Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Theory of Composing: Part 2
Think back to the theories of composing you have been constructing; what role, if any, did design/visual rhetoric play? Has your theory of composing changed--in what ways yes, in what ways no? Do you see visual rhetoric/visual composition in your daily lives, and if so, in what ways?
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My theory of composition depended very little on design or visual rhetoric. Before our work with McCloud, I thought composition depended exclusively on appealing to an audience and using clear, concise language. I think that my theory has altered a bit since. While audience and language are both very important to composition, visual rhetoric and design can be equally so. Depending on the medium, they can be even more important. In the case of a comic or publication with illustrations or charts, these two concepts are extremely important because they affect the level which the audience will understand the material. If a pamphlet or powerpoint or other visual medium is unorganized, any reader or member of the audience will not be able to immediately and easily understand the material therefore making any attempts at persuasion fruitless. Design and visual rhetoric are everywhere in daily life. In any advertisement, any brochure, or powerpoint presentation in class, design and visual rhetoric are at play. If these are not well structured, there is not any point in paying them any attention. These critical moments when an audience member first lays eyes on material are exactly why I have now added to my theory of composition.
ReplyDeleteMy original theory of composition relied heavily on the equal balance of cannons and other rhetorical disciplines, and really only focused on written rhetoric. My focus was more on the relationship established between writer, message and audience that was established, I felt, almost exclusively in text. Now after finishing McCloud, I feel like visual rhetoric played a bigger part than I had realized. The constraints and formalities of visual rhetoric were taken for granted and underappriciated until McCloud brought their significance to light. I never realized how much design and the visual presentation played such a vital role in how we process and interpret information. I don't feel that my theory of composition has changed, in terms of editing things out, but now I feel that adding the importance of design/visual components helps to make it a more complete and well rounded theory of effective rhetoric. We live in a visual world and themes of visual rhetoric are used in our daily lives, sometimes without us even noticing them. They are used on the billboards we pass driving to work, the signs on the side of the road or any kind of flyer or brochure we might read. Visual rhetoric is everywhere and whether we notice it at first or not, it is still there and if done correctly, it is just as effective as a written text. With this new knowledge, it is almost required that the importance of visual rhetoric be added to my idea of composition.
ReplyDeleteMy previous definition of rhetoric, in retrospect, is very closed minded. It included any type of speaking or writing that’s main purpose is to persuade and audience. The means of how the composer went about this varied by the type of audience, but it all had a similar goal. I did not even think of visual images as a type of rhetoric that was planned, with a purpose. I thought of it as a single representation of a though, that was an insight into the artist’s mind and was unalterable. McCloud, with his thorough examination of the “lower” art form (comics), helped me understand the full potential that visual rhetoric had to affect the audience. I began to realize that visual rhetoric, in its many forms, works just as well as written rhetoric to persuade an audience because it works on a more subliminal, subconscious level. In fact, visual and written rhetoric often go hand in hand to enhance each other and create a clearer, deeper argument and emotions.
ReplyDeleteVisual and written rhetoric have many of the many elements and are even constructed in similar ways. For example, art and pictures have a type of grammar about them, which, which manifests itself as the small details which helps you understand the image. This can include colors, designs and placements, and looks closer to what it is supposed to represent than the written word and its more “difficult” form grammar. This ease of understanding creates two diverse audiences for the different types of rhetoric: because visual rhetoric is inherently known, not taught and learned, children identify with pictures more so than the written word. My definition of rhetoric has expanded because of my introduction to this new word. It has grown to include not only the purposeful and thorough arguments presented by the written word, but the pictures and images that affect us in our daily lives.
Visual rhetoric was a thought in my original composing theory because I tried to take into account comics. Design was not in my initial thoughts. I believed you could effectively ignore rhetoric while composing, thus producing an organic piece of art. Rhetoric should be used in the editing process.
ReplyDeleteSince then, my theory has changed. I was too naive; you can't ignore rhetoric that long. In fact, rhetoric should be a part of your thought process the whole time you're composing. The rest of my theory is the same.
