Visual rhetoric is the study of how document design (including the use of illustrations, charts and graphs, typography and layout) communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages. Visual rhetoric examines also the relationship between images and writing.
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Both spatial and visual rhetorics attend to issues of boundaries. From the structure of our classroom spaces to the margins of the page, rhetoric and compositionist are investigating the ways spatial and visual experiences are impacting our work as teachers and scholars.
Kimme Hea, Amy C. University of Arizona (2003). Academic>Courses>Visual Rhetoric
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Anyone can relate the facts of an event, just like anyone can hold a camera up to a scene and document it. But bare facts and badly composed images make for poor communication. It takes skill and talent to write a good story, one that will inform and entertain. The same is true for photography. Images have always been storytellers. A good image can relay large amounts of data in a format that is pleasing and quickly absorbed by the viewer. That makes photos potentially more influential than a massive amount of words.
Salvo, Suzanne. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>Photography>Visual Rhetoric
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The Successes and Challenges of Visual Language 
Discusses efforts to create manuals that rely entirely on pictures for communication.
Hofmann, Patrick. Intercom (2004). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Supra-Textual Design: The Visual Rhetoric of Whole Documents 
Supra-textual design encompasses the global visual language of a document and operates in three modes: textual, spatial, and graphic. The rhetoric of supra-textual design includes structural functions that provide global organization and cohesion and stylistic functions that affect credibility, tone, emphasis, interest, and usability. Supra-textual rhetoric extends to other documents through conventional codes and through sets and series. Because writers may not control the end product of supra-textual design, intention may also be a rhetorical factor.
Kostelnick, Charles. Technical Communication Quarterly (1996). Articles>Document Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric
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A Systematic Approach to Visual Language in Business Communication
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.
Kostelnick, Charles. JBC (1988). Articles>Business Communication>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Tabular Data: Finding the Best Format
Discusses the results of a study comparing several formats for displaying data in tables.
Tullis, Tom and Stan Fleischman. Intercom (2004). Design>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs
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It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored to your design goals. Paul Smith shows how.
Smith, Paul. List Apart, A (2008). Design>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Geography
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Postrel's new book, The Substance of Style, explores the economic, cultural, social, personal, and political implications of the growing importance of aesthetics in business and society.
MacLaughlin, Steve. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Cultural Theory>Visual Rhetoric
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Teaching a Visual Subject and Facilitating Interaction
This panel segment focuses on facilitating interactivity and teaching a visual subject matter in a distance (satellite) learning environment.
Keyes, Elizabeth. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric>Collaboration
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Teaching the Visual: Understanding our Approaches
Despite the significant presence of the visual in the field of technical communication, we have not yet achieved a unified pedagogical approach to the visual. Because of the traditional emphasis on written communication, there is often a conflicting boundary between teaching the visual and textual, which often results in the visual assuming a secondary position to the textual.
Portewig, Tiffany Craft. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric
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The Technical Talk: More Effective Use Of Visual Aids
While most technical writing teachers assign the oral report and insist on visuals, very few offer their students good classroom examples of technical report visual aids. However, a set of 35 mm slides on one teaching topic could be easily produced with neither expensive equipment nor much ability in graphic design.
Jobst, Jack W. JAC (1981). Presentations>Advice>Visual>Visual Rhetoric
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The progression of computer-generated images in motion pictures gives a sense of where we are headed.
Faigley, Lester. University of Texas (1999). Articles>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric>Multimedia
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In visual querying, users analyze data for their decisions and problems by interacting with graphics that are dynamic and linked. This querying paradigm is new, a dramatic break from the more familiar retrieving of data via search statements and displaying of it in static charts and graphs. For this new visual querying paradigm, analysts conceptually and operationally need to master new approaches. To discover salient relationships, they need to manipulate displays. To drill down for detail or causes, they have to select data of interest directly from a graph. And to draw inferences, they have to consider meanings across several dynamically linked graphics. With the aim of studying users success in these new approaches, particularly focusing on the approach of directly selecting data from graphs, I conducted a scenario-based usability test with 10 data analysts. They interacted with visualizations to complete a realistic complex analysis evaluating employee performance. Test findings reveal a range of difficulties in visual selection that, at times, gave rise to inaccurate selections, invalid conclusions, and misguided decisions. To overcome these difficulties, support for visual selection needs to be built into interfaces and help. Results and recommended improvements are presented.
Mirel, Barbara E. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>User Interface>Usability>Visual Rhetoric
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Testing Visual-Based Modules for Teaching Writing
A study of novice writers shows that instructional materials about writing that incorporate basic principles of visual design are more effective than those that are primarily verbal. Less-capable writers benefit most from materials that include the extra text-processing cues provided by the visual design. Narrative comments about the instructional materials show that writers are aware of the design elements and appreciate them. Technical communication practitioners, researchers, trainers, and instructors have a large role to play in improving the way writing is taught.
Markel, Mike. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Theories of Visual Rhetoric: Looking At The Human Genome
For too long, journal articles and textbooks on scientific and technical discourse have adopted a positivistic approach to visuals. Unfortunately, this approach is problematic. It ignores that visuals are constructions that are products of a writer's interpretation with its own power-laden agenda. For example, in representing a tamed and dominated nature, visuals become instruments of patriarchy. Reading them responsibly requires that we uncover some of the values attached to the strategies of creating visuals and to the objects created. This article reviews the current approach taken by composition scholars, surveys richer interdisciplinary work on visuals, and-- by using visuals connected with the Human Genome Project--models an analysis of visuals as rhetoric.
