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Book Review: Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication

Aime Knight Journal of Business and Technical Communication 2014 28: 249 DOI: 10.1177/1050651913513876 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jbt.sagepub.com/content/28/2/249.citation

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Book Review
Journal of Business and Technical Communication 2014, Vol. 28(2) 249-253 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav jbtc.sagepub.com

Book Review

Book Review Editor: Christa Teston, Ohio State University Brumberger, Eva R., & Northcut, Kathryn M. (Eds.). (2013). Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 332 pp. $69.95. ISBN: 978-0-89503785-5. e Knight, Saint Josephs University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Reviewed by: Aime DOI: 10.1177/1050651913513876

Stephen Bernhardt first argued for the importance of helping students to see texts in his 1986 landmark article, Seeing the Text, published in College Composition and Communication. While his article was quickly accepted for publication, it took over 5 years to bring it to print due to a lack of companion pieces. Bernhardt recalled that as a field, we were not quite ready to map visual rhetoric to our practice (p. 303). Almost 30 years later, visual rhetoric is increasingly part of the teaching practice for instructors of technical and professional communication. Multimedia and multimodal platforms are transforming modes of writing; word-based communication increasingly shares space with image, sound, video, interaction, and various other means of representation. Teaching designed communication now encompasses an array of possibilities that include visual rhetoric, graphic design, multimodal composition, Web design, presentation design, sound design, video production, animation, 3-D rendering, and information visualization. To prepare students for this changing landscape of communication, instructors are challenged to engage with a wide variety of writing situations and experiment with a range of available technologies in order to help students read, write, view, interact, and otherwise make meaning through visual texts. The edited collection Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication brings together a diversity of theoretical and practical approaches to teaching visual communication. Editors Brumberger and Northcut claim that until now, professional communication and composition have not had a

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book aimed at instructors and focused exclusively on the challenges of teaching visual communication in postsecondary classrooms (p. 6). Organized into five sections, this book is pragmatic at heartchock-full of sample assignments, heuristics, and rubrics for the visual communication instructor. The interested reader will also find a timely survey of the rich and varied state of the field, featuring theorists, pedagogies, and practices that are currently employed in visual communication classrooms. Part 1, Visual Thinking and Problem Solving, brings together the voices of practitioners who emphasize visual thinking in their teaching. Seen together, these introductory chapters highlight the move toward more informed practice, using theory to inform teaching. In the first chapter, Lisa Meloncon speaks to the challenge of teaching visual texts, attesting that what is missing from the field are best practices and specific pedagogical strategies to integrate visual communication into the classroom (p. 13). To extend ways of seeing in the teaching of visual communication, Meloncon introduces students to landscape theory, particularly the work of cultural geographer Pierce Lewis. Meloncon claims that it is important to help students acquire a shared vocabulary as a way to order and explain the world they see (p. 20). In the next chapter, Teena Carnegie approaches the teaching of visual design through problem solving. When we teach the grammar and vocabulary of design, she suggests, we emphasize that design is rhetorical. We teach students about the rhetoric of design, asking them to consider audience, purpose, and context . . . although we recognize design as a problem solving activity, we often do not explicitly teach problem solving (p. 47). Carnegie discusses four theories of problem solving traditional, associationist, information processing, and Gestalt. According to Carnegie, as design is a problem to be solved, a means for providing enabling solutions, and a problem solving process, it cannot be readily explained through any one theory or approach (p. 47). Seen together, these approaches represent a pedagogical turn to design thinking, the act of applying a designers sensibility and methods to creative problem solving. The final two chapters in this section further emphasize the pedagogical trend toward empirical observation and experience. In her teaching, Linda Driskill turns to argumentation theory in order to help students understand how conclusions can be reached through logic. She helps students put theory into practice by analyzing flyers, slides, and commercial advertisementskinds of designed communication that students encounter in their everyday lives. She explains that sometimes students dont recognize these commercials as arguments, as persuasive claims that should stand up to tests for logic, evidence, and assumptions (p. 49). In the last chapter

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in this section, Nicole Amare and Alan Manning also call for instructors to produce empirically sound approaches to the teaching of designed communication based on real-world evidence and observation. The authors present their own research on color and emotional response, which, they claim, provide a framework for teaching color with the end goal of providing an evidence-based approach to pedagogy that moves beyond prescriptions and lore (p. 94). By Part 2, Contexts for Teaching and Learning, some consensus is apparent about the process of teaching visual communication as a contextually situated activity. This section features three different methods for context-focused instruction. To begin, Eva Brumberger discusses partnering with community-based organizations in a service-learning course in order for students to gain a real-world audience for their work. She notes that for too many of our students, design experience is slim, and a community-based project may be their only opportunity for professional development in a given semester (p. 114). Working with a community partner provides the student not only with a working knowledge of visual design principles but also with a more complex understanding of situated practice that extends beyond the classroom. Next, Claire Lauer also moves the conversation beyond the classroom walls and into an asynchronous online class setting. According to Lauer, teaching visual communication in digital environments presents unique challenges. In an online setting, for example, access to design software such as Adobe Creative Suite presents a real obstacle for some students, which (along with the more learner-centered environment) may compel instructors to experiment with different tools and techniques to deliver their lessons. Teaching visual communication in an online setting forces Lauer to assess what learning outcomes are important and how she is going to facilitate those outcomes in ways that she may not consider in a traditional face-to-face classroom (p. 120). Finally, Lee Odell also calls for new strategies to teach the critique and creation of texts. He develops a versatile heuristic that can aid students working in a variety of mediums and contexts, from print to video. The heuristic features four processes: moving from given to new, selecting and encoding information, creating and fulfilling readerviewer expectations, and establishing logical and perceptual relationships. Guiding the reader through an analysis of technical instructions and then applying the heuristic to a students video project, Odell demonstrates the flexibility of such a framework in teaching designed communication. Part 3, Evaluation and Assessment, focuses on outcomes, goals, and objectives for teaching visual communication. This section discusses