Now that I have been made aware of visual rhetoric, I will notice it in all sorts of visual composition. For example, T.V. show episodes. Most times, there is an exigence inside the plot. Also, advertisements on the web are examples of visual rhetoric along with political cartoons.
I will be driving home next weekend and will see plenty of billboards, as usual. However, the vasectomy and pro-life messages, while only annoying before because of their sheer multitude, will now prove excellent examples of visual rhetoric and provide endless minutes of analysis.
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ReplyDeleteWhen I first drafted my theory of composing, I do not think I considered visual rhetoric. I made my definition of rhetoric very broad, encompassing all mediums, but I do not recall specifically considering rhetoric at all. My theory proves this. I spoke of language and gestures, things not usually included in visual rhetoric. I spoke of flexibility, of the ability to adapt to an audience, and the use of rhetorical tools used almost exclusively by practitioners of oral rhetoric. I did not mention design, or images, or colors, or anything related to visual rhetoric. I wrote mostly about oral rhetoric and a little about written rhetoric but not of visual rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteStill, I believe much of my theory still applies the visual rhetoric. I stress attention to audience, and I don’t think visual rhetoric is exempt from this consideration. A rhetor using a visual medium still must know their audience intimately and still must use images, colors, words, fonts, and other components according to the people they want to reach. This being said, a rhetor still must pay attention the rhetorical triangle and the canons of rhetoric. A rhetor can use images to appeal to emotions (pathos), can juxtapose statistics to appeal to logic (logos), and use spokespeople to gain credibility (ethos).
In my daily life, the most common form of visual rhetoric is advertising. Advertisements are everywhere. They pop out in magazines, convincing me of the need to buy a brand of jeans or a pair of shoes. They appear on websites, urging me to sponsor a starving child in India. They stretch out at the corner of Tennessee Street on billboards urging me to consider a career in nursing. In each form of visual rhetoric, the rhetor considers how to appeal to an audience and how to use pictures, words, colors, and other components to effectively convey a message and produce a desired effect. Many appeal to pathos, like the pictures of starving, wide eyed children used by charitable funds. The Got Milk advertisements use photographs of celebrities, often athletes, sporting milk mustaches to boost credibility and appeal to ethos. Alongside pictures, many advertisements list staggering statistics, appealing to logos.
When I first composed my theory of rhetoric, I did not take into account the visual aspect of the field. Although I still stand by my original thought that writing should be used to explore thoughts and learn, I feel like my idea of rhetoric has evolved to be more encompassing of all types of media. Creating a visual poster about the power of pathos could easily be as explorative as a paper I write about pathos. I am using rhetoric to learn. I found through out reading McCloud how fascinating the marriage between words and images is. Not only can ethos, logos and pathos be applied to the written word, but they can be applied to images as well and they can compliment each other. I still stand by the fact that ethos remaining the most important thing on the rhetorical triangle, but I’ve come to realize how images can enhance ethos depending on the images selected and the quality of the visual appeal. I still believe rhetoric fits social demands and images change depending on what changes in society (i.e. the same advertisements aren’t still being used today) to be most effective.
ReplyDeleteIn my original theory of composing, visual rhetoric and design were not a part of the equation in the least bit. Rather, I focused on textual rhetoric. However, after reading McCloud and discussing how visuals can be just as persuasive if not more, visual rhetoric plays a huge part in successful discourse. Though I still keep my comments about the five cannons of rhetoric, visual rhetoric is very important to rhetoric. Whether this is through the physical form of text, or a picture that conveys a message, or the layout of a newspaper or magazine, visual rhetoric has a power of its own in conveying a message. This can be seen in advertisements on T.V. or billboards, as well as in photographs from war. Visual rhetoric is literally everywhere, including the text that we read everyday.