Rosner, Mary. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
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This Is Not Your Father's Education
Employees, whether they are hourly workers on a manufacturing line, salaried supervisors, or owners of their own businesses, often need to develop newsletters, make presentations, create WWW Home pages, and communicate via e-mail. Therefore, students enrolled in professional writing courses need to acquire skills in manipulating desktop publishing and presentation software, hypertext and multimedia authoring programs, programs that display numerical data graphically, and programs that integrate graphics onto a Web Home Page. However; the visual displays that the generation raised with Nintendo's Mario Brothers prefer differ from those of the textbooks. They are more glitzy, colorful, and busy.
Boiarsky, Carolyn. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric
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Toward Consistency in Visual Information: Standardized Icons Based on Task
Argues for continued work on developing standards for icon design. Suggests that icons should be standardized not just within products, but across applications. Suggests that icons be standardized based on the complexity of the task represented.
Gurak, Laura J. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures
This paper offers a first step towards a rhetoric of tactile pictures by applying the visual framework developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen to a tactile alphabet book. After a brief review of tactile research, this paper explores the ways in which tactile pictures represent objects in the world and the stategies the pictures use to enact interative-represented participant relations. These explorations demonstrate that Kress and van Leeuwen's framework offers valuable insights and a sound basis, but their framework must be adjusted to the semiotic codes used in tactile pictures. It is hoped that this essay will encourage interest and research into tactile rhetoric. Such research would benefit both those who rely on tactile pictures and those who study rhetoric in its many manifestations.
Wiest, Carol. Enculturation (2001). Design>Graphic Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric
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Tracing Visual Narratives: User-Testing Methodology for Developing a Multimedia Museum Show
As a cognitive framework for making meaning of the world, the narrative provides a powerful form for structuring information, and has been adopted as a useful design framework for many communicative forms, including interactive media. This paper reports on the use of visual narrative for user-testing an interactive museum show. The viewers’ perceived narratives of a sequence of graphics from a show on brain science were compared to the designers’ intended narrative. Mapping the audience’s reading of the visual arguments proved a useful testing structure in developing the show, with color and pattern tracking proving especially critical when viewers experienced novel or abstract information.
Kim, Loel. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Usability>Testing>Visual Rhetoric
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TradeOff Cube: A Graphical User Interface Device
Decision support systems for multicriteria problems aim to help users understand the tradeoffs between their priorities (i.e., criteria weights) and their impact on the leading alternatives. Assignment of weights in existing systems requires multiple interface screens, so does analysis of the relationship between criteria weights and outcomes. A single-screen user interface device is proposed - a tradeoff cube - for declaration and viewing of all criteria weights - even if the hierarchy is multi-level and for examining the relationships between criteria weights and performance of alternatives. The tradeoff cube displays the entire hierarchy in a single base square subdivided into rectangles, each of which corresponds to a criterion. Criteria weights are adjusted by modifying the area of the rectangle. Valuations of alternatives are dynamically displayed in an adjacent stack bar chart, where stacks represent the lowest level criteria nodes. The dynamic interactive fluid process dramatically speeds up visualiz
Kirshner, Michael. EServer (2001). Design>User Interface>Visual>Visual Rhetoric
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An interactive experience informed by type and typography, which aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
typographic. Design>Typography>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Typographical Design, Modernist Aesthetics, and Professional Communication
The technology of in-house publishing is radically shifting the responsibility for document design from the graphic specialist to the individual writer. To apply the new technology, professional communicators need to understand the principles underpinning typographical design and their origin in the functionalist aesthetics of modernism, particularly as articulated by the Bauhaus. While some of the key concepts of modernism--strict economy, universal objectivity, intuitive perception, and the unity of form and purpose--are well-suited to business and technical documents, these concepts are bound to an historical and intellectual milieu. By understanding the influence of modernism on typographical design, professional communicators equipped with the new technology can adapt design principles to the rhetorical context of specific documents.
Kostelnick, Charles. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1990). Design>Typography>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Understand Film Language: An Introduction for Technical Communicators
The techniques of film language areas important to video and multimedia presentations as the techniques of written language are to technical documentation. Film language consists of such components as shot content, frame composition, camera movement, color (or shade), lighting, and film transitions. Film transitions are the way in which shots and sequences are connected and carry specific semantic weight for the viewer. However for many technical video-makers, the meanings of film transitions are overlooked in favor of flashy presentations or are abused to cover a problem. In developing videos for training or informational purposes, we should respect and understand the significance of film transitions and other aspects of film language.
Tillman, Michael A. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Multimedia>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Writing
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Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments
This essay illustrates key features of visual rhetoric as they operate in two professional academic hypertexts and student work designed for the World Wide Web. By looking at features like audience stance, transparency, and hybridity, writing teachers can teach visual rhetoric as a transformative process of design. Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important pedagogy of writing as design.
Hocks, Mary E. CCC (2003). Articles>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric>Writing
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People often use colors in their documents in the wrong ways. Many students think that bright colors should be used in a document when they want to attract someone’s eye to a place on the page. Colors alone, however, should be used in synch with white space, font size, type and placement of whatever it is you want someone to be attracted to. Furthermore, just because something is filled with a bright color does not mean that it is eye-catching or attractive. True, bright colors will quickly draw the eye there, but use colors in a way that will make the eye stay there, not glance away in disgust.
Lanier, Clinton R. sense and usability (2008). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric>Color
