The parts of the Louvre

The page at issue is set out for reference in Figure 3.7. It is a two page spread printed in full colour. The function of the pages of this book are to give visitors to Paris information about sites of interest, including histori-cal background and practihistori-cal tips for their visit. Within this collection of information, there is little that is clearly much more important for the visi-tor than other facets, and so the resulting design reflects this by presenting an essentially ‘random-access’ document in which information can be se-lected in any order. Within this, however, there are particular organisations and access strategies supported. The analysis will now clarify this.

First, as in all analyses, we establish the base units for the visual unit being considered, in this case the two-page spread as a whole. For this first illustration of a complete analysis, we present this step in much more detail than will be followed in subsequent examples in the book. Even here, how-ever, we will make a number of simplifications to shorten the exposition. In particular, as defined above and listed in Table 3.1, we know that a full base unit list should actually include all the sentences that occur in the texts of the pages analysed as separate units. This is in order to support subsequent linguistic and textual analyses. However, since we will not be carrying out any linguistic analyses, we will leave this level of description to one side, grouping all sentences that occur into paragraphs in order to focus more on the layout description.

In addition, the boxed inset for the ‘Visitor’s Checklist’ upper right in-troduces a considerable number of base units of its own because of its free mixing of icons, text fragments, and both bold and italic highlighting of in-formation. This information could also have been presented visually draw-ing more on the resources of a table—the information presented is in fact a simple list of ‘attributes’ (e.g., various telephone numbers, opening times, admission charge, etc.) and their values. Some of the attributes are identi-fied by icons, others by bold italicised text. In fact most of the text apart from the initial attribute ‘Map’, identifying where in the main map provided in the book the Louvre is to be found, and the following information about

Figure 3.7 A page from a Dorling-Kindersley guide to Paris: description of the Louvre (Eyewitness Travel: Paris, 2007, pp122-123); used by permission

tickets is in italics. Two extracts from this list (one from the beginning; the other from the end) that shows the contents of the inset in close-up are the following:

Here we can see how what is essentially a single text paragraph is sprinkled liberally with visual icons. In a complete list of the base units for this page, therefore, each of these attributes and values would receive its own base unit. We omit this detail here because the paragraph in fact operates entirely

in the text-flow typographic mode and so does not extend our discussion of layout at this point.

That the layout of the inset does not use spatial cues is, however, in-teresting in its own right; indeed, this non-spatial presentational form for table-like information in which a sequence of attributes and their values is presented as continuous text receives some rather harsh words in Twyman (1982). But for the present case, it can be argued that there are some good reasons for taking this solution rather than using a table. First, the inset contains only supportive ‘enabling’ information for the visitor rather than factual information about the building or site being visited, which is the main rhetorical focus of the page: this non-prominent rhetorical role then requires that the information presented should not become too dominant in the page layout. Second, many of the pages in the book contain insets of precisely this style and form: the reader therefore can readily become ac-climatised to this presentational strategy for this book and, indeed, for the entire series of books produced by the publisher in this genre. And third, much of the function of defining the access structure for the information in this inset that would be communicated spatially within a table is here effected in any case by the visually prominent icons. The regular order adopted for the information presented across the pages of the book further supports this access structure.

The inset therefore functions rather well for precisely its current commu-nicative purpose: further information of a detailed (e.g., phone numbers) or generic (e.g., is there food, wheelchair access, and so on) nature can be accessed by the reader if he or she requires it, without having that infor-mation at all prominent or accessible on the page when the reader does not require it. In a sense, this treatment makes information available on demand in a manner entirely analogous to hyperlinks in a web-page: the practiced reader is able to ignore the information until it becomes useful, and then to locate the required component with some efficiency. We will return to ques-tions of the relation between communicative intenques-tions and selected layout in Chapter 4, but we can already see from this example how it is essential to consider layout decisions and the deployment of visual-spatial resources with respect to the rhetorical purpose and genre/production constraints of their contextualising documents rather than in isolation.

Turning now to the rest of the spread, Table 3.3 sets out the base units for the remaining parts of the page. This is similar to the listing we gave above for the Gannet page, but with additional information concerning the type of material found in each unit—i.e., whether the unit is a photograph, icon, text and so on. This is not strictly necessary for base units because the information is in any case properly maintained in the layout structure—

U001 T Mus´ee . . . U040 D A.d. Triomph U079 L connector

U002 I reversed 1 U041 I star U080 T Sully Wing

U003 I semicircle U042 T A.d. Triomph U081 L connector U004 T the Louvre U043 T paragraph U082 T Cour Car´ee U005 D the Louvre U044 T Denon Wing U083 L connector

U006 T The Jardin U045 L connector U084 T Cour

Napol´ean U007 T paragraph U046 T glass pyramid U085 L connector U008 L connector U047 L connector U086 p the Louvre

U009 B framing U048 B coloured U087 T Charles V

U010 T Building U049 T Star features U088 T paragraph

U011 T paragraph – – U089 I semicircle

U012 d Louvre plan U051 I star U090 B coloured

U013 T Alterations U052 T entrance U091 T Checklist

U014 I square U053 L horizontal – –

U015 T 1515–47 U054 I star U093 T checklist

U016 I square U055 T Colonnade U094 P Colonnade

U017 T 1560 U056 L horizontal U095 T Colonnade

U018 I square U057 I star U096 I star

U019 T 1589–1610 U058 T M. moats U097 T paragraph

U020 I square U059 L horizontal U098 L connector

U021 T 1610–43 U060 I star U099 T The Salle

U022 I square U061 T A.d. Triomphe U100 T paragraph U023 T 1643–1715 U062 P P.Richelieu U101 L connector

U024 I square U063 L connector U102 P M. moats

U025 T 1804–15 U064 T P.Richelieu U103 I star

U026 I square U065 T paragraph U104 T M. moats

U027 T 1852–70 U066 T Cour Marly U105 T paragraph

U028 I square U067 L connector U106 T Paris

U029 T 1989 U068 T paragraph U107 L frame

U030 T Pavillion U069 T Richelieu W. U108 T 122 U031 L connector U070 L connector U109 T Tuileries

– – U071 P pyramid U110 L frame

– – U072 I star U111 T 123

– – U073 T entrance U112 L connector

U035 P E. Facade U074 T paragraph U113 T paragraph U036 T E. Facade U075 L connector

U037 T Carrousel U076 T Cour Puget U038 L connector U077 L connector U039 T paragraph U078 T Cour

Khorsabad Table 3.3 Base units of the Louvre two-page spread.

Key B:box, D:drawing, d:diagram, I:icon, L:line, P:photograph, p:painting, T:text.

it is helpful here for identifying just which unit is being talked about in each case. For subsequent reference, we also number the units and label them with the prefix ’U’ in order to distinguish them from units introduced within other layers; the numbering generally runs from top-to-bottom and left-to-right although nothing follows from this.⁵ Even with all the tex-tual contributions collapsed to the granularity of paragraphs, this explicit description makes it clear that there are a considerable number of units to be considered in this spread. Nevertheless, identifying and listing them is quite straightforward and simply follows the rules for individuating units described above.

This list of base units labels the elements on the page so that we can dis-cuss both their typographic realisation and their participation as meaning-carrying elements at other levels of analysis. For ease of reference, and again only for purposes of illustration for this first detailed example, we set out in Figure 3.8 the Louvre page showing graphically precisely where the most prominent base units are to be found. This lets us see directly which unit corresponds to which part of the page as this may not always be com-pletely clear from our descriptions in the table, which have been abridged in order to save space.