Considering Visual Elements

As I continue to work on developing Project 3, I'm now beginning to look at the potential visual components of my work.  I know that on some online versions of newspapers, opinion pieces are accompanied by an image, or enlarged quote.  However, because my issue is so local, I'm looking at just how the Arizona Daily Star formats opinion articles.  The Star, even in its online format, provides only text in its opinion articles.  You can view some examples here and here to get an idea of what I mean.  Because of this, I'm rather limited in terms of visual elements.

Ossanna, Lia. "Tucson.com logo." 11/5/15 via http://tucson.com/

Questions (taken from Writing Public Lives)

1. What color choices best reflect the visual-rhetorical tone of my project?
• Since this is going to be for a newspaper, I will stick to just black and white coloring.  Unfortunately I can't include images, my project will basically be a headline and a bunch of text.
2. How might I vary the fonts used in my project for emphasis, such as the title and body of my project?
• I'm not really sure if I really have the power to change the fonts or have multiple fonts in my project, because since newspapers are uniform, the fonts are probably all going to be the same. That being said, there will be a difference in the size of the headline, so I should make the headline itself catchy and interesting.
3. Are the fonts appropriate to the visual-rhetoric tone of my project?
• Since I'm probably going to end up using just one font, I'm going to pick a standard font that is professional to give the right tone; probably something like Times New Roman.
4. Do your eyes move easily from section to section in the order that you intended?
• Print articles are broken up into small columns, which helps the readers scan the page more easily.  I should replicate this in my draft to make sure the effects are what I want. 
5. Could large blocks of text be broken up more effectively using text boxes, lines, headings or images?
• Newspaper articles also use short paragraphs, so readers feel like they're reading quicker, and progressing through the article.  The best way I can break up large amounts of text is by writing short paragraphs and using line breaks.
6. Is the visual-rhetorical tone of your project consistent?
• This project will be only text, written in a very standard way, so it will be extremely consistent with the tone and the medium it will be published in.

REFLECTION

After looking at Olivia and Bailey's posts, it made me wish that I could have more visual elements for my project as well.  Having images really adds a whole new layer, and gives the project more dimension.  However, because of the platform that I've chosen (Arizona Daily Star), it would make sense for me to add images and other visual elements because the Star provides only text for their opinion articles.  None of them, either online or in print, have any accompanying images.  So to stay true to my platform, I shouldn't spend time focusing on visual elements.  I can't change my platform either, because my topic is so narrow that this is the only one that really makes sense.  But overall it's okay, because I'll just focus on the text and making sure that's strong and speaks for itself.