I bought an alabaster Leaning Tower of Pisa when I was in Italy years ago. It seems odd that I own an alabaster figurine when a lot of stone statues are made out of alabaster.  Like anything carved out of alabaster, it is very detailed. There is a great deal of texture to the rotations of windows that go up the tower, and there is also a lot of detail in the bells, of the bell tower.  Whenever I see this figurine on my bookshelf I automatically think back to the shop in Italy where the men were carving alabaster in the back room.  It makes me think of this picture:

My fossil wallet is a brown letter with little flowers imprinted into the leather.  On the flap where you open the wallet there is an extra stitch of leather, but this one has Fossil imprinted on it. On the inside there is a small pouch container and an insert for your credit cards, money, etc.  On the inside fold of the wallet there is a colorful cloth sheet of flowers.  It gives the inside a little extra appeal.  I picked my wallet because I wanted to chose something that I spent a little more money on than I have in the past.

There are plenty of women that are completely fine with going out with whatever purse they were able to find at the store. I used to be one of them because name brands were not so important to me.  I was never able to keep up with what the other kids were wearing. I had nice things but nothing like Abercrombie & Fitch or Aeropostale. Now that I have moved away from the petty importance of being the one with the best clothes in high school, there is a lot less pressure from everyone around you to fit in.

I didn’t even know that I was going to buy a wallet when I was shopping one day, but I did.  There was just something about the wallet that made me feel like it was an extension of who I wanted other people to see me as – which is what visual rhetoric is all about.

I really liked the idea of how Sherman inserts herself into her pictures, and made it possible for the audience to see from behind the camera. This view is very unique in itself because people rarely ever get to see what goes on on the other side of the camera.  It gives the observer the feeling like they are more involved with the picture, rather than just an average observer who gets to see what the producers want them to see.

I received a small Mickey Mouse Snow Globe while I was shopping on Black Friday.  The globe itself is very small.  It has Mickey Mouse leaning in the snow with winter attire on.  The foundation is red in color with the appearance of snow spilling from the snow globe, with snow flakes on it with 2009 marked into it.

This globe may not seem like much, but it brings forth a lot of memories and ideologies to me.  It reminds me of how much I have always loved Disney movies; Beauty and the Beast being my favorite.  I have also gone to Disney World many times in my life. Most were when I was young, when my grandparents lived down in Florida.  The last time my family and I went to Disney World was two years ago. I went over the course of my Spring Break.  We stayed at one of the resorts that Disney has on the property.  One of the perks of staying at the resort is that you can either go in an hour early or stay an hour later in the parks that are available.  It was then for the first time that I was ever able to get my picture taken with Mickey Mouse, and my dad.  It was a great experience, even though I was twenty.

This globe reminds me of an aspect of childhood that I will always have in my possession. I never plan to permanently give up the idea of going to Disney World, or being too old to watch Disney movies. I even have started my own collection of the collector’s editions of Disney movies on DVD. I have many of the movies already on VHS, but that has completely phased out, and VCRs along with it.

I don’t know what an average person would think about a snow globe of Mickey Mouse. Perhaps they would think of the vast globalization and advertisements that are put out everywhere for Disney products.  For some it probably holds memories of watching Disney movies or visiting Disney World when they were younger.  However, there would be many still that would be indifferent to the globe because they had no personal connection with Disney.  The globe will always remind me of my childhood and what a happy character Mickey is, along with all the other Walt Disney characters there are.

It’s really interesting how visual rhetoric does not necessarily have to be an advertisement. It can be an everyday object as well.  It is all about how an audience can view the object and how they can interpret it that gives it its meaning.

It is difficult to define document design because there is confusion over the meanings we have about ‘document’ and ‘design.’ There is such a negative response to document design that professionals have to define what document design means to them. Also, it is hard to convince people that they will encounter any better circumstances with a new document design than they have had in the past, boring, hard to use, or ugly.

Document design was a hard concept to get my head around at first. Especially since it is a complicated subject for defining and understanding what it specifically entails within the field itself.

I put in general search under images for sexual ads in the media. I went through a few of them, and I came upon one that was shocking it was it was trying to persuade its audience to do.  There is a nude model covering her breasts, with her hips turned sideways, laying down in a huge pile of red chili peppers.  The ad says, “Spice Up Your Life. Go Vegetarian!”

I understand how the ad is trying to connect the concept of the peppers being hot with the nude model that is lying on top of them, and that she’s so beautiful and healthy because she is a vegetarian.  But it is a stretch when you have to have a naked model in order to get people to consider becoming a vegetarian.  Why couldn’t they put up  a horrible statistic or statement of how animals are mistreated when they are being raised for eventual slaughter, that will help to keep the idea of eating meat a little more repulsive.  I would have thought that it was an effective ad if there had been a beautiful woman in a dress, behind a kitchen counter, fixing a vegetarian dinner for her family.  Why is it that when people are trying to get the most out of their advertising that they automatically move to removing a models clothes in order to sell a product to the public? It is okay to have an original idea that doesn’t have to do with sex.

Sullivan also accuses the world of advertising of its lack of great fashion photography: its connection between human personality and clothes.  He claims the central feature of the dehumanized uniformity of today’s bodies is the flesh.  He gave an example of how a Swedish company was hired to advertise a lesser known leather show company.  With a limited budget, the company decided to portray sex along with the product. They had models pose nude and intertwined with only the leather sneakers on. One ad had a couple in the missionary position with nothing on but the sneakers, and another had the nude woman on top of the nude man’s shoulders, again with only the leather sneakers on.  Sales in New York tripled in a year with the advertisements.

I agree that sex and the appearance of flesh sells.  Although, I don’t see a change coming in the near future. The odd thing is that I don’t the advertising companies to change their aim with using sex to appeal to their audiences. I would rather they take women out of helpless, expressionless, submissive poses that have men as the dominator, that would be a nice change, but I doubt that will come about either.

Of course, it was also easier for me to relate to the people in the advertisement because they look like they are around their mid twenties, the age when they have graduated college, and now have started a career that will help them go places in the world. I found this advertisement to be very effective in drawing me in to what they were selling because I was able to associate the people in the advertisement with myself.  It didn’t matter so much what they were trying to get me to buy, but because they were able to draw my full attention I am a lot more likely to consider buying what they are selling.

The period of modernization was part of instituting a capitalist economy and a liberal democracy in the United States, for the Soviet Union modernization in the form of industrialization and technological advancement was tied to a Communist ethos of equal benefits and living conditions for all citizens. During modernity, it was obvious to the masses that industrial development was required to advance all of mankind toward a better way of living in the future. There are a lot of modern ideals in the architecture of the early twentieth century that aims to master nature in its use of iron, steel, glass, and machine-like structures.  The Chrysler Building in New York is an icon of modernist Art Deco architectural and design styles. In modernity, technological and social changes were viewed as beneficial and imperative to progress.  In the twenty-first century we are much more concerned with the environmental and social costs of technological advancement because we have seen the long term effects initiatives, such as the overuse of natural resources, overproduction of emissions, and excessive industrial waste.