The goal of this visual argument is to demonstrate the power of solar power for generating electricity. The purpose for this is two fold: firstly to convince the viewers to swap their own primary electrical sources over to solar energy, and secondly to convince countries to join the International Solar Alliance. The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an international effort to set up a world-wide electrical grid based entirely on solar energy. The main goal of course being to combat climate change, however it does come with the benefit of helping other developing nations become fully developed while skipping over their own industrialization (often called leapfrogging). This visual argument specifically targets the United States of America, which is already a member country of the ISA, however there should be more support towards the ISA on the USA’s part through extra funding. As one of the most developed countries in the world, the USA is the most capable of providing support for the ISA. This visual argument’s main target audience is politically active Americans, including of course, politicians, specifically Congressmen. The main argument present is that since the amount of solar panels needed to power the entire USA is much smaller in area than that of the entire United States, then as many people as possible should use solar energy, since it isn’t that much comparatively. In this case, I used West Virginia as an example, since the area of West Virginia is about 22,000 square miles, and the amount of solar panel coverage required is only 20,000 square miles. I also included a link to the ISA’s homepage, so that anyone who wants more information can easily find it.
The main design principles I included in my visual argument are emphasis, balance, and contrast. The overall main emphasis is on the state of West Virginia, which is central to the main point of the argument. I cut out the shape of West Virginia from a picture of a solar panel, in order to give it the texture of a solar panel and further emphasize the connection between the two. The spotlight also acts as another means of emphasis, since it draws your eye directly to it. For contrast, the spotlight also comes into play, since it creates a better contrast (blue against yellow) than between the background and the solar panel texture (blue on darker blue). Balance was mostly used in terms of color combination. Here, it served to further emphasize the light areas from the dark, and to balance out the lighter blue color of the solar panel texture.
This aspect of the visual argument was one that I spent the most time on going between the Full and Final drafts of this assignment. Figuring out the right positioning and colors for the text was especially challenging, and one thing worth noting is how the main text and subtext swapped colors between the drafts, since I felt the colors didn’t match up with where the emphasis was. I did not change the font of the main text, since I could not find a better font, and I wanted to keep it simple. The main text is in all uppercase as well as bolded and takes up a large amount of the image, so the overall argument should not be lost. The subtext did get a font change in order to make it a bit more compact in terms of length, since the font I chose had the letters closer together. The font also has a technological feel to it that evokes almost a futuristic feel. FInally, I decided to make the text of the isolaralliance.com link a much darker yellow and smaller size, so it would not draw too much attention away from the argument. I wanted to specifically include this link to give people more information if they wanted it, but it does not add anything argument wise, so I wanted to make sure it was not distracting from the main point of the visual argument.
This visual argument is made up of eight layers. The first three layers are the three different text parts of the visual argument, and are on the uppermost layer to prevent them from being covered up by any other parts of the image. The next layer down is the solar panel texture cut out into the shape of West Virginia. This was achieved by selecting West Virginia using the Select by Color tool, and inverting it using the quick keybind control + i, which removed the image of the solar panel, except for the part in the shape of West Virginia. This layer is near the top, so that it is not affected by the opaque layers, such as the spotlight layer. The spotlight layer is the next layer, and is over top of the map of the USA to create the effect of lighting. This layer has an opacity of 91%. The next two layers are the USA map and the city lights. The USA map is actually over top of the city lights layer and has an opacity of 38%, this is because the city lights layer contains some blue parts left over from the image that they were originally taken from, meaning that it must be against the blue background in order to not stand out too much. If the layers are flipped the blue parts stand out a lot and make the image look a lot messier. The final layer of course is the background layer, which is a completely solid dark blue color.
The effects and tools used in this project include the fuzzy select and select by color tools, the gradient tool, the text tool, the eraser tool, brush tool, and the color picker tool. I also used the invert selection keybind (control + i) as well as the layer scaling tool. The fuzzy select and select by color tools were both used in conjunction with invert selected area for isolating specific parts of the original images to get specific parts out of the image as seen with the West Virginia cut out, as well as with the city lights. The gradient tool was used to create the spotlight, with it radially gradienting between yellow and the dark blue color of the background. The text tools were obviously used to create the text. The eraser tool was sometimes used to clean up certain cut outs of images. It was especially used for the city lights part, since that left a lot of blue patches that weren’t properly removed using the fuzzy select tool. The brush tool was only used to manually retrace the outlines of the states, since they were originally outlined in white and the color select tool was having trouble selecting them without selecting the light gray states as well. Finally the color picker tool was used to make sure colors were consistent, especially with the dark blue background and the blue part of the spotlight gradient. Finally, some layers were rescaled to better fit their use, such as the city lights and solar panel texture.
I stuck to using two main colors throughout the visual argument. The purpose of this mainly being to reduce the amount of visual noise on the argument itself. This also helps certain aspects better stand out, such as the text and West Virginia. I chose blue in order to match with the colors of the solar panel texture, as well as to use as the background, which is a much darker blue that is meant to resemble night time. I specifically chose yellow in order to invoke other aspects that are related to solar panels, such as light and energy. I wanted to emphasize the connection between electricity as a source of light, in that solar energy produces electricity from sunlight, so that we can light our houses at night. There are also speckles of yellow “light” across the USa in the image, especially towards the east coast, which are all lights from cities that would benefit from having access to this solar energy.
All sources were found using Google Images’ Creative Commons licensing search tool. Meaning that all images are licensed under Creative Commons and available for fair use. Sourced websites all listed in SOURCES.md file. The original images used can be found in the Assets folder.