Visual+Literacy+Critique

Visual Literacy
 * This is an essay I wrote in critique of an ad. In it, I was very picky, looking at the smallest details under the PAT model "microscope" that we'd just learned about in class. Though different visual elements appeal to different people, I learned to make sure my visual creations don't distract my audience from my point. That would be missing the point of creating something for them to look at, entirely. **

 I think whoever created the "Overproteined" ad should go back to the Ace model and reevaluate their work. This representative/organizational visual is fairly unappealing. It's not misleading or confusing, but its violations of the PAT model may distract an audience from its valuable information.  For example, the alignment is off. Maybe the word "Overproteined" is centered in the table but it doesn't appear to be because of the placement of the Big Mac and the bucket of chicken. Another issue is that the A and B don't really make sense to me.  I think if I created this I might have said "consumed" instead of "eaten" in the 3rd column for the sake of consistency, which would probably fall under the category of repetition in the PAT model. Also, the chicken pieces seem to be in two colors, one of which looks grosser than the other. It isn't due to an imagined light source (light/shadow) so what the heck?  If they are going to include the baby chicken, they should also include a baby cow and a baby pig for consistency/repetition. There's something strange about the depth too. The graphics just look like stickers a child stuck on the table. Maybe they could have been arranged around the edge with some implied contiguity to lead the eye around the visual. I feel like my eye just jumps sporadically from element to element. This activity keeps me from selecting, organizing and processing the information in my mind, and certainly from integrating it into my belief system.  As a vegetarian, I value information like this but I worry that this amateurish visual wouldn't be taken seriously by many people and they therefore would not be influenced by it to reduce their meat consumption.