Practicing Safe Visual Rhetoric on the Web
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W49-43DDF2R-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bc721a4bcc2a3e08e59a6791c2782819
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Sullivan, Patricia
Science Direct

Abstract:

This essay examines when and why a 'safe' approach to visual design for web pages is attractive to writers and writing teachers. It considers typical reasons for choosing a 'safe' approach to designing the visual dimensions of web pages, traditional sources in print graphics and writing for safe advice about visual design, and design challenges posed by issues of a web design's stability and navigation. The essay then turns to the fact that the additional media included in a web site bring more design traditions into consideration. It discusses the differing concerns and aims that issue from visual design traditions that focus on prose graphics versus those that focus on theatrical graphics. Keeping these differences in mind, the essay ends with a consideration of the forces shaping visual rhetoric on the web.