring directly at the piano getting ready to play it. If we look at the directional lines in the picture, we can see that the keys closest to us look a bit larger than the keys all the way down by Mickey's nose. This effect makes us think that the piano is really there even though it really isn't.

Mickey has many contour lines around his body.  For example the curvage of his tail and ears demonstrate that his body has many contour lines included in him.  Since this is such an old drawing, descriptive and textural lines are absent from the picture because it is a hard technique of drawing to figure out especially in the mid 1900's. 

In this cartoon there is much more negative space than positive space. The negative space can be seen on the ground portion, Mickey's face and shoes, and the white parts of the piano.  The positive space can be seen on Mickey's famous set of ears, and on the piano's top part.  In this cartoon there is high contrast because it is pure black and white.  On the top portion of the piano the use of light and shade makes the piano look more 3D like. 

In conclusion, this cartoon has many concepts used in class incorporated in it.  Now that our class understands these concepts we will be able to impress people by talking about them while reading the sunday newspaper in the cartoon section!

Blog #1- SPE 370- Rhetoric in Visual Media- Icons

As soon as I stepped into my first day of Kindergarden I instantly started to make friends left and right.  My kindergarden teacher had conferences individually with all the parents one week and I will never forget what my teacher said to my parents.  Mrs. Burke, who was my teacher, told my parents that I was like a five year old mayor in the classroom.  She had mentioned that I was the most outgoing, yet kind student in the classroom and I made all the other kids feel welcomed and equally liked. 

As I left kindergarden and went onto Elementary School, all my teachers started to notice the same thing that Mrs.Burke noticed.  My sister who was in 5th grade at the time I was in 1st grade had Mrs.Aanensen, the teacher who coined my nickname in the school with all the teachers, "The Mayor".  Mrs.Aanensen told my mom that she had never seen such a young man acting like this in her life.  By the time I was in 5th grade, I ironically had Mrs.A.  Mrs. Aanensen would always tell the other students to follow my lead and how everyone should be like myself.  On the last day of school all of the students would form in the gymnasium for an award ceremony for that school year.  Some of the awards were perfect attendance, outstanding grades, etc.  As the ceremony went on, Mrs.Aanensen walked on stage to present an award that she had made. 

Mrs. Aanensen started to give a short speech about a "young man" who everyone in the gymnasium probably knows "by now". She called me on stage and said "There needs to be more people in the world like you, Matt." I'll never forget this moment in my life because it was an honor for somebody to think so fondly of me.  At the end of the day, I was the first recipient of the "Mayor of Central School" award and it is now a tradition at Elementary School I attended.

Blog #1: The Case for Public Persuasion--SPE 210

Everyone in the world is constantly seeing the concept of persuasion being used around them in many different situations.  I've seen persuasion in the classroom, at home, in politics on TV, and within my group of friends.  Persuasion is effective most of the time if the source of the information is a reliable and credible one.  People will more likely be persuaded about something if they can relate to the source of information and believe that the information is correct.  Persuasion differs from person to person and I also think that people are persuaded in different ways.

Persuasion to me is a way of altering ones thoughts or feelings about a certain topic and changing it to the persauders thoughts.  In order to persuade ones feelings or thoughts about a topic, the persuader must have confidence, personality and a loud voice.  I think that these three elements make a speaker an effective one at that.  Having confidence will show the audience that the speaker has strong feelings about something and people sometimes will follow by lead and start to feel the same way after seeing someone speaking so confidently. 

When it comes to evidence to support ones thoughts or feelings about a topic, the evidence must be reliable and worthy of peoples time.  Some evidence is more compelling to some people maybe because the audience may have never heard of such evidence and their attention is now more focused on the speaker.  Building that rapport with the audience will give the speaker much more pride from the audience.

Issues that are immediate and urgent are the ones that are more likely to be paid attention to.  I say this because I think that people would be more attentive to something that needs to be solved sooner than later because not fixing whatever the problem may be, may or may not affect that person.  Issues that are more objective and broader, are more likely to be on a long-term basis.  These broad topics expand over a long time period obviously because they have many more things to be covering and how to fix the problem at hand. 

If somebody feels so strongly about a certain topic, their feelings and attitudes about that topic probably will not change just because somebody is trying to persuade them differently. Even if the persuader has good and valid points, the audience members may stick to their personal beliefs most of the time.  This is seen most of the time in politics. 

In conclusion, I hope to gain a lot out of this course.  I am not interested in politics at all and I barely follow any of the political debates or anything like that because, I'm not going to lie, I have zero interest in it.  Hopefully over the course of this semester my view on politics will change and I can have a minor background in the field of politics.

Extra Credit Blog- The Penn State Scandal

The Penn State Scandal is one that will go down in history for having misconceptions, lies being thrown around, and overall a very bad situation for the reputation of Penn State University.  Groupthink could relate to this scandal because the men who either lied to authorities, covered up aspects of the situation, or denied everything that the press said, were partaking in groupthink.  Groupthink is the idea that if groups get too confident that they will begin to start making poor decisions as a group.  The men who lied and denied accusations did not want to break the cohesive bonds between Jerry Sandusky and themselves. 

There are many factors that play into groupthink.  The first is an illusion of invulnerability.  This factor plays part in that the group thinks they are the best group and nothing could ever bring them down.  This seems to obviously be false in this situation because they were caught in the act of lying.  Another factor of groupthink is belief in the group's own morality.  Group members think that their actions and beliefs are better than people from outside of the group.  The third factor is the tendency to hold shared stereotypes. Group members often will take a "us versus them" mentality to make ones group seem better.  Looking at these three factors alone, the people who had a pivotal role in the Penn State Scandal thought that their group was better and stronger than the press.  Sandusky's team of lawyers and co-employees were wrong in that they thought that they could fool the press and the judicial court about the scandal. 

The men that tried to help Sandusky eventually ended up getting caught of fraud and lying to authorities.  These men should think next time before they talk just because they are close with all of their group members.