ReplyDeleteMy theory of composition relied solely on the five cannons and they way they were woven together. And before reading McCloud and learning of Hill's idea of visual rhetoric, I hadn't considered giving visual rhetoric the time of day to blend with the five cannons. I felt that these 5 cannons were summed up in literature and constructive arguments. I had failed to make the connection that images, such as advertisements and political cartoons are in fact, visual rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteYet, how naive I was. It is clear to me that my whole life is enveloped by visual rhetoric, maybe even more so than verbal or written rhetoric. Everyday you are presented with advertisements on bus stops, television, billboards, and those are just the ones that want to be seen. We don't realize all of the mediums that are promoting their products to us subconsciously.
Hill says that visual rhetoric is more powerful that any other form of rhetoric. Yet, I must agree with McCloud on this one. I feel when used correctly, visual rhetoric and literature create an unstoppable team, one that is hard to deny.
Especially, in a modern day world, that doesn't have the time to read a full newspaper article, or sit down to read a book, we rely heavily on images to convey almost all of our messages. Sites such as the BBC offer "A Day in Photos," now as an alternative to reading what is going on in the world. This shows the trend of how the world is shifting to rely primarily on visual rhetoric in our modern day society.
In my opinion all rhetoric is visual, if it is a speech then the speaker will use hand movements to produce emotions in the audience, if it is written then there must be words on a page for the audience to read it, and then there is visual as in a photograph, comic strip, or video. In my methods of composing I did not issue the need of visual (as in photograph, comic strip, video, etc.) rhetoric because it is not needed to produce positive rhetoric, although it can help a person's argument if the visual object is relevant.
ReplyDeleteMy theory of composition was extremely basic, it consisted a very basic form:
Ethos
Logos
Logos
Logos
Pathos
and was meant to produce effective rhetoric, and it still does. Learning about pure visual rhetoric is not going make me change my methods of composing, but I would not be against someone inserting something visual in their rhetoric. I think my method of composition can stand by itself, but a visual (if it is going to help the rhetoric that a person is presenting) is a great way of persuading an audience. My theory of composition was kept simple so it could be added to, like using visuals in ones rhetoric.
We see visual rhetoric everywhere and everyday; just open a magazine, turn on your television, put in a movie, or even just go for a walk. The most visual rhetoric we see in this day and time is advertising, the means to persuade an audience to buy a certain product that they don't need. We see advertisements everywhere, and can never escape their grasp. Somehow these forms of rhetoric can change our lives, just by revealing something that you may have not been conscious of or revealing something in your faults. Advertising is not the only visual rhetoric we see, there are many other forms such as visual composition. We see visual composition everyday when we take a picture or see something that moves to form genres. There are many forms of visual rhetoric that presents itself.
As I was reviewing my initial theory of composing, I realized that design or visual rhetoric was not addressed at all. My theory consisted of textual information only- persuasion through words. I wouldn't say my theory of composition has changed dramatically, but I would say it has expanded. I still think composing has everything to do with the five canons, the rhetorical triangle, the audience and its constraints, cohesion and coherence, collaboration, form and structure, revision, and that it is an ongoing process. But now I acknowledge that pictorial images convey just as much information and are just as significant as the words that accompany them. Visuals, if used in an appropriate manner, can send a strong message just as words can. Visual rhetoric is abundant in our daily lives. We experience visual rhetoric on television with ASPCA ads; we experience visual rhetoric on billboards when we're driving on the highway; we experience visual rhetoric in the classroom when a professor uses a Powerpoint presentation; we even experience visual rhetoric waiting in line at McDonald's drooling over the dollar menu. Visual rhetoric is very significant and has become an essential element in my theory of composition.
ReplyDeleteOriginally I did not process that visual rhetoric or design could be in any theory of composing. It never even came to mind until I began reading McCloud. I now understand that if an image is descriptive enough it could capture the important elements of rhetoric. For example, when creating a flyer, the image is what says the most on the 8x11 paper because there is not much else you can do when trying to attract the attention of a person and still being able to convey the proper message. I believe that visual rhetoric could be a lot more important that the canons because individuals rather look at an entertaining image rather than reading an overwhelming amount of words. I now know and understand that visual rhetoric is an important part in and of our lives. It is very significant when wanting to draw in a public audience. Such as Starbucks and their idea of removing the name off the cups of coffee because everyone can identify the coffee shop by the mermaid on the outside.
