A visual rhetorical analysis can be performed on Stevenson University’s online magazine, The Villager. The Villager is an online publication, which consists of articles posted by journalism students from Stevenson University. These articles are usually related to university news, such as sports, events happening on campus, and reviews of things in the community that might interest students. This online magazine is effective for capturing the attention of Stevenson University students by accommodating and writing to their interests.
The primary audience of The Villager is current Stevenson University students, faculty, and staff. One of the ways it captures the attention of the audience is by the color scheme. For example, the header states, “The Villager Stevenson University” in large green text. Knowing that Stevenson’s colors are green and white, they designed their website with mostly green text and white background to promote their school colors. Additionally, the writers know that college students are generally not interested in reading long articles. Therefore, most of their articles are short, so they can be read fairly quickly. At the same time, there is a lot of white space, so the readers do not feel overwhelmed by the website. The articles also include pictures, which is another thing that will catch the eye of college students. College students would rather read an article with pictures than an article with just text. Another thing The Villager does well to connect to their audience is by posting hyperlink icons to Facebook and Twitter in their heading. They are aware that most students will not check their website on a daily basis. However, many college students check their social media sites regularly, so they want to encourage readers to follow their social media accounts to stay up to date on the latest articles. The Villager does a great job with their colors, spacing, pictures, and icons to capture the attention of their intended audience, which is Stevenson University students and employees.
The Villager is published weekly to inform and motivate students. First, it is published to inform students of campus news, such as sport scores or events happening on campus. For example, on December 5, 2019, Cassandra Harris published an article about Winter Commencement. This was done to inform Stevenson students and employees about the ceremonies, so they are aware of the event. Furthermore, this also motivates students and employees to come out and support the Stevenson graduates. They did a good job using a picture of a creative graduation cap to accommodate the story, which once again will catch the eyes of college students. In addition, they underlined important information to make it stand out from the rest of the text. For instance, the writer underlined the link to a website to watch the ceremonies online since some people may want to watch the graduation, but will not be able to attend in person. It is also hyperlinked, so they can click the link and it will take them directly to the streaming website.
Since this is an online magazine, it is only published online at https://stevensonvillager.com/. Other contexts include their Facebook and Twitter accounts. It is also published weekly throughout the spring and fall semesters every year. With it being a website, there are many visual elements that make it an effective magazine. The layout is very basic and easy to understand. There are categories in the top navigation and the side navigation, which can be clicked on to take you to the page. This makes it very easy to find articles related to what the reader is looking for. Also, there is a search bar, so the reader can search anything to find it on the website. This is located in the header, which makes it easy to locate and use. In addition, the home page is separated into each of the sections with the two most recent points in each category. This is effective because it gives the reader a quick glance at the recent posts in each category without having to go to each page individually.
There are many affordances to using an online magazine. First, there is a search feature, which allows you to search for anything that was ever published on the website. The reader can even search the names of authors to find all the articles written by that student. Secondly, writers can hyperlink websites to allow readers to navigate to a new website quickly. This saves the reader time because they do not have to copy and paste the text since they can just click on the text. Additionally, there are no space constraints when writing for an online magazine because the page can be infinitely long, unlike a newspaper which is a consistent size. Lastly, all the information that was ever posted will always be in one place, which is on the website. If they published hard copy magazines or newspapers, then the readers would be expected to keep all the editions if they did not want to lose anything. However, with a website magazine, everything will always be there, but it may just be further down on the page.
Clearly, The Villager is a great online magazine to inform and motivate students about events on or around Stevenson University. They use many visual elements to meet the needs of the audience, which is Stevenson students and employees. They do this by keeping the layout simple and easy to navigate, text color that matches the school colors, lots of white space to not overwhelm the readers, social media icons, and interesting pictures. Also, by using an online magazine rather than a paper copy, it allows for many benefits. For example, a search bar, hyperlinks, no text length constraints, and articles that will remain viewable forever. Stevenson University’s journalism department should continue accommodating to the interests of college students to make their website effective and enjoyable to read.