Website/ Image text Anylisis

Overview/Text Analysis Guidelines. The LA Dream Center was established in 1994, it is a volunteer non-profit organization that’s reaching the needs of 50,000 individuals and families each month. With its 360, 000 square foot campus, 9 buildings and 8 acres of land. It provides in different capacities such as; ·      Hunger relief ·      Medical programs ·      Residential rehabilitation programs for teens and adults ·      Shelter for victims of human trafficking ·      Transitional shelter for homeless families ·      Foster care interventions ·      Job skills training ·      Life skills counseling ·      Basic education and more. It is one of the largest and most influencing among the many non-profit organizations in the world that are making a difference. This website captures you straight away and engages viewers to want to discover and learn more about the LA Dream Center, and what they are all about just by a click of a button. The website is aimed towards bringing an awareness that there is a great need/issue in their city that needs to be addressed. Since the Dream Center has been in downtown Los Angelus crime rate has dropped over 70% proving success.

split image of the historical building of what use to be Queen of Angels Hospital, to what is now known as the Dream Center Fundraising project to raise money for a rescue/recovery programme and residental home for human trafficking victems A programme that picks up kids from run-down neighborhoods to the dream center Helping low-income families who live in rough neighborhoods Reaching to the homeless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Use of Imagery On the home page they showcase a slideshow of different image links that promote certain current projects. By doing this, it highlights them first grabbing peoples attention as soon as the click into the website. The lighten up slideshow brightens up the page, its verity gives a sense of interaction with the viewers, its as if its alive and allows an opportunity for the web users to respond. this backs up Wysocki’s (2004) idea that, “photographs are often used to bring an sense of immediacy and “reality” to a layout”” In one of the pictures theres a shot of Two images put together of the Dream Center building in 2 different periods of time. The first one in black and white polaroid from the 1920's  fading into the building in todays generation. Its a split image effect of the historical building of what use to be Queen of Angels Hospital, to what is now known as the Dream Center. Emphasizing that what was once a medical hospital for the sick is now a  hospital for the messed up victams, broken hearted, struggling addicts out of hope people who want another start in life. In the image of the focused individual running is a link that takes you to a page that tells you about the Fundraising project to raise money for a rescue/recovery programme and residental home for human trafficking victims.   but there's more to it, the individual is a woman running with fierce wind blowing behind reinforcing the statement RUN FOR HOPE is a fight. the image of the woman is showcasing a sense of breaking free from the struggles of human trafficking. The image of the Food truck and  little kids being piggy-backed by young adults are portraying a message to the viewer that their is a need in the city, there are kids and families struggling and more help is needed. both in terms of volunteering to simply show that you genuinely care and donating whether that be food for the food truck on money to provide food for the food truck. In the city shot of the sun setting, it closes in on the DREAM CENTER sign overlooking the city. This is the background image thats used frequently on the website to create a peaceful, bright and personalized feel to the text/image as it symbolizes the dream that a city has hope for a dream, a better future.  Images are a powerful tool that leaves an impression either good or bad and gives people a trigger to memory of what they read or what struck them.

Typer Face/ Font use.

According to Wyoski (2004) the use of typeface is “a major visual strategy for a text’s composers” (p. 127) and it seems that the designer(s) of this website understood that as they have distinctvly emphaised the word DREAMCENTER along with its LOGO, creating dominance as a defualt heading for evey page grabbing the viewrs attention so the name sticks in their minds. The font is in Arial which is a clear user friendly font, but as you scroll onto (White) icons they highlight in light blue, giving that subheading significant importance as they provide vital information for certain effective initiatives. eg - RESCUE PROJECT, which is there human trafficking prevention programme. As stated in (Wysocki, 2004p.126) “ The size and colour of something, and its placement at top or left or bottom or right, or what it presents…help answer the question.” There are 3 dominent colors that are majorly used throughout the website - Blue, White and Black. Dream (In Bold Black) CENTER (in blue) with the logo in Blue and White with a background image of a sunsetting shot overlooking the city. which gives a a peaceful feeling. the Subheadings closest to the left is entitled, ABOUT US & GET INVOLVED - this not only shows that their main purpose to create awareness of the the Dream Center but also creating a targeted set of viewers. specifically targeting average people such as you and I, encouraging to volunteer. Also the word DONATE on the far right is always highlighted in Blue emphasing on giving money towards the day-to-day functioning of the Dream Center as it is not governmental funded. In their home page information and images are spread out across the page in an F-shape pattern; because it connects on a more natural level to the attention span of typical web viewer; when reading content on websites mainly because online or web users just tend to skim read through sites, scanning quickly through it not actually throughly reading it. This idea is supported by Nielson (2007).

Links extended (Bottom page)

At the bottom of the site you typically find a whole bunch of extended links. This is a part most web users tend to skip, but in actual fact it holds good information that people actually want to know about. for example links to their Facebook, or Twitter or the blog of the founder/CEO, Creator of the website domain, address/map etc. (See exert below





2301 Bellevue Ave.|
Los Angeles, CA 90026|
(213) 273-7000Site Map|
Mobile Site
© 2012 DreamCenter.org. All rights reserved.
Designed by PlainJoe Studios

References 

·      Goatly, A. (2006). Critical reading and writing. London: Routledge.

·      http://engres.ied.edu.hk/lang_arts/onlineRead/popCultMM/5KeyConceptMediaLiteracy.pdf

·      Wyscoki, A. F. (2004) The multiple media of texts; how onscreen and paper texts incorporate words, images and other media. In C. Bazerman and P. Prior, (Eds.) What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices, pp. 123 – 163, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum
·      Nielson, J. (2007), writing for the web: Research on how users read on the web and how authors should write their web pages. Retrieved 26 June, 2007
from: hhtp://www.useit.com/papers/webwritting/