ReplyDeletePreviously, visual rhetoric played a very small part as most of the theories which we had read did not mention it in great detail. Since the last blog posting regarding composition theories, I would say that mine has changed with the inclusion of visuals and the rhetorical and compositional aspects that come with visuals. Other than that, I believe my theory remained the same--except that meeting the fourth of the five canons (memory) is somewhat more difficult with visuals. I still believe that meeting the canons will cause one to meet the parts of the rhetorical triangle as well, if done correctly. I also still think that kairos is understressed.
ReplyDeleteEvery American not living in the wilderness, off the grid sees visual composition daily. Be it on television, billboards, posters, brochures, the Internet, or any other visual-based media. It is impossible to avoid.
In my first definition of composing I did not consider design or visual rhetoric when writing it. It focused more on the actual text and the five canons. My definition has been altered slightly to add in design and visual rhetoric because even in printed text visual rhetoric and design are present. Visual rhetoric and design sometimes can even make the composition a more effective voice of change that rhetoric embodies. Before we started studying McCloud I did not realize how much we actually use visual rhetoric and design. We see it every day when we pick up a magazine or newspaper, when we drive past a billboard, or even look at a menu at a fast food restaurant (as crazy as that sounds). Visual rhetoric and design plays a huge role in our daily lives whether we realize it or not. It is what sometimes helps us make choices.
ReplyDeleteMy theory on rhetoric has indeed changed quite significantly since my previous blog post. The addition of Visual Rhetoric into our curriculum (especially in the form of McCloud's book) has opened my eyes to the capabilities of images and diagrams in enhancing rhetoric. Since reading McCloud's book I feel compelled to put a helpful and integral picture in much of the things that I write. Our study of visual rhetoric has indeed shown me the sheer power of graphics on media and its prevalence EVERYWHERE in our society. Seriously, look at the fliers and magazines that people obnoxiously stuff into your mailbox - they all use visual rhetoric... it's astounding!
ReplyDeleteBefore taking this class, my theories on composing depended heavily on grammatical devices and rhetorical cannons. I would focus largely on these two things, and while they may be important, I have learned that they aren’t everything. And while I still believe that a good paper should include all of the for mentioned aspects, and other things, such as a clear and precise delivery of your thoughts with written rhetoric, I am now willing to admit that it needs more. Visual rhetoric and design is extremely important in a composition. The readings from McCloud really taught me to focus on how time and space play such an important role in my theories of composing. Depending on the medium, such as in posters, or comics, or even in magazines time and space are just as important, if not more important than the written rhetoric. Something’s visual design has the ability to instantly convey an entire message and leave an impact on an audience in a way that the written word never could. And now that I’m more aware of it, I see examples of this visual rhetoric everywhere I look. For example, it seems that every time I pick up my favorite magazine and flip to one of its advertisements, I can’t help but analyze how they have specifically constructed there composition with design to try and persuade me to buy whatever product it’s about. So to some it all up, visual rhetoric has grown to play a very influential role in my theory of composition.
ReplyDeleteWhen I thought of my theories of composing, I had never really included “visual rhetoric”. Reading McCloud has opened my mind to the different ways that visuals affect our mind. We don’t realize how intricate our minds work, how they infer visual images and relate them to the text. I think when composing, a visual image (when relatable) can only strengthen and improve the clarity of your argument. I don’t think my theory of composing has really changed. I’d just like to add that visual rhetoric can play a huge role is used. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and I believe this is true. People can relate more to a picture and it is universal, anyone can see it. I see rhetoric/visual composition everyday, especially in advertisements. In ads, we notice a lot more said with pictures than words., even in print media. Those commercials that are usually about medicines and are just words rolling across the screen are probably the least watched and most boring commercials ever, while visually stunning commercials are fun and exciting. People enjoy watching them.
