In the process of analyzing my visual text, it is evident that there are many design elements that can affect how each person might interpret a picture differently. These design elements include but are not limited to the perspective, contrast, color, space, focus, or realism and abstraction that can be drawn when looking at a particular image. These elements along with layout and style come together to give everyone a meaning of the particular picture their viewing. The particular visual text I selected is an editorial cartoon that depicts a mother and father not seeming too happy with a report card grade in two completely different generations. The small differences in each generation just go to illustrate the overall picture, and the overall meaning how over time, things change depending on a generation and the society that generation lives in.

Being that my visual text is actually 2 almost separate images together to give one message, the contrast of those two pieces is extremely important. The first contrasting aspect that jumps out between the two is time. This goes to reinforce how over time, as society around us evolves, our reasoning and thinking process change as well. On the other hand, sometimes things will stay the same, like the text in my image. Another major contrasting aspect between each portion is whom exactly, the parents are upset with. The image is trying to convey that in the 20th century, it was thought that if your child received a bad grade it was their fault and it was not acceptable, but parents of the 21st century don't hold their children to those high standards. Instead, parents feel like there is no way possible their child could receive that bad of a grade and if they did, the teacher had to have either not taught it correctly, or not favored their child, so those terrible grades are a result of the teacher. 

Perspective also plays a major part in this image. In my perspective, this picture is trying to convey how in our generation we seek to blame the teacher for poor work instead of taking responsibility of our own work like kids in earlier generations did. Another perspective that could be seen from this picture is that kids of our day and age are smarter than those of the 60's while they had much better teachers. Also if you notice, in the depiction of the family on the right in comparison to the left, the child is on the parents' side in our generation. That leaves a perspective that states that kids in our generation more often side with their parents, where in past generation that didn't happen as much because of the age barrier.

The first thing that you notice where you look at this picture is the space between 1960 and now. That is a time difference of 55 years and plays a big part in all meanings that you could take from this picture. If the space between those two years was any different, or they were just completely different times, it would give the entire picture a completely different meaning. In each section of this picture, there is also space between whoever is on the left delivering the scorning and whoever is on the right receiving it. That just goes to reinforce how important the space between the two groups of people are, and how the space makes an impact on what the picture is trying to say.

My image is also in a comic or cartoon drawn form which brings up the two elements realism or abstraction. When you look at the editorial cartoon, you'll see that the faces have some definition, but not a completely realistic face. These simpler faces tend to give a more general meaning that can easily relate to anybody. If these faces had more definition, then they would give off a more specific look that would relate more to people that could classify into that specific look. In this editorial cartoon, the purpose was to depict an average set of parents disciplining their child for work, while in the next generation, the entire family, being upset with the teacher for the work. All of these particular persons do not have that much definition in this editorial cartoon so that all different types of parents, children, and teachers can view this cartoon and be able to relate to it just as well as the next person.

The key focus of this entire editorial cartoon is grades. In every part of the editorial cartoon the grades are affecting someone in some fashion, either positively or negatively. The grade is also not a good grade, which is the reason for anyone to be upset in the first place. If the grade were good, the picture would have a completely different look between the two time differences. There is also a side focus to this editorial cartoon, being time. This editorial cartoon is trying to show how as the time changes, so does society and society's attitudes on certain subjects.

This editorial cartoon shows few of the many elements that can be used to draw meanings from any types of pictures, not just cartoons. When there are multiple people trying to come up with a specific meaning for any picture, perspective will then play a huge part in how each person sees the picture differently. The contrast between any factors in a picture, this example being the time periods and everyone's reaction to each other, will also give open interpretation to multiple sides of an argument and multiple meanings to take from both factors. On the other hand, seeing as though my example was a cartoon, realism and abstraction play a huge part in the analysis of the particular faces in my image, along with the other elements that can be used for any type of picture. When you incorporate all those elements together to analyze a visual text it gives everyone an opportunity to create their own meanings based on what they see in that particular image.

