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VISUAL COMMUNICATION a WRITER's GUIDE Second Edition VISUAL COMMUNICATION A WRITER’S GUIDE Second Edition Susan Hilligoss, Clemson University Tharon Howard, Clemson University New York Boston San Francisco London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore Madrid Mexico City Munich Paris Cape Town Hong Kong Montreal i This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (includ- ing on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted.The work and materials from it should never be made available to students except by instructors using the accom- panying text in their classes.All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical pur- poses and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials. Visual Communication: A Writer’s Guide, Second Edition, by Susan Hilligoss and Tharon Howard Copyright ©2002 Pearson Education, Inc. (Publishing as Longman Publishers.) All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Instructors may reproduce portions of this book for classroom use only. All other reproductions are strictly prohibited without prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. ISBN: 0-321-09981-8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - CRW - 04 03 02 01 i Contents Chapter 1 Why Visual Communication for Writers? 1 Chapter 2 First Impressions: Perception and Genres 7 Chapter 3 Second Impressions: Interpreting Images 31 and Information Graphics Chapter 4 Planning Visual Design 55 Chapter 5 Creating Pages and Screens 97 Chapter 6 Using Type 121 Chapter 7 Adding Images and Information Graphics 133 Chapter 8 Putting It Together: Sample Documents 141 Chapter 9 Learning More about Visual Communication 163 Glossary 175 iii Acknowledgments We are grateful to John Trimbur for his interest in Susan’s visual communication seminar that led to the first edition of this book, and for the high example he has set in composition studies. For her enthusiasm and encouragement to make the first edition happen, Anne E. Smith has our sincere thanks. We also appreciate Lynn Huddon’s efforts and support on this second edition. Donna Campion coordinated the process of putting together both editions with skill and tact. Leslie Taggart made a number of valuable suggestions. We also thank the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities and the Pearce Center for Professional Communication at Clemson University for use of the Multimedia Authoring Teaching and Research Facility. We wish to recognize Christopher Lohr’s efforts on the layout of the first edition and Wendy Howard’s help proofreading the second edition. Bryce and Logan Howard gave their patience. Permission to reproduce two flyers was given by the Department of Speech and Communication Studies, Clemson University. Thanks to the graduate students in Visual Communication for creating the genre graphics in Chapters 4, 5, and 8. Permission to reproduce their work is as follows: Amy Joy Bumgarner, makeover of speech lecture flyer; Keena Hamilton, typesetting of poem by William Wordsworth; Joseph D. Hooper, Kids newsletter; Ryan James Keith, original and makeover of presentation slides; Christopher Lohr, logo original and makeover, with comments, and portfolio pages; Rebecca J. Pope, makeover of speech club flyer and commen- tary; M. Esther Revis-Wagner, original and makeover of resumes; Deborah M. Staed, diagrams of whole page, body section, and navigation section of Web pages, with commentary, and original and makeover of Web pages; Myra A.Whittemore, grant proposal with budget, outcome graphic, and commentary; Michele Slater, storyboard for Web pages and tri-fold brochure; Sarah Weathers, Ceilbrite Web pages; Angela Davis, Aim High image poem; Parker Smith, tri-fold brochure and Livewire newsletter redesign. David Munger of Digital Text Con- struction, Davidson, NC, provided additional graphics. Our thanks to Barbara Heifferon for the example of the South Carolina Department of Transportation project. Susan’s technical editing class, spring 1999, created the glossary and provided additional copyediting of the first edition. Finally, we are indebted to many people for their contributions to visual rhetoric and document design, especially Stephen A. Bernhardt, Karen A. Schriver, Anne Wysocki, and Charles Kostelnick. iv CHAPTER 1 Why Visual Communication for Writers? In the past, college students wrote mainly essays and research papers seen by teachers and no one else. These papers were typed on typewriters, or “word-processed” and printed out on equipment that emulated typed text. They were formatted according to standards based on the manuscript preparation guidelines that college teachers used to submit their own writing to scholarly journals or presses. Today, besides essays, college students write many other types of documents and consider readers outside the classroom. They prepare their work with sophisticated computers and printers that rival the output of commercial printing. They have many