A Systematic Approach to Visual Language in Business Communication
http://job.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/29
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  peer-reviewed

Kostelnick, Charles
JBC
1988

Abstract:

Although business communication relies heavily on the visual, current approaches to graphics and text design are prescriptive and unsystematic. A 12-cell schema of visual coding modes and levels provides a model for describing and evaluating business documents as flexible systems of visual language. Emphasizing clarity and objectivity, the 'information design' movement has generated guidelines for creating functional visual displays. However, visual language in business communication is seldom rhetorically 'neutral' and requires adaptation to the contextual variables of each document, a goal the writer can achieve by com bining visual and verbal planning in the same holistic process.