The composition or layout of a web page can greatly hinder or highlight the page’s content. Of course, this idea pertains to the text presented on a page. Having hard to read text, bad color choice, text that is too small, or text that is all concentrated in one are of a page can negatively impact a reader’s experience. However, this importance of composition and layout is also very essential to the effectiveness and meaning ascribed to images.
One of my favorite points that Kress and Leeuwen addressed in the reading The Meaning of Composition is the idea of the “new” and the “given. Kress and Leeuwen writes, “For something to be Given means that it is presented as something the viewer already knows, as a familiar and agreed-upon point of departure for the message. For something to be New means that it is presented as something which is not yet known, or perhaps not yet agreed upon by the viewer, hence as something to which the viewer must pay special attention.”
The eye is trained to, accustomed to, and comfortable with reading from left to right. This makes sense with how the concept of Given and New images are then articulated in a composition. Something that is a Given image is often presented on the left side of a layout, while something that is New is often presented on the right side of a layout.
Some of the examples shown in the reading were really dark because of the scanning, so I tried to find a good example on my own. Hopefully I am not too far off track! I found this article and thought it was a good, yet very basic example of this Given and New principle.
The Proactive website opens and you see scrolling images on the left of beautiful famous people with gorgeous skin, and on the right you see the three step proactive system. The Given then is that “these women have gorgeous skin” the New is that “you can get that skin with Proactive!”
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