Using Visual Rhetoric to Avoid PowerPoint Pitfalls  

Criticisms that Tufte and others have leveled against PowerPoint are not insurmountable defects of the programs themselves. These defects are generally due to an orientation, shared by program designers and users alike, and toward images rather than diagrams, toward perceptual decoration and object indication rather than toward visually mediated, iconic representations of verbal information. Using Peirce's theories of visual rhetoric, we show that improvements in visual communication generally - and PowerPoint slides in particular - depend on shifting our orientation away from image-driven thinking and toward diagrammatic modes of presentation.

Manning, Alan D. and Nicole Amare. IEEE PCS (2005). Articles>Presentations>Visual Rhetoric>Microsoft PowerPoint

Using Visual Techniques to Enhance Usability  

Effective visual design enhances the overall success of a manual as much as, if not more than, the other factors that go into its makeup. The presentation shows how we redesigned a 2-volume manual into a 6-volume manual and otherwise maximized the visual impact of the manual. The many examples of improved visual presentations show how important effective visual design is to the overall impact of the manual. While we also changed stylistic and organizational elements of the manual, we found the impact of the changes in the visual elements most powerful.

Evans, Jeanette P. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Usability>Visual Rhetoric

Verbal Versus Visual: A Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures, Too    

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes—a saying debated by some but accepted pragmatically by most. Do we not all remember some little drawing or other that came in handy to clarify an otherwise plainly unintelligible discourse? Professionally, experienced technical communicators know the benefit of adding illustrations to the text of their technical publications. With increasingly better tools available for their production, pictures seem to have a bright future indeed.

Doumont, Jean-luc. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration

Verbalizing About the Visual: Visual Analysis Tools for Design Evaluation and Group Communication  

While technical communicators are increasingly involved in visual design, they frequently have difficulty communicating verbally about the visual, and, therefore, contributing effectively to design development. A five-step visual analysis tool provides a common framework and language for design evaluation and group communication.

Keyes, Elizabeth. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

Visible: The New Valuable  

Documentation departments have value; however because of the disconnection with the rest of the company, that value rarely get accurately communicated. Therefore, it is the department’s responsibility to show their value by becoming more visible. This paper describes how one technical writing department overcame negative perceptions by making themselves visible in five different ways.

Granger, Christine and Austin Skaggs. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Documentation>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Aid Virtuosity

Einstein said, If I can't 'see' it, I don't understand it. When visuals are used, you are more persuasive, you can cover more ground in less time, retention and comprehension are greater and, your presentation is more interesting and involving.

Miller, Anne. Presenters University (2002). Articles>Presentations>Visual Rhetoric>Microsoft PowerPoint

A Visual and Social Analysis of Optometric Record-Keeping Practices    

This article investigates the contribution visual rhetoric and rhetorical genre studies (RGS) can make to health care education and communication genres. Through a visual rhetorical analysis of a patient record used in an optometry teaching clinic, this article illustrates that a genre's visual representations provide significant insights into the social action of that genre. These insights are deepened by an insider analysis of the patient record that highlights how content analyses of visual designs need to be elaborated by contextual considerations. A combined visual rhetoric and RGS analysis shows that clinical novices learn to interpret the record's visual cues to safely traverse the complex requirements of this apprenticeship genre. The article demonstrates that visual rhetoric research can meaningfully contribute to the understanding of genres by presenting an enriched contextual analysis achieved by consulting with context insiders.

Varpio, Lara, Marlee M. Spafford, Catherine F. Schryer and Lorelei Lingard. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Blogs

Native to the Internet and personal in approach, weblogs deliver bite-sized portions of information on a daily basis to an ever expanding audience. Weblogs are the conjunctions of the Internet: the ands, the buts the ors – they add to online conversations, refute them, or provide new perspectives altogether.

