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Margeaux Janneck
Candis White
Dr. Antoinette Larkin
Engl 3077
17 November 2015

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden was founded in 1875 and is celebrating its 140
years in operation. The Cincinnati Zoo is the second oldest zoo located within the United States.
It is home to over 500 species of animals as well as 3,000 varieties of plants, holding more
species than many other zoos and is one of the top ranked zoos in the nation. The Cincinnati Zoo
has a mission to foster knowledge, create adventure, conserve nature, create a sense of
community and inspire visitors with wildlife. Their website is able to dramatize this message and
spread their vision by using rhetoric, icons, layout, color palette as well as with many other
entities.
The Zoos website opens with a header of an in focus image of eyes of a big cat and out
of focus portion of its body. The use of
this image draws your attention and
creates a visual that is demanding of
your notice. The main focus is the eyes
and a portion of the face. The part gives
a glimpse of the whole Underlying
these points about parts and wholes is a
more general issue, which concerns the
philosophical one of when we count
something as a part and when we count
it as a whole What we see as a whole and what as a part, then, may depend on what we are
trying to explainIn doing this, though, we should not forget that the complexities of the world
result from the fact that we can always divide a thing into its component parts or else look for
other things that link with it to form a larger whole (Hall, 67)
Within the fold of the page, one can see the navigation bar, which is organized by
information pertaining to the areas of interest for the visitor. The emphasis is attractions a visitor
might experience on a visit to the zoo. Tabs are placed at the top and side of the page allowing
for quicker access to certain frequented pages. Beneath the navigation buttons, news scrolls
allowing for the access to easy information regarding upcoming events and discounts that could
be easily missed. This feature encompasses the lower half of the fold; the size is large giving it
dominance in visual hierarchy. This makes appeals to ethos and pathos showing that it is ranked
top 10 in the U.S. by Family Fun readers as well as asking the viewer to join our family
building a sense of community. The site uses clean white space and a responsive design to help
further add professionalism and ethos to the site. The site tries to make the user respect the
establishment and want to feel apart of it by becoming a member and conforms as something that
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they would want to be a part of. Kimball explains: In the case of the Mint website, the clear and
simple design supplies useful information about the product (logos), encourages people to think
Mint is cool (ethos), and makes people feel good about the prospect of purchasing the product
(pathos). By itself, the visual design of the website cant compensate for the product that doesnt
work well. But the design of the website at least contributes to a rhetorical argument for the
product and the company. (Kimball, 65)
Using semiotics is the basis of communication. The signs that are created by the designer
and then they are interpreted by the consumer. The Cincinnati Zoo uses many of these signs and
icons to give the consumer information. The website uses icons for easy access to information.
Bright colored animal symbols, such as a bright yellow bird, symbolizing early admission to the
zoo give the consumer an easy obtained material for their upcoming visit. Their logo is a sign for
a postage stamp containing an image of rhinoceros under an acacia tree. Stamps signify places
that you go and want to share. The rhinoceros signifies strength, un-conventionalism, and
durability. The tree carries a lot of cultural significance in the bible and signifies endurance. By
drawing attention to the ways in which a familiar thing, x, can be seen in terms of an unfamiliar
thing, we help to show that the qualities of the first thing are more like the second thing than we
had initially thought. (Hall, 44)
In the Perception of Images: Photography a Way of Seeing. Zakia states that the way of
seeing is not just the visualization but appreciating the tone, force, modulation, and tempo in
which a group of objects that are visually displayed. (Zakia, 304) The Cincinnati Zoos website
utilizes many of these elements. The site is designed using 2 to 3 grids, different sections are set
apart by lines, the use of arrows allow the reader to know the direction to follow. The
visualization of colors, the clear defined lines of the text boxes and the compelling photos of
animals from the zoo create an ambience of good design. Gestalts principles of simplicity,
similarity, and proximity are used to organize the site into sections to allow for easy readability.
Together, this compels the viewer to look further into what is offered at the zoo.

Although The Cincinnati Zoos website uses

a array of colors it primarily sticks to using a
triadic/split complementary color scheme consisting
of the colors green, orange and purple. The green
color on the website gives it a sense of nature. The
color orange is used to catch attention and give a
sense of joy. Purple is used on the site to bring a
sense of mystery to add a sense of adventure. The site uses the colors to organize and block off
areas into different sections. Colors along with images are used as buttons leading to different
pages containing information about the locations and the animals that lie within.
The Zoo organizes its animals into its species and then into its genus to allow for easy
mobility throughout the website to search for information regarding the desired animal.
Photographs of the animals are used as the buttons; this helps the viewer to easily navigate the
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page. Seeing the images of the animals creates an adventure on the website to find the animal
you are looking for. The photographs of the animals were shot using a close up shot from a
birds eye view, an appeal to pathos is made creating a bond with the animals.

The Website uses indexes to

signify the information about the
animals such as a magnify glass which
is used to show where the animal is
from, a scale to show how much they
can weigh, fork/knife to show what
they eat etc This layout is used in a
clean consistent manner for all of the
animal species.
The zoo utilizes vernacular to
show the exhibits for animals, plants and
attractions. One of the rhetorical statements that is on the website is a tab for Happy Zoo Year
that begins on New Years Eve, December 31, 2015. However, when the tab is clicked it shows
applications that you may go on at the Festival of Lights, that is a holiday event from November
to January.
The website for the Cincinnati Zoo utilizes a number of appeals to ethos and pathos to
demonstrate its mission. The colors, the use of signs or semiotics and the easily organized tab
system to showcase the animals, plants and attractions of the zoo all embellish the website users
experience in an attempt to attract someone to visit. Information such as animal facts and eye
appeal work for the website to be enticing and believable and creates adventure for the animal
enthusiast. A sense of community is created by the visitor having close up views of the animals
on the website and this enhances this effect for the viewer. The information about the zoo
experience is very organized and easily obtained by use of a tab system. The zoos website has
eye appeal and gives information that leaves the viewer with wanting to come to visit to have the
first hand zoo experience.
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Works Cited

Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics. London: L. King
Pub., 2012. Print.

Kimball, Miles A., and Ann R. Hawkins. "Chapter 3: Visual Rhetoric." Document Design: A
Guide for Technical Communicators. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 63-69. Print.

Zakia, Richard D. Perception and Imaging: Photography - a Way of Seeing. Oxford: Focal,
2012. Print.