Visual Argument

Analysis of Visual Argument
The site visithoustontexas.com is a website designed to attract and convince tourists to visit the city of Houston, Texas and to provide information about current events, activities, and places to go while visiting the city as well as hotels and restaurants. The website includes a considerable amount of images of these places and events and each of these images are accompanied by a small descriptive text which, if followed, it will redirect to a section of the webpage with an article about that event or place. The rhetorical feature that is central to the effectiveness of the website to make a tourist to want to visit Houston is the enumeration (making a point an enumerating the details) since this presents the information that a tourist would want to know about the city.
The design of the website is made to emphasize the images of the site and being easy to use. When the main page of the website is open there are a few words accompanying their respective images. As you scroll down, new images and their corresponding description appear on the screen. New pictures appear on the screen, giving the illusion
that there is always more of the city and more activities to do than it originally appears. As soon as something intriguing appears, the user can click on the image or text and be redirected a page showing the relevant information about the topic. With easy access to the information and images that the user is interested in, is more probable that the person will visit Houston rather than a city where he cannot find information about.
An interesting fact is that colours have physiological effects on the people.
The use of colours can affect how a person feels about something or what emotions the colour choices try to make the person have. The colours are used on the website to create positive emotions towards events or places in the city with the intention of making the person browsing the website to like Houston more rather than other city where there are random images of the city. For example, the images of restaurants or foods in the website tend to have an orange colour, which cause the person seeing them to be hungry and think that there is a warm atmosphere. In the photos where the sky is present, the sky usually looks blue which represent calm and serenity, the ambience that the website wants to focus on is a relaxed ambient where people can have a good
time.
There is a combination of no or almost no people in the photographs to pictures where a multitude of people is present depending on what the photograph wants to show. The pictures where almost no people are shown are pictures where the place has to stand out. The pictures that have a multitude of people at them or have them too close to each other are the ones that try to highlight the social aspects of the place and/or to show a big attendance for the events. The photographs try to show how people are having fun by showing them on the different places throughout the city with the intention of making the person who is visiting the website to think that they will also have as much fun as the people in the photos. Furthermore, the people in the photos are not smiling unless the photos are specifically about them, when combined with the ambience of the place the photos appear to be natural. This creates the idea that the places on the photos are always like that and if that kind of ambience is desirable for the person on the website then they are going to have a good time in the city.
The first image (which can be found at the end of the paper) that was chosen is an example of how an image of the place can affect the idea that you have of a place and how it can convince you that you have to visit the area. The image shows the Houston Galleria skyline, which is described by the website as “an international shopping destination that hosts more than 24 million visitors annually.” This phrase has the objective of convincing the people that this place is one of the most visited places in the state. This phrase gives the idea that that a great number of people (24 million people) cannot be wrong in visiting the gallery and that is a worthwhile place to visit. On the image the galleria can be seen from away with buildings surrounding it. The photo shows a big city, unlike others, that has multiple activities to do and that there is a reason for people to want to live in Houston.
The second image (which can be found at the end of the paper) shows the Free Press Summer Fest or FPSP. The FPSP is a music and art festival that is held in Houston every year as part of the cultural aspects of the city. This is an example of how seeing a big group, like hundreds of people as the photograph shows, of people in an event makes the person to want to attend the festival and how the colors can affect what the person thinks about the festival. The photograph is taken from an angle which gives the impression that the festival has a bigger attendance than it actually has. On the background, the skyline of the city downtown can be seen with orange tones which give the sensation of warmth, combined with the blue sky the festival feels like a place where people can relax and have a good time.
In conclusion, the website tries to convince people to visit the city of Houston and their main tactic is a combination of images and text. The website is designed to bring attention to these images and make them desirable for tourists, then the text as a short description of what the place or event the image represents. When you click the image a new page loads with the information about the event or place, what it is about and what date. It uses a combination of colours to make the person browsing the site to feel one way or another towards something. The website is effective making people wanting to visit the city.