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assessment in relation to course projects as well as how this assessment could inform the broader course curriculum. The editors note that as visual communication assumes a more prominent role in pedagogy, it must also become more central to evaluation and assessment (p. 177). Kathryn Northcuts chapter leads this section by reporting on three studies of visual communication practices featuring a focus group, a survey, and a roundtable discussion. As Northcut reports, published scholarship suggests that the teaching and evaluation of visual communication are characterized by a broad spectrum of practicestoo varied, ill-defined, and nontransferable to be sustainable (p. 183). Her findings indicate that assessments in visual communication courses should not only highlight the formal and technical aspects of student work (such as Gestalt principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity) but also pay attention to issues of aesthetics and creativity. Suguru Ishizakis chapter offers pragmatic advice for identifying and developing learning outcomes for a course. Ishizaki provides concrete examples of course objectives and a variety of assessment activities, including the use of critiques and portfolio-based assessment. He stresses the development of learning objectives within the cognitive domain (understanding and thinking), the affective domain (feelings and attitudes), and the psychomotor domain (physical skills). He invites instructors of visual communication to embrace the value of assessments as a way to help our students develop a high level of competency in visual communication design (p. 216). In the next chapter, Da ` nielle Nicole DeVoss extends the argument for assessment by demonstrating the value of working from a framework of alignment. She establishes the importance of mapping the goals and objectives of an individual course assignment onto a largescale course project and then finally onto the larger curricular framework within the writing program at her university. In Part 4, Tools and Technologies, authors find common ground in their call for rhetorical, audience-centered approaches to technology. Jennifer Sheppard discusses the need to balance the technical, howto instruction of tools and software with more rhetorical approaches to visual communication, including a focus on intended audience, purpose, and context. In the next chapter, Charles Kostelnick warns that technology can sometimes impede the students inclination to think creatively and flexibly about design solutions (p. 266). He offers low-tech strategies and project ideas, such as the hand-drawn production of logos and comics to develop students awareness of the rhetorical situation as well as to enhance students aptitude for creativity and

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invention. Finally, Mike Markel examines the strengths and weaknesses of Microsofts SmartArt. Markel notes that while SmartArt software might be technically easy for students to use, thinking through rhetorical issues of audience and purpose presents a challenge for students. He argues that visual communication instructors must help students understand not only how to use software but how to achieve particular rhetorical effects that will further their communicative intentions (p. 296). Through their rhetorical instruction, then, teachers of visual communication play important roles in helping students become more creative with and critical of the technology that they use. Stephen Bernhardt ends this collection by reflecting on the book as a whole. He concludes that this collection offers rich insight into how instructors in a variety of settings pursue the task of teaching a visual rhetoric (p. 303). Indeed, throughout the collection, authors often reach for theories and practices outside the discipline in order to achieve their intended pedagogical goals and outcomes. Thus, it is not surprising that Northcut generalizes that teachers of visual communication do not have a shared understanding of terminology and concepts, and further have difficulty evaluating visual artifacts consistently (p. 185). One reason for this fragmentation in the field comes from the simple fact that many instructors have not received formal training in visual communication and design. In the years to come, tendencies to stray outside the discipline may contribute to further diversification of approaches and methods to teaching visual communication. Nonetheless, Designing Texts reveals many common practices and shared calls to action. While there is no single approach to teaching designed communication, the authors appear to agree on some strategies. Mainly, these shared strategies include (a) joining theory with practice, (b) using heuristics, (c) developing a shared vocabulary, (d) emphasizing Gestalt design principles, and (e) teaching design as a problem-solving activity. Perhaps most important, the authors continuously turn to rhetoric in teaching designed communication in order to accommodate the needs of students who work within a variety of modes, media, and contexts. In fact, recognizing the changing landscape of communication, many authors in the collection extend their purview beyond visual communication to discuss sound, user interaction, and more cinematic means of communication. These shared strategies create an opportunity to develop a common vocabulary for students and instructors who come from diverse backgrounds so that they can communicate meaningfully about the role of designed communication in todays teaching and learning.

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