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Date: March 25, 2009
To: Greenpeace
CC: Kim Peek, English 200 Instructor
From: Junyu Zhao
Subject: Get involved in stopping global warming
Introduction
Recently, I’ve designed a visual argument about global warming. After I did some research, I
found that Greenpeace is a powerful organization which cares much about the environment
and has a big influence among the public. You have 30 offices all around the world and it is
so excellent that you have been working actively on calling on people to help prevent global
warming. As a result, I hope that my visual argument can appear on your website.
I choose the general public as my target audience because global warming is changing
everybody’s living environment gradually. I designed the visual argument by picturing that
when icebergs are all melted, the penguins at the South Pole are facing death because they
can’t find any icebergs to rest on. Through my visual argument, I want my audience to realize
the severe results of global warming and convey my point that everyone is affected by global
warming, but everyone can stop it. Then persuade them to be involved in the issue. I think it
is an effective visual argument because of the use of type, the choice of the image, the
element of color and the text.
The use of type
The first factor to make the visual argument effective is the use of type. In the whole visual
argument, the most eye-catching part is the text below the picture. I use the biggest size, bold
Showcard Gothic font, to make four words stand out from the rest of the words, which are
“survive”, “disaster”, “prevent”, and “happening”. Among them the word of disaster is the
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biggest. It reminds the audience that global warming isn’t just a natural phenomenon. What’s
more, it is a disaster and it pushes everybody to the edge of life and death. If we don’t prevent
it, we’re going to be at the survival level. Next, another two words, “nobody” and “you”,
jump into the audience’s eyes. I used a bigger size and put them in a separate line to make
them stand out so that they catch the audience’s attention. I choose the font of Comic Sans
MS because it is italic. It seems like someone writes his answers below the two questions
using ink. It allows the audience to compare my answers to their own answers and think
about whether they make sense. In the two sentences beside the penguins, I bold, enlarge and
change the font of four words, “not”, “global warming”, “last” and “melt”. They help link the
audience to the theme of my visual argument—global warming—and show the audience one
