Digital Politics: Engaging Voters Online

The 2008 Presidential election's brought a new battleground to the forefront of the political arena - online. The online activities of both Barack Obama and John McCain, and their UK counterparts, highlights the increasing reach and influence of online channels and seems to be setting a trend for elections to come.

Salisbury, Olivia. Webcredible (2008). Articles>Rhetoric>Online>Politics

Visual Communication and Web Application Design

In order for a Web application to be "usable", it must be understandable. It needs to communicate, and communicate effectively. When a user interacts with a Web application they have only the visual presentation (the interface) to "tell" them what the application has to offer, and how they can make use of it. As a result, designers must rely on visual communication principles to tell our audience: about the behavior, structure, and purpose of our Web applications. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our audience to understand our messages and intentions, and the easier it is for them to use and appreciate our Web applications.

Wroblewski, Luke. Functioning Form (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Visual Rhetoric

Where Visual Literacy and Interface Design Meet

Scientists tell us that visual communication is natural human behaviour which all normally sighted persons engage in every day and take for granted, yet it is the product of a complex human intelligence that is very poorly understood.

Hugo, Jacques. Usability News (2005). Articles>User Interface>Visual Rhetoric

Writing Skills and Better Visual Design

Strong visual design is about balance. It requires an appropriate relationship between written content, information hierarchy and the use of visual elements such as graphics and photography. While most visual designers will tacitly acknowledge this, the preponderance of visual design artifacts shows a bias toward either the words or the visual elements, and too often does not reflect strong information hierarchy. These all-too-frequent examples of spotty visual design belie personal comfort levels and experience.

Knemeyer, Dirk. Thread Information Design (2003). Articles>Writing>Visual Rhetoric

Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization

Visual communication can be thought of as two intertwined parts: personality, or look and feel, and visual organization. The personality of a presentation is what provides the emotional impact —your instinctual response to what you see. Creating an appropriate personality requires the use of colors, type treatments, images, shapes, patterns, and more, to “say” the right thing to your audience. This article, however, focuses on the other side of the visual communication coin: visual organization.

Wroblewski, Luke. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric

Does Design Matter in Comparison to Content?

Few people have ever commented about my blog’s design at all. The same goes with the music intros for my podcasts. I can change the music each time, and no one ever responds. In contrast, if a post has good content, I see a steady stream of comments. My experience leads me to conclude that content is about 90% important, and design is 10% important.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>Writing

There's the Tribe, Where's the Technical Author?

Connecting people and giving them a place in the world IS (what makes you a living). I immediately thought, this affects technical authors. They connect people to information, rather than people. They help people find their place. They play a role in building and maintaining an organisation's tribe. They show there's more to the supplier-customer relationship than the moment of the sale.

Cherryleaf (2008). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Rhetoric

Read It! A Poem for Writers

The poem at the top of the linked page was written around the time that I first conceived of creating a not-for-profit (NPO) online meeting place for academic research writers, editors, translators, illustrators, and publishers (The Research Cooperative). The aim of the poem is to emphasize the creative and contemplative aspects of academic writing, and it has been posted on the Research Cooperative as a kind of founding text for the site.

Matthews, Peter J. Research Cooperative, The (2002). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Nobody Wants to Read a Stupid Blog

Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog.

Chung, Tony. Duo Consulting (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Rhetoric

Ten Recipes for Persuasive Content

In many of my columns, I have touted the importance of persuasive, or influential, content and shared relevant theories and arguments, sprinkling in some practical tips and examples along the way. This column brings together a collection of practical tips, or recipes, for persuasive content.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Persuasive Design

Stepping into Oz: Managing and Delivering Successful Visual Design

How can design teams get to a successful visual design with their clients? Getting to the right visual design can be the trickiest part of a design project. One of the key reasons is that some clients have a hard time saying clearly what they want from the visual design.

Houck-Whitaker, Julia. Adaptive Path (2008). Articles>Management>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

Rethinking Loci Communes and Burkean Transcendence    

In situations of potential business change, the cooperation of various direct and indirect stakeholders (i.e., employees, customers, shareholders, neighbors) is crucial. The alternative policy courses may all be reasonable, and yet none of them may be clearly best for all stakeholders; support for an option must be cultivated through public rhetoric. Loci communes and Burkean transcendence are two potent rhetorical strategies that can help business leaders publicly weigh and civilly advocate a policy position relative to competing alternatives. This article develops and illustrates that argument by analyzing the public rhetoric involved in AirTran's attempt to build support for its hostile takeover of Midwest Airlines and Midwest's successful resistance to that attempt. Midwest's deft development of the transcendent term value helped it circumvent the initial deadlock between its preferred loci communes (i.e., the existent and quality) and AirTran's (i.e., the possible and quantity). The article advances a rationale and call for rhetorical scholarship to adopt more situated, social practice views of loci communes and transcendence.