choices of fonts and the ability to incorporate drawings, charts, and graphs. They have access to a wealth of graphics via the Internet and inexpensive collections of clip art, as well as the means to create digital photographs and artwork. They make pages for the World Wide Web and effectively publish their work to a large audience. They collaborate with others, so that their documents present the ethos of a group, class, or organization to their readers. In short, the world of college writing has changed. The visual design of the traditional essay or research paper, so long taken for granted, is only one of many “looks” that college writing may take. With so many choices, how should you, as a writer, make decisions about visual design? This guide is intended to provide strategies and numerous examples for you to consider. What is visual communication? In this guide, visual communication means all the ways that writers and readers interact through the look of pages and screens. Visual design means the structured process of planning for this interaction. There are other similar, overlapping terms. The widely used term document design covers much the same ground as visual communication, except that document design may also refer to matters of language, such as employing certain types of paragraph and sentence structure that have been shown to be easily understood by readers (Shriver 10; Felker et al. 1-2). Communications design and information design also refer broadly to visual communication.1 In this guide, texts 1 and documents refer to both paper and on-screen writing. Likewise, images and graphics are used interchangeably for visuals that are distinct from verbal material. Visual communication is part of the writer’s task because the visual elements of a text affect how readers interact with the words. The interaction is rhetorical, and the importance of visual communication in documents is also supported by empirical research. Visual communication is rhetorical We can think of a document as a field of interacting rhetorical clusters. Karen A. Shriver Increasingly, documents are being regarded as more than words. Readers do not experi- ence your written words in a vacuum. Typically you present your words on paper or on screen—that is, you arrange and deliver the text to readers. As soon as they encounter your text, readers immediately start to take in many kinds of visual information about it, from its apparent size to details of type, color, layout, and illustrations. As they continue to read or even just examine it, they use (and make judgments about) the visual design. Thus the design of a document is rhetorical, part of the interaction of writers and readers and contrib- uting to effective communication. Consider visual design even during the early stages of your writing, invention and audience analysis. Good visual design clarifies a document’s organization, called arrangement in classical rhetoric (Dragga and Gong 12). As for style, just as you choose your words to be “effective, appropriate, and striking,” so may you choose images or visual design elements (Shriver 65). Design is also integral to effective presentation, known rhetorically as delivery (Dragga and Gong 14). Visual design contributes to your ethos or credibility. Design that respects readers’ knowledge supports a text’s ethical appeal, while inappropriate format or jarring visual choices may make the document less credible. Table 1.1 Visual communication and classical rhetoric Invention Style Arrangement Delivery Ethos 2 In summary, when you plan the look of your document with your readers in mind, you engage in rhetorical thinking. Visual design organizes readers’ experiences of texts Research in cognition, perception, and human factors psychology demonstrates that read- ers’ understanding of texts is influenced by formatting and visual cues. Reading is a complex activity that relies on many layers of visual information. How readers read. Studies of functional documents like manuals and forms have shown that readers do not read every word: 1. Readers are selective about what and how they read. 2. They read to accomplish their own purposes. 3. They actively interpret documents in light of their own knowledge and expectations. Initially, readers decide what and how they will read. As Janice C. Redish, a researcher in document design and usability testing, declares, “Reading is a voluntary act; people don’t have to do it” (“Understanding” 15). In the workplace, in public discourse, and at school, many documents compete for attention. Readers are compelled to be selective. Once they decide to look at a document, readers do not necessarily read from start to finish. They scan, then read with their goals in mind—that is, they use the document as a tool to accomplish their own purposes. For example, in one study, readers of a manual read only two or three sentences at a time before they returned to the task at hand (“Understanding” 20).
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