Steve Jobs – Stanford speech 2005

This is a rhetorical analyze of the speech of Steve Jobs when he delivered commencement speech “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” to the graduates of Stanford University on June 12, 2005.

I noted three noteworthy elements in speech:

• It have a strong opening
• Theme of birth/death/rebirth.
• Simple structure

These three elements have a big importance how Steve Jobs have created his speech and also how he has include the rhetorical aspects ethos, Pathos and logos into it.

Steve Jobs opening the speech with “I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.” He mention early in the speech that he never graduates from the collage (“I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation”) and this shows his humility about how great work the students does and also makes them to feel good and keep attention. He try to be personal and talking about rights and wrongs and his emotional feelings about his disappointment and bewilderment about his chose of collage, when he wasting his parents saved money to something he don’t wanted to be. Due to his stories, he creates a persona about himself and he makes himself out to be a person who carries on even in the darkest of times and who has overcome many obstacles when things didn’t look good. By describing life events and how close he was to death, he awoke much emotional feelings and aslo breaks down the barriers between his personality and professional roles.

Through Jobs strong opening and by present a persona of himself and talking about life experiences, creates the ethos aspect to this speech and by talking about death and as well happiness, makes a strong emotionality by the whole story. This also includes the rhetorical aspect pathos.

One more reason why this story awoke attention as the audiences and keep them interested during the whole speech are because of its simple structure (logos), which is a part of the aspect in rhetoric.

The speech can be divided in three parts.

He tells the audiences in the beginning of the speech “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” This creates a curiosity, which is a good way to awake attention and engagement. 

VISUAL RHETORIC – The art of speaking and writing effectively

Visual rhetoric questions the persuasiveness of images, and the devices that are used to persuade us.

By using rhetoric in visual communication may be pass a message with a specific purpose. Questions about how a website can be designed for awake trustfulness and persuade the viewer it a serious company, and what a photographer tried to persuade the viewer. This things communicate the receivers through Ethos, Pathos and logos and they are together responsible for the persuasiveness of a message.

Ethos – is about the credibility of the rhetor, the person or organization who wants persuade the viewer.

This is a typical example of usage of the rhetorical tool ethos. By showing a prior and after picture of a man who tells he dropped 245 pounds by eating two subs a day, they persuades many people by eating subway sandwich will you lose weight.

Like Uncle Sam said – I want you for the US Army

Pathos – Tries to appeal to affect your emotions in order to persuade you.

Here is the visual language clear; by using Michelins tires will you save life, your and your children’s life! Including object that wakes much emotionality, as children or animals will pathos function strike hard.

Logos – Is about rational arguments, a form or arguments based on fact, logic and figures.

By using this picture tries the company to convince their audiences by drinking milk can you get super powers.  But the main purpose with the ad is to tell the message that calcium makes you stro

GESTALT

According to the book visual Language of Jos van den Broek, Willem Koetsenruijter, Jaap de Jong and Laetitia Smit are the main rule for gestaltning simplicity, which creates “space in the brain”. Theoretically will gestaltning reduce cognitive overload.  Because of the capacity of our working memory is extremely limited is this beneficial.

Gestalt theory creates a degree of order in visual communication, which keeps the creators of visual information on the right track.

There are rules to simplify the complexity of how to create a picture within the gestalt aspects. They can roughly be categorized:

• Significance
• Proximity
• Similarity
• Direction of motion
• Area
• Relatedness
• Synchronicity

This rules exist due to help reduce non-useful information in picture or add/improve important things, which is needed to create the wanted simplicity.

Here are examples of the different gestalt laws.

This technique are also used in creation of newspaper and websites, in order to create a clear headings and categories.

A practical example is the company IKEA, every store in the world is similar and everything works together and also the colors of the brand as symbolized which country its come from.

With these practical and easy rules in the mind, may a presentation in visual fields be better and the audiences have a better chance to understand the message.

SEMIOTIC

To be able to analyze and understand images, graphic forms and another art is Semiotic used. This can be implemented and used everywhere and not only in language or images.

According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Swiss linguist  “Semiotics is a study of signs in the social life.

Semiotic is well used in visual communication due to their main function to construct and simplify an understanding for something.

You can also use semiotic in construction of products.
For example a handle:

                        

Here is one good and one bad example in use of semiotic.

The first picture acutely communicate to the user at their main function is to be rotated for some reason. You can understand that due to the pattern it have on its side, which also makes the function better to handle.

The other handle has a good function for rotate and fulfill that required function. But their design can be misleading; due to its similarities as something you can life with (a grip). My opinion is that the designer have fault with the semiotic aspects with this product.

This type of visual language can you see everywhere in the surrounding, things as you might even think about. How do you know to do something when you never did it before? Thanks to the visual language  and the semiotic provides it’s this possible.

How you understand semiotic is connected to previous knowledge and experiences. Due to that is it important to chose right method and strategy when you shall implement semiotic as a visual language.

One principle of semiotic give you an instrument to  be enable to talk in a structured way about the process of understanding and the meaning of e.g. an image.

But if you don’t know the target group, when producing visual language you can bet choose the sign that requires the least prior knowledge. So with other words keep it simple and don’t make it to complicated, the target group will be bigger then.

IDEOGRAM

If you want to find an Ideogram in your surrounding is it just to take a look at the street, next time you walk into a public toilet, when you want to know if you sidewalk is for walkers or bicycles and so on. An ideogram is a graphical symbol that represents an idea, a similarity for something “real”, rather then a text as description. It can be a simple drawing, which represent and illustrate a concept, object or place.

Here is examples of ideogram that I have founds.

This example of an Ideogram is a funny way to show where the bathroom is, which I found here in one of Rotterdams museums. I selected this example because of it’s not a common ideogram people use to have on their bathrooms door. But it still deliver right message to the audiences, who searching for a toilet.

This example can you see at a normal airport. The different pictures symbolize a specific thing and it’s quite easy to interpret what everything is.

By combine this kind of ideograms with other signs like arrows, can a easy and fast interpretation be performed and a way descriptions can be explained without any words.  This is just one of many benefits when use of ideograms.