Olson, Kathryn M. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric>Civic

You Got Your Technology in My Typography!!!

What is it about XML, and the technical publishing solutions that storing content in XML enables, that makes non-technical, design-oriented people in publishing want to run for the hills while screaming “You just don’t get it!”, leaving the technical people in publishing in the dust, wondering why no one understands all the wonderful benefits that can be reaped through publishing automated by XML-enabled technologies.

Kaplansky, Jean. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Content Management>Typography>Visual Rhetoric

New Research Shows That Speaking Can Enhance Your Career

People perceive someone who speaks up as a competent leader - regardless of whether they actually are competent. That’s the finding of a fascinating research study that has just been reported online at Time.

Mitchell, Olivia. Speaking About Presenting (2009). Articles>Presentations>Rhetoric

Why 2007 I.P.C.C. Report Lacked ‘Embers’

Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as “burning embers,” is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel’s preceding climate report in 2001.

Revkin, Andrew C. New York Times, The (2009). Articles>Scientific Communication>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

The Dynamic Discourse of Visual Literacy in Experience Design  

Educators should include new dimensions of visual literacy in academic curricula. Today’s students are actively involved in interactive experiences. They are contributing content to websites as well as designing websites and other types of online experiences for the public. Students need to understand the semiotics of interactive computing and how the integration of diverse sensory data with social interaction impacts the way we interpret online information.

Search, Patricia. TechTrends (2009). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric>User Experience

Ten Commandments of Storytelling

You may not have known your presentations have protagonists, but they do (or should). And whether the protagonist is you, your product, your cause or even your audience, IT must be primarily responsible for the major benefit or crisis you are trying to convey. If you’re selling a product or service, let it demonstrate exactly what it does. If you’re asking for funds, the audience may be the protagonist. Make it clear that they are the key to making it all happen.

Martin, Jill. slide:ology (2009). Articles>Presentations>Rhetoric

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer

Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use—Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less.

Blanchard, Jennifer. Copyblogger (2009). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Social Networking

Tech-Rhetters Go Back to Grad School

A while ago, I queried the techrhet mailing list for suggestions. I asked: Which five technical/technological skills (beyond the basics of e-mailing and word processing) would you make absolutely sure you had under control at the start or the end of the PhD process? Here are the responses.

Whipple, Bob, Jr. Bedford-St. Martin's (2009). Articles>Education>Technology>Rhetoric

Enhancing Your Written Works by Producing Effective Charts

Producing effective charts is essential to any document that conveys technical, scientific, or financial data. Here are four suggestions to ensure that your charts are effective and enhance rather than detract from your document.

Davidson, Jeff. Carolina Communique (2009). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs

What's Cognitive About Rhetoric?

Our capacity for mimesis -- the capacity to represent experiences and states-of-affairs in iconic and indexical formats under strict bodily control -- molds later symbolic thought and action. Culture is not the initial product of language, language is the product of a particular manifestation of Mimetic Culture.

Van Evera Oakley, Todd. Social Science Research Network (2008). Articles>Rhetoric>Research>Cognitive Psychology

The Personable Manual

Why do product manuals sound formal and stiff-upper-lipped? Why don’t users read manuals? These questions have haunted the precincts of Technical Writing for quite some time now. From what I have seen in Indian writers, I am forced to conclude that English Composition, as we were taught in school, is the culprit.

Kumar, Suman. Indus (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Rhetoric

Harnessing the Power of Annotations -- An Interview with Dan Brown

Annotations come in all shapes and sizes depending on the artifact and the intent of the document. People are probably most familiar with wireframe annotations, where the author calls out areas of the screen to describe functionality not immediately discernible from the picture alone.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Interviews>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration

Visual Decision Making

User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable success. Underneath the arguments, I see a fundamental culture clash.

Lynch, Patrick. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>User Experience

Review: Page Layout and Design Tips from Jean-luc Doumont’s Trees, Maps, and Theorems

Given the engineering audience, one can’t hope for too much style and flair in the prose, but it reads like a college textbook, outlining basic principles in a flat way. It is too focused on “clarity, accuracy, correctness, etc.” (p.79) to make for a fun or engaging read.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Reviews>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric