Reading Response: Type + Image, Aristotle's Appeals

Type + Image argues that decoration is not a frivolous element but can be used to heighten the sensory experience. It states that style is not an accident, but a component of its time, and serves as documentation of that period. For example, the modernist-functional style of the 1920s left a major imprint and continues to shape present day design where simplification takes on a primary role. The reading discusses how, in the late twentieth century, design utilizes historicism, eclecticism, and pluralistic reinvention to extract form and expressions from other periods of time and developing graphic resonance. Aristotle's Appeals gives a detailed description of the three modes of appeal in rhetoric as a means of persuasion; ethos (Greek for "character), pathos (Greek for "suffering" or "experience") and logos (Greek for "word"). After the in-depth examples and explanations, I have deducted each mode's purpose. Ethos refers to the credibility or projected character. Utilizing ethos requires good character which can vary depending on time and culture (Ex/ a current form of credibility would be a impressive resume). "This [persuasion] does not come from appearances, but a person's use of language.""Inspire confidence in the rhetor's [speaker's/writer's] own character-the three, namely, that induce us to believe a thing apart from any proof of it: good sense, good moral character, and goodwill." Pathos is described as an emotional appeal to the viewer's self-interest. This includes methods such as advantage and indirect flattery. "...creating an emotion with words usually requires recreating the scene or event that would in 'real' circumstances arouse the emotion." Logos is the argument itself. With seemingly clear objectives, logos gives the audience facts and values. Through methods of inductive logic, showing the viewer similar examples and giving them a general proposition, and deductive enthymeme, which gives your viewer a few propositions and drawing a specific, new truth. 1) Are they arguments based on definition? 2) Does the arguer make analogies or comparisons/parallel cases? 3) Are the appeals to cause and consequences? 4) Does the arguer rely on testimony or authority by citing the received opinions of experts/public opinion to support the position?