What would Kress and Van Leeuwen think?

So, the day after our last class meeting prior to Spring Break, I was pulled into a huge project at work (which is why I disappeared off Reddit until now - three volumes plus all the CDs were shipped out Friday). My team of proposal writers finished writing a solicitation from the Department of the Army. In one volume, talking about "how we plan to do the job," there were a lot of graphics. I'd like to post a few here for thought, because, after my brain re-engaged, I thought about them. I’d also like to preface that the graphics I’m analyzing were chosen for inclusion into the documents by the prime solicitor; my company would be sub-contracting should the prime win the contract. Finally, I don’t know where these graphics come from, other than a wild guess that there’s a “business people looking happy” photo website out there.

1.       It didn’t hit me until after the haze of solicitation production wore off: I couldn’t decipher who is actually the main focus in the picture. Neither male in the forefront are directly in the middle, both are gazing forward but their bodies are not completely forward-facing. The one person directly in the middle is out of focus in the background.

2.       The suits worn by the three individuals in the forefront, along with their body postures and facial expressions, could tell a story:

a.       A tan suit, relaxed posture, and big smile for the African American. Again, I believe this is supposed to reflect the actual President of the company. And yet, his shoulders tilt slightly toward the white male.

b.       An off-white suit, slightly sideways, and a more subdued but genuine(?) smile for the older white male.

c.       A black suit, standing sideways facing the two men (and at a slight lean into the shot) for the woman, who may be the “blend” (ethnically and professionally) between the two men. Though black is normally considered a power color, it’s a huge contrast between the leaders in the picture, who are wearing lighter colors.

d.      The other three employees in the background are out of focus, and feel like fillers to round out the crew. The white male in the middle is wearing a tan suit, as though he’s another odd blend of the two men in front. The younger woman on the right and the older man on the far left would be, in Web 2.0 parlance, photo-bombers. In reference to the colors of the suits, the younger woman has no business presence at all; all a viewer sees is her plain white business shirt.

 

These are the larger concepts that struck me after I had the chance to look back at this photo. While I was building the volumes, however, the forest took over the trees. And it’s only afterward I realized this may be the norm; the underlying visual rhetoric isn’t a conscious thought so much as “happy team that wants to earn your business.”

The second slide are various graphics throughout a section that talks about the management principles and how the management will operate to complete the work. Again, in the middle of the process, the graphics didn’t ring false to me, but I wasn’t consciously aware of them nor was I the writer inserting the graphics.

Now, here's a white anonymous (headless) male, wearing black-and-black (power suit!), with his finger on the pulse of the world:

Now, a (probably) Asian woman in what looks like stereotypical lab attire, including the requisite stark hair style and black horn-rim glass frames, managing the times, dates, and figures (the math) of project management. And she's blurry...

 

 

 

A list of "business core values" (ethical, trusted, honest, friendly...) that are empathic (pathos) in nature, accompanied by team photos of two women and an African American male. According to the website Empower Yourself With Color Psychology.com, “Blue is the color of trust and peace.” The employees here are dressed in more casual attire than their counterparts in the first graphic, in either off-white or colors of grey and blue. I admit that, to me, the male presence seems odd in these pictures. And I think it may be the preconditioning of “woman as nurturer” that makes a male in the picture seem out of place.

 

I'm not saying that the overall solicitation contained a large amount of these graphics, but these are very indicative of the "people" graphics I've seen in the short amount of time I've been in this current job. And again, I want to reiterate that I didn't consciously absorb the visual rhetoric while I worked on the project - it was only after that some of the above concepts struck me, as I glanced back after the fact. I would be curious to know how the prime solicitor's writers chose these graphics - if there was a conscious decision, rhetorically, or merely "this one looks better/makes a better (non-rhetorical anlysis) statement."