Badger, Meredith. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Blogging

Visual Communication Stem Overview  

The visual practices of technical communication-the special use of graphics, page design, and typography, as well as the increasing reliance upon graphics software, multimedia technology, and data bases of various kindï¿distinguish the work we do from related forms of professional and academic communication. Though Visual Communication (VC) remains one of the smallest stems of the ITCC, it has traditionally offered some of the most innovative and best attended sessions of the conference. With a special emphasis on problem of design and technological change, this yearï¿s sessions should be no exception.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Communication>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Communication Stem Overview  

The field of Visual Communication is in the midst of a powerful transition driven by changing technology and a changing marketplace. Communicators are struggling with ambiguous definitions and expectations. Although visual communication has come to occupy a co-equal place with verbal communication in our field, those who identify themselves primarily as visual communicators are still a distinct minority in STC.

Brock, Cynthia J. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Communication>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Communication Stem Overview  

A glance through the proceedings of the last several STC annual conferences strikingly reveals how rapidly the field of visual communication is evolving. Even more striking than the yearly growth in the number of sessions is the expanding range of topics. This growth reflects the explosion of methods and technologies over the past few years that have impacted our work as visual communicators. The World Wide Web is revolutionizing the field of technical communication, and advances in technology in the areas of multimedia, video, and shared working environments present a set of diverse challenges to visual communicators.

Bayer, Nancy L. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Communication>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Communication: Crossing International Boundaries  

Technical communicators often produce documents that are then translated into another language. Much has been written about creating a text that is “translatable” by eliminating analogies and metaphors; using short, clear sentences; organizing information according to the cultural preference for order; and eliminating jargon. whenever possible. Because technical communicators often provide both text and graphics, such attention to the translatability of graphics is essential to producing documents that fit the cultural conventions of the country in which the document is to be used.

Bosley, Deborah S. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Language>Localization>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Factors in Constructing Authenticity in Weblogs

Authenticity is something which must be constructed rather than simply accruing to verbal content, and visual and other design features are an inherent, but often overlooked, factor in this construction.

Thompson, Gary. Saginaw Valley State University (2003). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Blogging

Visual Literacy Alternative Perspectives  

With the rush to adopt new methods of preparing graphics and the recognition that properly-prepared graphics cannot only enhance a document but may in some cases be the entire backbone of it, we need to recognize that special audiences may need extra attention when information is developed for their use. In this session, two speakers will discuss the challenges of preparing illustrated documents for pre-technological cultures and for audiences whose sight is impaired or absent. We invite you to explore these two challenges in communicating technical information.

Ausburn, Lynna J., Brea Barthel and Dart G. Peterson, Jr. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Communication>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Metonymy and Synecdoche: Rhetoric For Stage-Setting Images    

The recent trend of incorporating more visuals into communication challenges technical communicators, who must now possess both verbal and visual literacy. Despite all the recent scholarship on visual aspects of technical communication, technical communicators lack thorough guidelines for selecting and composing effective images that convey thematic and conceptual information, or what Schriver calls "stage-setting" images. This article reviews existing literature in visual communication and reports results of a study that assessed readers' opinions of themes conveyed by specific example images. It then suggests that the rhetorical tropes of metonymy and synecdoche can be used to identify images for conveying certain themes, and that successful stage-setting images will show intrinsic, not extrinsic, relationships to their thematic subject matter.

Willerton, Russell. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>TC>Visual Rhetoric>Tropes

Visual Social Semiotics: Understanding How Still Images Make Meaning    

Presents a framework for analyzing imagery in multi-modal print documents and Web sites. Demonstrates how images and text work together to make meaning for readers/users. Provides analytical tools and tips to help choose still images to enhance textual messages.

Harrison, Claire. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Rhetoric>Visual>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Texts: Format and the Evolution of English Accounting Texts, 1100-1700    

Emphasis on page design, as an aid to visual accessibility, did not receive attention in modern technical writing until the 1970s. However, accounting documents and instructional texts utilized format and document design strategies as early as the twelfth century to enhance the organization of quantitative data and linear bookkeeping entries. Format in text was used to reflect the arrangement used in oral accounting practices and to produce uniform documents. Thus, format was integral to the rise of pragmatic literacy of the commercial reader. During the Renaissance, these early format strategies received impetus from Ramist method. The result was design strategies that attempted to capture the rigid principles of organization fundamental to commercial accounting. These early accounting documents also illustrate the plain style that would become the focus of the later decades of the seventeenth century. Clarity in language paralleled clarity in page design for the sole purpose of eliminating ambiguity on the page and on the sentence level. Plain style was thus nurtured by financial forces long before the advent of natural science.

