Composite (multimodal texts) - visuals which combine text and image and other graphic elements. Questions arise whether the products of the various modes should be analyzed separately or in an integrated way.
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Information value- the placement of elements (participants that relate them to each other and to the viewer) endows them with the specific informational values attached to the various 'zones' of the image: left and right, top and bottom, centre and margin. "Many visuals combine horizontal and vertical structuring." (188)
Given and New (information value - left and right): in cultures which write from right to left, the Given is on the right and the New is on the left. "What is taken for granted by one social group is not taken for granted by another. We might expect to find, therefore, systematic differences in the dispositions of material in layout across different magazines - for instance, according to their readership." (184) Can also be found in film and television - interviewer on left of the interviewee (viewer's point of view). Interviewers are presented as people with whose views and assumptions viewers will identify and already familiar with ('GIVEN') ; interviewee presents 'NEW' information and are situated on the right.
- Demand pictures - usually the right page (NEW); dominated by large and salient photographs from which the representative participants engage the gaze of the viewer. Key information for viewer - must pay attention to 'message'.
- Offer pictures - usually the left page (GIVEN); dominated by smaller, less salient photographs from which the viewer doesn't have direct contact with the representative participants. Already given information - viewer already knows.
- Upper section - (Ideal); visualizes the 'promise of the product', the status of glamour it can bestow on its users, or sensory fulfillment it can bring. Consumer's supposed aspirations and desires. SALIENT part.
- Lower section - (Real); visualizes the product itself, providing more or less factual information about it, and telling the readers or users where it can be obtained, or how they can request more information about it, or order it. Products placed firmly in the realm of the real, as a solid foundation for the edifice of promise.
- Centre - central element; presented as the nucleus of the information to which all the other elements are in some sense subservient.
- Margins - elements around Centre; dependent, identical or similar to each other, so that there is no sense of a division between Given and New and/or Ideal and Real elements among them.
Salience - the elements (participants) are made to attract the viewer's attention to different degrees (realized by factors as placement in the foreground and background, relative size, contrasts in tonal value (or colour), differences in sharpness, etc. Not objectively measurable; greater the weight of an element, the greater its salience.
"Regardless of where they are placed, salience can create a hierarchy of importance among the elements, selecting some as more important, more worthy of attention than others." (201)
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Framing - the presence or absence of framing devices (realized by elements which create dividing lines, or by actual frame lines) disconnects or connects elements of the image, signifying that they belong or do not belong together in some sense.
"The stronger the framing of an element, the more it is presented as a separate unit of information... the absence of framing stresses group identity, its presence signifies individuality and differentiation." (203) The more the elements of the spatial composition are connected, the more they are presented as belonging together, as a single unit of information. Ways in which framing can be achieved - by actual frame lines, by white space between elements, by discontinuities of colour, etc. "Emphasized by vectors, by depicted elements (structural elements of buildings, perspectivally drawn roads leading the eye to elements in the background, etc.) or by abstract graphic elements, leading the eye from one element to another, beginning with the most salient element (first element that draws the viewer's attention)." (204)
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Linear and non-linear compositions: "Given that what is made salient is culturally determined, members of different cultural groupings are likely to have different hierarchies of salience, and perhaps texts of this kind are the way they are precisely to allow for the possibility of more than one reading path, and hence for the heterogeneity and diversity of their large readership." (205) Linear reading is gradually losing ground; these are like movies where the viewers have no choice but to see the images in an order that has been decided for them. Non-linear texts, viewers can select their own images and view them in an order of their own choosing.
The shape of the reading path: conveys a significant cultural message; they may be circular, diagonal, spiraling, etc. - these different paths can themselves become sources of meaning. Interactive - no chronology, nor a clear hierarchy of salience (Water Parks of the Damned! - newspapers, billboards, comic strips, advertisements, websites).
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