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last.updated 10.2.05

Visual Arguments: Reading Arguments

Purpose

While written arguments are often the focus of many writing courses, our particpation in our popular culture makes us very aware of the visual arguments that we are exposed to on a daily basis–from companies selling products to politicians selling policies. Many of us are quite astute at knowing how these rhetors are trying to persuade (or manipulate) us. But some visual argument are much more subtle and require the audience to know the entire rhetorical situation to understand its impact and significance.

Today we will develop strategies for reading visual arguments. Likewise, we will discuss ways to use these reading strategies to start thinking about the audiences of the visual arguments we write and how they may respond to these texts.

Before Class

• Read R. Williams's Chapter 9 (Color on the Web) and Chapter 10 (Graphic Definitions), pp. 155-188
• Read Lupton and Miller's "White on Black on Grey" [BB]

Discussion

Williams and Tollett

• What questions do you have about Williams and Tollett's description of visuals for the web?

Lupton and Miller

As a class we will discuss the following questions:

• What is Lupton and Miller's argument? How do they support their argument?
• Lupton and Miller refer to examples from Roland Barthes scholarship on visuals and mythos. What did Barthes mean by this? What visuals represent certain mythos in our current culture?
• What is the rhetorical impact of the following: A picture by itself? A picture with words? (think of painting or photgraph titles, certain pieces of art, advertisements)
• As writers, what suggestions can we take from this article?

Activity

We will begin exploring Macromedia Fireworks.

First, we will use some of our heuristics and read the interface.

Then we will work through the following tasks:

• Opening document and Resizing the Canvas
• Creating shapes
• Working with text