Visually Persuading Your Viewer

Competency

Prepare and evaluate the use of media visuals to improve persuasive and marketing communication.

Scenario

You are a visual communication expert for a company that creates and maintains websites for large businesses and organizations. They called a meeting a few days ago to bring various departments together for a “think tank” session. The goal of this session was to update the images and visual elements on the website of your newest client: a large medical facility’s website. Currently, they are using the same website images across all websites in the following American locations: New York City, Miami, Phoenix, and Denver.

As the meeting progressed, several people posed several situational conversations. You took careful notes during the meeting, and as you review them at home, you decide to create a Talking Points to address all the issues discussed.

Prepare your talking points as if someone had to use them for a seven minutespresentation. The talking points should outline the importance of using cultural familiarity, perspective framing, and emotional appeal in order to visually persuade viewers in all of these different locations. For clarity, you decide to include specific visual images and examples that could replace current website images for each situation. Plan to include explanations to prove your points to the other “think tank” members.

Reference Robin Landa Graphic Design Solutions 6th Edition Chapters 4, 5, 9, 11 and 12 when thinking about your talking points.

You review the situational conversation notes:

1. Carol      asks: “Why can’t we just use the same images that are already being      used for all the different locations? All the images of the medical staff      look American enough.”
2. Daniel      states: “Let’s use images of families in all of the images that      scroll through the main website page. That will catch everyone’s      eye-everyone has a family somewhere.”
3. Caleb      questions: “The pictures we use should all be outdoors and of people      having fun. Isn’t that what all patients want to see when they visit the      medical facilities website?”
4. Heather      states: “Maybe we should think like the potential patients that might      visit this website. What would those patients want to see regarding this      facility?”
5. Samuel      asks: “How can we use images to get people to feel like they will get      better, or experience a miracle, or receive better treatment here than at      some other facility?”