McCloud Reading (1/31/14)

I'm choosing to write about McCloud and his notion of icons because the things that he describes about icons and how pictures come together aren't really well thought out by audiences who just read words and move on without paying attention what is actually there. For example, McCloud drew himself very plain and not very sophistacted so that the focus remains in his texts and not his picture. As a reader, McCloud really nailed the focus on text part instead of himself by adding less detailed to his avatar. Most readers won't even take into consideration that McCloud purposely made himself look so very plain so that he can deliver his message. To be more clear, what i am trying to say, is that the writer must truly understand his audience before getting his message across. So lets elaborate on what I mean by this and how McCloud see things. McCloud is a writer who notices what a reader wants to read while I am a reader who reads what McCloud is writing.

Hahaha I bet i just lost you there... okay let me put more examples to try to get my point across. McCloud is trying to deliver his lesson through text by using comically drawn icons to deliver it. People like pictures and like following a constant flow leading from one image to another and will be more willing to read text if there is a picture there even if that picture is totally useless and not informative. He drew himself a couple of times with different emotes but it only had him in the drawing a couple of times but with different words placed on the picture. Now as a reader, the text he puts in his image were short and concise which didn't scare me and I mind as well read it since the picture takes up more room than the text. If McCloud were to draw himself smaller than the text, I might have just not read it and just skimmed it because I would feel too lazy to read all that text. That would destroy what McCloud wanted and he wouldn't have accomplished his mission in getting his point across.

In addition, McCloud did not focus in details when he was drawing out icons, especially himself. He showed us a face that look a lot more detailed and explained how our attention will be drawn to his detailed face instead of his lesson. He was right with that because I noticed if the detailed is so great, I just wanted to look at the pictures and move on without reading any texts which isn't what McCloud was focusing on.

Therefore, I realized that McCloud uses simple font and images with texts to get his point across by understanding his audience and how they would react.

Food For Thought....
If the world was faced with a massive threat like an asteroid heading towards earth which would wipe out all life on earth, do you think we can set aside all the differences we have with other countries and combine our brightest minds to develop a plan to avoid such problem? Will we be able to stay United as one world? If that did happened, do you think the world will be a better place since every countries are allies? Will our technology far surpass anything that we created since all the money that went to war is now going into science and development which leads to new irrigation or food culture or making the environment a better place with more advance solar technology?