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ReplyDeleteMy theory of composition only encompassed the language aspect of rhetoric without taking into account the huge impact of the visual side. Before this section of the class, it had never occurred to me that all rhetoric has some visual aspects to it. We are flooded with images that we see daily in TV, comics, movie posters, album artwork, etc; which are all considered to be using visual rhetoric. However, it is also seen in other forms of rhetoric, such as the way a speaker moves and dresses or how a book is formatted.
ReplyDeleteThis has certainly added to how I view composition. Whether oral, literary, or visual, it is all still rhetoric and therefore the basics of composition must remain the same. Visual rhetoric still relies on understanding the audience to choose a genre. Just as the rhetorical triangle is still in play in the way that visual rhetoric uses images. I do also understand that other things must now be considered when thinking about composing. Visual rhetoric takes into account the use of space, time, and visuals as means to engage the audience more. Manipulating these things well will cause the audience to be more invested in the rhetoric as it forces them to superimpose their own thoughts into the places left open. Design now also comes into the forefront of rhetoric. The use of colors or black and white can invoke certain responses from the audience while also helping to create those iconic images that we all recognize. Colors have associations that are immediately called to mind when used well. Overall I see visual rhetoric as a merely adding to my “theory of composition” rather than something that requires me to adjust what I have already stated.
When I am composing, the imaging around me will affect my use of language. What I see or visual rhetoric, often, will influence how I say something. My Theory of composing has not really changed much in that I still believe in the original five steps to creating a rhetorical situation while appealing to the emotions of the audience. I would add that visual rhetoric plays a part. Depending on what is being composed, the audience and the writer are affected by whats being communicated to them visually. Visual rhetoric is everywhere. Images are constantly speaking to us and it influences everything we do and the decisions we make. From commercials to billboards, to the posters on our friends walls, visual rhetoric is present throughout our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteoal11 writes:
ReplyDeleteMy view of composition has not changed much. It is completely different when composing an image or visual rhetoric. I feel like the some of the steps from composing text applies to composing a rhetoric design. While reading Understanding Comics, McCloud helped me make the connection between words and images. The connection I concluded at was that the combination of words and images makes icons. We use icons in everyday life. Tony the Tiger, Mickey Mouse, and Joe Camel are all examples of icons used in everyday life. Human beings associate words with images and this creates icons. The reason I say this is because icons are comparable to words and anyone who is literate knows the significance of the word. Composing visual rhetoric is at the discretion of the creator because they can choose what the image needs to entail to get the point across to the reader. When it comes to textual rhetoric there is a list of guidelines that the writer/ speaker has to touch on in order for the text and or discourse to receive pathos from the audiences. My thoughts of composition have not changed with my new knowledge of composing an image because I do not associate the two processes. I focus on the 5 cannons when it comes to a rhetorical discourse; there is nothing to ensures the credibility of visual rhetoric.
Brittany writes:
ReplyDeleteWhen you think about “theories of composing,” you think about audience, collaboration, form, style, memory, process, delivery and rhetoric. Visual rhetoric did not play a significant role those theories, composing to me was looked at as just the cookie cutter idea of literature. The theories of composing were more concerned with the structure of writing, like freshman English.
Since we know that rhetoric is all language we can come to the conclusion that design and visual rhetoric is still apart of composing. My personal theory of composition has changed in a way that I can see the similarities that visual rhetoric has to theories of composing. Visual rhetoric is “information that causes situations that intend for an audience to react to it,” this connects to theories of composing because it still requires an audience. Visual rhetoric also deals with forms of genre and must come to a conclusion like in composing. The difference in visual rhetoric or design the image may convey the information verses writing, but this is still just as effective. Visual rhetoric and composition is seen in my daily life on a billboard, in magazines, the FSview and plenty other ways that come to mind. When you really think about it, all rhetoric is visual, you paint the image in your mind.