For some reason, I think I vaguely remember Erin mentioning McCloud in another class we had together - correct me if I'm wrong, darling - and possibly writing a paper on it. If I am correct in my remembering, I'd love to hear what it was you were writing about when you mentioned this (I think was in Advanced Comp?).
My mind imploded on itself a little while reading to the first chapter of the three we were assigned, but while I think that concepts the author is speaking about are really interesting, what I couldn't help doing the whole time was comparing this reading to the other readings we've been doing in class. All deal with relevant issues in rhetoric, but what I think sets McCloud apart from the others - other than the obvious pictures - is the ease with which I was able to understand the wide concepts he was trying to convey, which put me in mind of the different ways we learn - aural, visual, etc. The visual point in this is one known well in the world of comics, but I wanted to apply it to another topic that a classmate and I were discussing the other day: the use of fonts.
Fonts vary in every text, every book - and I never realized how often they effect how I learn - and maybe how everyone learns. The all-cap thicker font of McCloud's writing kept my attention centered - is that because I make the correlation between all caps meaning I'm either being yelled at or someone's trying to emphasize a point? I put that up against how much trouble I have paying attention to the the small printed, dictionary-thin pages of my Rhet/Comp book in another class - possibly because I associate that print with higher learning I have trouble understanding? Or how larger fonts in books in thick books make me less appreciative of it's content (it just looks more juvenile to me). I think it's incredibly interesting.
Pictures and comics aside, that is what I kept thinking about while reading from McCloud.
Oh, man…that project…I think I’m glad that you only remember it vaguely.
ReplyDeleteLast spring, my intent was to try and examine methods by which a comic book artist uses persuasive devices unique to the comic format to either tell a story or imbue the reader with a particular message. Such as how McCloud both “shows” and “tells” his points about the unseen art of comics at once via his cartoon-ified self doing what he simultaneously describes. I wanted to explore the multimodal rhetoric of comic books, if you will. Which I suppose wasn’t a bad idea... I just really, really, wish I hadn’t emailed random people pictures which I had drawn. I was sorry for months afterward!! Sadly, I had no idea what else to use.
(How could I pick from all the varied comics out there….? Especially when I myself like hardly any of the comics I encounter and am therefore completely unqualified to decide what samples ought to be used in such a project...?)
Er...now that that rant’s out of the way, I’m intrigued by your thoughts on typefaces. Multiple courses I have taken stressed the different effects various typefaces can have on readers. I can't say I understood much on this topic. I think I might remember something about sans serifs being easier to read on a computer while serifs are easier to read on a printed page…but my mind may be inventing that factoid.
Interestingly, in a past web design course, (I think) I was taught to mainly employ a sans serif typeface when creating a site, but to also distinguish headers and whatnot by switching to a commonly-used serif typeface. I guess this differentiation makes web pages more comfortable to peruse at length.
A particular professor of mine totally abhorred the typeface Comic Sans (lemonade stand font), as it (apparently) looks kiddish and unprofessional. This abhorrence of his has ever after made me want to use Comic Sans in the most unfitting of contexts. Perhaps on a webpage.
I'm really glad that you brought up the fonts. It was something that I noticed, too. Mostly, I thought that it was interesting how he chose certain words to emphasize in bold. I know that is a common practice in comics, but I've always found the emphasis to be unnatural and it always bugged me a little. It throws me off, which is primarily why I tend to stay away from comics. As a writer, I strive to keep a consistent style so that as a reader reads my work, he or she will naturally understand where I place my emphasis and it becomes natural. In comics, the bolding makes it forced so that my mind has to emphasize the specific bolded words. I don't like it.
ReplyDeleteSo, beyond comics, I've always thought it was interesting how fonts have an important role in ethos. I know that now whenever I see any writing in comic sans, I don't take it seriously. The other day I picked up a Bozone and one of their headlines was written in comic sans. If it had been a feature about a 2nd grade class trip to the pumpkin patch it may have been forgivable, but it was about some adult event going on somewhere (I didn't read the article. I couldn't bring myself to look past the headline). I know that instructors have specific fonts that students can use, and if you do not use those fonts it could result in a failing grade. Fonts are essential in order for the writer to be portrayed as he or she wants.