Hypertext Design

Note: This exercise can be completed individually or collaboratively

Part of exploring your own possibilities for hypertext design involves thinking critically about the design choice made by other visual rhetoricians. To do so, complete the following exercise:

Visit these two Websites:

• Body Icon: The Conning of American Women into the Pursuit of a Perfect Body (http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/newmedia/projects/masters/bodyimage/index.html)
• Body Image. (http://www.johnriviello.com/bodyimage/)

As you can see, both of these sites address the broad issue of body image, although they focus their treatment of the topic in different ways. Perform a comparative analysis of the two sites, first analyzing them in terms of the Prewriting Checklist for Analyzing Visual Arguments found at the end of Chapter 8.

Having done so, spend some time looking more closely at the design of the sites:

• How are images used?
• How is the navigation scheme laid out? Is it accessible and clear? Confusing?
• How much direction is the reader given in how to proceed through the argument? Is the Website primarily informative (providing information) or interactive (encouraging reader participation)?
• How is the information in the hypertext divided up?
• How is type-face used, in terms of font size, color, and style?
• Thinking back to Chapter 2, what strategies of development (narration, comparison-contrast, process, example, definition, cause-effect etc.) and rhetorical appeals (logos, pathos, ethos) are used, and to what effect?
• How are sources sited in this hypertext?

Finally, list three design elements that you might consider using them in your own hypertext.

When you have completed your analysis, write it up as a writers log entry, a short 1-2 page written piece, or present it orally to your class.