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.
#24786
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
#23845
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
Visual designers working on the web need an understanding of the medium in which they work, so many have taken to code. Many have entered the usability lab. But what about the other side? Are developers and human factors professionals immersed in literature on gestalt and color theory?
Wroblewski, Luke. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
#29705
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
#20535
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
#29538
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
#25583
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
#24961
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
#24781
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
#24810
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
#24807
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
#14562
Visual Communication: The Expanding Role of Technical Communicators
Visual communication no longer refers only to illustrating verbal information but to all aspects of designing documents. To be effective as information architects, technical communicators must understand the opportunties and limitations of developing technologies, the basics of communication in general and of visual communication in particular, especially the principles of selection, design, positioning, production, and cost of graphics.
Rainey, Kenneth T. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>Graphic Design>Visual>Visual Rhetoric
#23009
Whenever I ask a large group of people whether or not they have a visual disability, very few of them answer that they do. Then I ask whether or not anyone uses any assistive technology to overcome their visual disability. Most people are unsure what I mean. Invariably, though, as I look out across the group, I see many of them--often a majority--using an assistive technology for their vision at that very moment.
WebAIM (2004). Design>Accessibility>Visual
#25490
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
#24976
Visual Indexes for Visual Products
Many people prefer to use indexes to find the information they are looking for. As software products become more visual, so too can their indexes. Visual indexes allow users to find information about something without having to know what it’s called. And by organizing information in visual indexes by time, location, continuum or magnitude, or category, you can reveal aspects of a subject that might not otherwise be revealed. Visual indexes can be included in print and online.
Dukay, Kristin L. and Charles Tyrone. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Indexing>Visual
#24968
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
#15236
The study of visual communication is a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional effort. People who write on this topic come from mass communication (including photography, advertising, and news editorial areas), film and cinema studies, education, art and aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, architecture and even archaeology. This rich melange of viewpoints is an asset because of the insights that come from cross-fertilization, however it causes some problems academically for those of us who teach visual communication because of a lack of any sense of common theory. This is not to suggest that there is or should be a central of core theory that organizes the field, however, it would be easier to order a curriculum, as well as a graduate program of study, if there were some notion of at least the important theories and scholars from the various disciplines that need to be covered. This project looks at the body of literature and the categories that emerge from the writings to develop a taxonomy of topics and some sense of the location of the most important, or at least the most frequently written about, areas of study. The objective is to collect the scholarly writing on the most central visual communication topics (mental imagery, visual thinking, the language metaphor, psychology), as well as peripheral topics that interweave with visual communication, such as sociology, anthropology, archaeology and architecture.
Moriarty, Sandra and Keith Kenney. International Visual Literacy Association. Resources>Bibliographies>Information Design>Visual Rhetoric
#22912
Today, communication requires more than just pages of printed words. Producing effective documents and training requires the ability to understand, think, and communicate graphically-to be visually literate. This demonstration shows how to communicate almost anything graphically. Through creative brainstorming you will start to think visually and to translate text into graphics. By looking at numerous examples of what works and what doesn’t, you are going to learn valuable principles that you can use back on the job to refine your own graphics.
Horton, William K. III. STC Proceedings (1997). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
#29119
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
#10292
Visual Perception and Its Impact on Technical Communication
Past studies of visual perception have produced a wide library of information on what forms of information can be most easily absorbed by the user. In this paper, we consolidate the literature to provide guidelines on the most effective steps in text engineering, with applications in both printed documentation and website design.
Kaltenbach, Susan. EServer (2001). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Visual>Cognitive Psychology
#10244
We hear a lot about proofreading. And, although it is a vital part of any publication, there's another kind of proofreading that can make as much (if not more) difference in the success of your publication. Note: This is part four in a continuing series about the creative processes involved in designing a publication. I was prompted to begin this series by the discussions and questions asked by attendees of my Newsletter Design workshop recently in Dallas.
Design, Typography and Graphics (2000). Design>Graphic Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric
#22811
This course focuses on articulating rhetorical opportunities present in the visual turn; the role of perceptual processes, time, movement, and memory in the act of seeing; the interanimation of the verbal and the visual in representation; the circumstances of visual culture and art; visual communication in print and on the Web; and identification as a visual/rhetorical process. Is there potential to create critical verbo-visual literacy? The course explores what such definitions of literacy mean for communication, argumentation, persuasion and narration.
Salvo, Michael J. Purdue University (2004). Academic>Courses>Graduate>Visual Rhetoric
#24856
Visual Rhetoric (and Other Visual) Resources 
Links to a variety of resources about visual rhetoric.
Wysocki, Anne Frances. Michigan Tech University (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
#19197
Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age
This course participates in constructing visual rhetoric for composition studies and computers and composition studies. There are few models for the graduate study of visual rhetoric, and certainly there are not canonical issues or figures in this area. Instead there is the growing realizing that written discourse increasingly involves visual dimensions that are influenced (and sometime controlled) by the composer(s). Nowhere is this understanding more concretely rendered than in areas that depend on technology. In a real sense, technology has pushed us to see visual dimensions of meaning as falling under our influence. Of course, that influence can only be exercised via know-how.
Sullivan, Patricia. Purdue University. Academic>Courses>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric
#21539
A collection of online resources for visual rhetoric, based at York College of Pennsylvania.
Propen, Amy. York College of Pennsylvania. Resources>Directories>Visual Rhetoric
#29950
This interactive tutorial is designed to supplement your use of TCTC, and provides new information and activities that will enhance your understanding of visual rhetoric. This tutorial has five main sections, Visual Rhetoric, Use of Visuals, Types of Visuals, Color, and Design. With only a few variations, each section is divided into smaller three- to five-page chapters, all arranged using three basic types of pages.
Dobrin, Sidney I., Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. TCTC. Academic>Course Materials>Visual Rhetoric
