This discourse analytic study explores aspects of metaphor construction in a sample of 900 online motivational posters. Identified metaphor units were coded with variables linked to their VEHICLE, TOPIC, and MODE, and connections between these variables examined. The findings (i) suggest metaphor as a usual characteristic of motivational posters, (ii) disclose important topics, vehicles, and topic-vehicle pairings, (iii) display that while metaphor units tend to be multi-modally presented, topics tend to be only verbally presented, and (iv) reveal tendencies for specific topics and vehicles to be presented either verbally, visually, or multi-modally. The present approach centers on interpreting patterns of content and form underlying a bigger data quantity, amplifying multimodal metaphor studies which richly explain a restricted set of examples.