Shayne Applegarth
Mudd
29 September 2010
Rhetorical Defense
Alden Library
The Alden Library is extremely essential building in a college students life at Ohio University and it was not any different back in 1966 when it was constructed. One of the largest buildings on campus dedicated to one purpose and one purpose only; to provide a stable learning environment. The Vernon R. Alden Library was named after the fifteenth president of Ohio University and was proclaimed for him right before his resignation from the University. The Alden Library was completed in 1969 and later was expanded in 1972 to house more than one million volumes and many different types of electronic files. The expansion of the library was a great mark in the history of Ohio University and was a large topic among students. The use of a flyer to promote this event is effective way of promoting and informing students and it has a many rhetorical ways of doing so.
The obvious audience of this flyer is college students who use the library to expand their learning or to reinforce it. This flyer is very catering to a college students mind set, which is a simple task to do. Students want to observe a flyer that is short, simple and to the point and this flyer reflects that. The use of a large heading, a picture and quick facts helps a student retain the information trying to be presented. The large heading grabs the attention of the viewer, a picture keeps the viewer focused on the main idea of the paper, and the short and quick facts, keeps the reader from becoming bored with the flyer and ignoring it. The style of this flyer also reflects how the audience is portrayed to students in the fact that it is in black and white and that was the colors used back when the library was being expanded and this shows that it is something that is not completely off the map and it is important information. The main point of this flyer is to grab the attention of students provide them with some information that is extremely helpful.
The sole purpose of any flyer is to inform the reader and through different techniques this can be achieved and provide an appropriate form of information. The use of certain features makes this flyer very purposeful. Providing students with the information needed to inform them of a growing library in a simple way to get the point across without beating it into the ground and using short facts and a picture displays a student friendly flyer. This flyer has different conventions compared to today’s normal flyers which are very colorful with many different things going on all in one picture, which make it friendlier to the students. The rules of today were broke in designing this flyer by using a black and white color scheme with simple facts and no crazy artwork or other distracting things going on, but back in 1972 when a flyer like this would be coming out you would not be seeing all this computer generated flyers because it simply did not exist. The new flyers are not bad but the use of all the newer features would not be a purposeful thing to use in a flyer that is going to be dated back to 1972. Having a flyer for a library was a very hard topic to cover and having it back to a period in which I was not around for was even harder.
The Alden Library is of course an important place but is not typically put on a flyer and posted or handed out on the Ohio University campus. Having information to put on the flyer was extremely hard to decide what someone would actually read and pay a little bit of attention to. With having the first flyer a bust, with simple facts and bright background but overall boring, I decided to switch gears in a sense. I tried to imagine myself back in 1972 and visualize what I thought I would see on a flyer for an expanding library on campus. To no surprise I came up with a simple black and white flyer that would grab the attention of someone walking by it and realize that it is somewhat interesting. Everything I did in this flyer, I did in a rhetorical way and the main goal was to keep it simple and something that I thought would capture the essence of the library back then. The library is a vital building in any learning environment and is something that should be recognized if there is a major change in it.