Visual+Literacy+Critique

In the following essay, I offer a critique of a visual message in terms of the PAT model. In addition, I provide suggestions as to how one could improve the visual in order to enhance its effectiveness. The process of analyzing this image and considering how it might be improved has increased my awareness of the importance of creating good visuals that illustrate clearly the concept or material being studied.

Presented with a table entitled “overproteined”, which contains pictures of a hamburger, a hot dog, a chicken, and fried chicken and facts related to American eating habits, I assume the visual message is that Americans eat too much protein. The title itself refers to protein and the table reports that Americans eat 600 million Big Macs and 20 billion hot dogs each year.

Utilizing the PAT (Perceptions, Actions and Tools) model to critique the visual, I am first drawn to the images of the chicken bucket, the chick, the hotdog and the hamburger, which appear to be placed around the table in no apparent order. After studying the table, it becomes clear that each image does in fact relate to one of the four facts, but given that the images are split between the top and bottom of the table, and since none of the images are centered over or under their corresponding facts, the pictures do not immediately connect to the information about the amount of protein Americans eat. If I were to improve this visual, I would align each of the images with the information to which it relates, ensuring that they are of similar size and that they form one row, whether above or below the facts. In addition, I would make sure that the text within each box is obviously centered and justified. In the current visual, it appears that the text in the first and fourth boxes is flush left while the text in boxes two and three is centered.

Although the images may distract the reader from the content included in the table, in my opinion, the visual makes good use of contrast. Not only is the size and color of the font varied between the heading, subheadings and corresponding facts, but the bolded numbers and the different colors utilized for each of the four boxes certainly catch the reader’s attention.

My final suggestion for improving the visual would be to reduce the table to three boxes by eliminating the box about the number of chickens that are raised for food each year in the U.S. Since the other three boxes deal specifically with the quantity //eaten// of a specific //cooked// food item (a hamburger, fried chicken and a hot dog), the information about the number of chickens raised to become food for Americans does not fit. I would also change the number of chickens eaten per second to the number of chickens eaten per year in order to coincide with the numbers provided about the amount of hamburgers and hotdogs Americans consume each year.