Nancy Allen
Here's the book so many of us have been looking for. As the editors of this collection say, most of us who teach visual rhetoric and design have been trained as 'wordsmiths.' We have extensive experience and skill in verbal expression, but we're 'newer to the teaching and practice of visual communication' (p. 2), the area that our students now need to learn. Brumberger and Northcut have developed Designing Texts with instructors like these in mind, as well as those more visually trained who would like some helpful strategies for teaching and evaluating visual communications. As the editors note, 'Writing is still important, but it has been joined on the main stage by visual communication' (p. 2). In fact, as DeVoss says in Chapter 10 about the programs at Michigan State University, 'We value document design to such an extent that we've situated it as one of the four core courses all majors take' (p.191).
Students and professionals now need the skills and understanding to manage visual literacy. They need to understand and work with both new technologies and time-tested rhetorical principles of persuasion and to do so while working in multimedia. This is a tall order. The question for instructors and designers becomes, How do we do this? This collection of articles by leaders in the field provides extensive guidelines and examples for teaching, learning, and evaluating visual communications. In addition, issues raised by the pros and cons of using technologies are discussed in the final section, making it clear that working with and teaching visual communication presents a major challenge to students and also to their teachers. The chapters in this book provide us with valuable guidance through this thicket. —Nancy Allen, Professor, Eastern Michigan University
Alan Gross
Designing Texts will be indispensable to novices and to experienced teachers of writing and technical communication, both those who have taught and those who intend to teach courses involving or focusing entirely on visual communication. Contributors offer useful advice on constructing syllabi, on formulating and evaluating student assignments, and on employing image-producing and image-editing software. —Alan Gross, Professor of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Karen Schriver
Designing Texts will help college teachers meet the growing challenges of teaching visual communication. The book offers practical techniques for increasing the visually literacy of the next generation of technical and professional communicators. With its innovative approaches to the pedagogy of visual communication, this text offers new methods for teaching students to solve design problems, think visually, and develop visual-rhetorical sophistication. The contributors take up the pressing questions of developing a common language for evaluating visual artifacts, of constructing visual arguments, of understanding technological mediation in teaching visual communication, and importantly, of evaluating and assessing what we teach. The book will serve as an important resource for teaching visual literacy. If you are the person in your department who develops new courses in visual communication or document design, you need this book. If you are adapting traditional courses to include visual communications or developing new courses online, you also need this book. —Karen Schriver, Author, Dynamics in Document Design, President, KSA Communication Design & Research
David Blakesley
Eva Brumberger and Kathryn Northcut have assembled luminaries in the field of visual communication who can help us understand the critical function of the visual in communication of all types across multiple media, as well as provide us with the practical pedagogical strategies for fostering visual literacy in our students. Visual literacy is too often mistaken as merely the aptitude for interpreting the visual, but the contributors to this volume understand that writers also need to know how to shape their own visual rhetoric in the act of composing, as producers of visual content, from print to screen. Writing instructors who rightly know that students need to learn these strategies will find useful suggestions and examples throughout the book, ranging across composition, argumentation, technical communication, and online writing.
The book concludes with important essays on the assessment of visual communication and the critical and effective uses of new tools and technologies. Designing Texts is a valuable contribution to the conversations about the importance of visual rhetoric in modern communication. —David Blakesley, Campbell Chair in Technical Communication, Professor of English, Clemson University
Sam Dragga
I applaud the editors for putting together this impressive book. It ought to be required reading for every new instructor of first-year composition as well as technical communication. The coverage of theory here is lucid, the teaching advice immensely practical, and the examples copious and pertinent across multiple disciplines. Reading this collection is like joining a virtual conference on visual communication where experienced and articulate scholars in the field have gathered, the keynote speaker is Stephen Bernhardt, and every presentation is genuinely edifying. —Sam Dragga, Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric, Chair, Department of English, Texas Tech University
