Visual Rhetoric

While both "The Last Meal" and "No Seconds" projects share a common subject, it is clear that they are also very different. They are also great examples of the use of visual rhetoric. The first piece, "The Last Meal", connected the meal with the convict. Each slide had a picture of the criminal who was about to be executed with their last choice of meal. This allowed for the viewer to look into the eyes of the criminals, something that "No Seconds" did not do. However, I do believe that this also took away from the actual meals, as the images were quite small. Another interesting point about "The Last Meal" was that after about 2 or 3, it gave information on the death penalty. I found these facts to be very fascinating and thought that they successfully added another element to the project. One aspect that I did not like about this was the text on the right of the images. I didn't like the notebook paper background and found the tilted writing to be sort of distracting. The next project that focused on the last meals of criminals was "No Seconds" (I enjoyed this title much more). The purpose of "No Seconds" was strictly to display the last meals of several different convicts. Each slide consisted of a birds-eye view of their last meal. The backgrounds differed on each slide, and the colors often complemented with the food. I found this project much more compelling because I was interested in seeing the different kinds of meals that the inmates chose, and this one displayed the meals much better. I also thought that "No Seconds" did a better job with displaying the information on each slide. The information was neatly displayed based on facts about the inmate and then the various food selections that they chose for their last meal. In conclusion, I believe both projects did a good job of using visuals to draw the audience into their work. While they both had similarities and differences, I felt like "No Seconds" focus on high quality images of the meals made it the better project.