Tebeaux, Elizabeth. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>History

Visualización en el Siglo XX

El siglo XX ha visto muchos avances en campos diversos. La Visualización no ha sido una excepción a esos cambios, que prepararon el camino para su transformación en 'Visualización de Información' durante las dos décadas que precedieron al nuevo milenio.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). Articles>History>Visual Rhetoric

Visualizar la Interacción Social

La interacción social nos proporciona patrones visuales que nos ayudan a situarnos en nuestro entorno. En Internet, sin embargo, esto no es tan inmediato. Están empezando a aparecer visualizaciones que intentan paliar el problema.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Visual Rhetoric

Visualization Strategies for Team-Oriented Problem Solving, Analysis, and Project Planning    

This article describes visualization methods used by many international organizations in the design of development projects. In this context, development projects means projects that are designed to improve the quality of life for people living in a developing country. During the project design workshop essential elements of a discussion and subsequent analysis are visualized as the discussion takes place and displayed to the participants. This visual record is kept in view through the whole period of the discussion. The visual methods of identifying, analyzing and structuring a problem dramatically improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the problem solving process and the quality of the final solution. The techniques enable a large amount of knowledge available within the group of participants to be collected quickly and allows complex problems to be taken through several steps of analysis.

Lewis, Paul. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Project Management>Rhetoric

Visualizations for Data Exploration and Analysis: A Critical Review of Usability Research    

Data visualization has the potential to change the questions that people are able to pose to their data and transform their analytical methods and decision-making processes. It may, in fact, be the next generation of data reporting tools. This article argues that the prevailing computer science orientation to data visualizations is severely limited for addressing many of the usability concerns associated with supporting users in three critical problem areas: sophisticated visual literacy, complex data analysis, and new paradigms of visual inquiry. I first describe what visualization technology is and what is uncharted about the three usability areas of perceptually rich, interactive displays; complex problem-solving; and visual querying. Then I explain what it means to take a computing -- specifically an object-oriented -- perspective on the usability of visualizations, emphasizing the limitations of this point of view when it comes to supporting users in complex activities and reasoning.

Mirel, Barbara E. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Usability>Visual>Visual Rhetoric

Visualizing Information: An Overview of This Special Issue    

The guest editors offer a brief history of visualization, discuss the present state of the art, and explore the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead. They then discuss the contents of this special issue in terms of the trends in visualization theory and research. They conclude by observing that technical communicators must respond to the challenges presented in the content of this issue, both by using the methods presented and by performing the further research the authors call for. Additionally, researchers must incorporate the results of inquiry in the related fields.

Gribbons, William M. and Arthur G. Elser. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration

Visually Teaching Technical Communication—Despite Technology  

Enticed by sophisticated software, students of technical communication often lose perspective of visual effect. Inclusion of design principles into syllabi for technicalcommunication courses can conflict with those elements, such as substance content and audience analysis, that already occupy primary emphases. Principles of visual design can, however, be taught within group projects on professional presentations or similar topics. Cognitive dissonance introduced through rudimentary techniques of not computerized—but manual—design shifts student focus from keyboard and mouse to visual coherence of the final product. This simple technique offers benefits to students and researchers of technical communication.

Bonk, Robert J. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric

Visuals and Specialization Present Possibilities for Handling the Information Overload Crisis

Professional communicators and attorneys have long stood side by side as both fought to win in court—one in the court of law, the other in the court of public opinion. These two sometimes wary compatriots, however, are now beginning to partner more frequently to garner the best results for the executive suite.

Larkin, T.J. and Sandar Larkin. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs