such that you understand what an image is about
immediately on sight. Chances are you will not be
accustomed to taking an image apart to analyze its
separate elements.
Your visual virtuosity also means that you are likely
to understand many of the elements of the compositional
metafunction at an intuitive level. Make this
knowledge explicit by explaining it to others.
Remember that not every aspect of every metafunction
is important in analyzing an image for its impact
on a reader/user. For example, the most notable feature
of the photograph of the U.S. Supreme Court in
Figure 2 is the interpersonal aspect of power “realized”
through the vertical angle.
Continually ask yourself why a producer chose a particular
semiotic resource. Just as you instinctively know
how to use words to evoke certain feelings in readers/
users, producers often rely on instinct in their image
choices and may not be aware at a conscious level of
the sign conventions they have employed.
Reflect on the development of images and design as
a project moves through its production phases, noting
how colleagues discuss images and how illustrators
and designers respond to their suggestions. And
if usability testing is undertaken, note how users react
to the rhetorical messages embedded in the combination
of text and imagery. The more you learn
about others’ social/cultural “lenses,” the more sensitive
you will become to the different potentials for
meaning-making with images.
As you gain confidence and can handle a variety of
images and page designs, consider ways in which
you might, as Dragga and Voss suggest, propose
that a team humanize technical illustrations by adding
imagery to pie charts, bar graphs, diagrams, and
so on, and “genuinely integrating words and pictures
instead of simply juxtaposing the two on the page or
screen” (2001, p. 270).