The Stevenson Villager is an informative online magazine that is managed by Stevenson students. The Villager’s audience consists of current students, faculty, parents of Stevenson students, and alumni. The online magazine can easily be found on the SUnow portal or on a Stevenson University social media platform. The Villager’s purpose is to inform its audience on current events around the university.
There are various modes that are used within The Villager.
Linguistic – The word choice is direct. The content manages to capture the important details of the news being discussed. There is a sort of formality with each article, which is impressive since there are various writers. The writing has a consistent style.
Visual – The layout of The Villager is simple. It’s easy to use. There is the consistent use of a picture alongside an article. This draws the eyes of the reader to that article. The color is similar to other online magazines with a white background and black text. The color doesn’t distract the viewers from the article’s content.
Aural – There were a couple of videos attached to some articles. Some videos provide a visual demonstration. There were no sound effects or music within The Villager.
Spatial – The arrangement of the online magazine was placed in an orderly manner. The tabs on the top of the page makes the website more organized. The search bar is small, and it would be hard to find at first glance, since it’s not at the top. The articles are placed in chronological order from the most recent article to the least recent article.
Gestural – As previously stated, there are pictures associated with the articles. Some of these pictures consist of various people posing or engaging in the activity that is mentioned within the article. The body language of the people in the pictures suggests to the audience a sort of investment in the event they are partaking in.
The color of the site is mainly black and white. The white background with black text provides a sophisticated and professional look. The words, The Villager, are in green, which creates a nice association to Stevenson.
The font is easy to read and doesn’t distract the audience from the content of the passage. The font’s simple style also brings out a certain formality that is often associated with news articles. The headings are darker and larger, making it stand out and catch the readers’ attention. The date of the article is in a lighter font, which might be hard to see for some people.
As mentioned before, the layout of The Villager is simplistic, making it easy to navigate through the website. In the home page, it has a section that shows recent posts, which provides options to look at for someone who is reading The Villager for the first time.
In conclusion, The Villager does a nice job with its organization. The tabs at the top give readers different options on what to look at and makes it easier to navigate through the website. They could add more videos for articles about sports or past events. For some people, this might make the articles more appealing, since they might prefer having a video over just reading. The search bar is hard to find, which might make it difficult to find anything for someone who is reading The Villager for the first time. Despite this, The Villager still manages to have a professional and concise organizational style, which makes it enjoyable to read.
