Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication (Baywood's Technical Communications)

Designing Texts is an edited collection dedicated to teaching visual communication in non-visual disciplines, with a particular focus on the fields of technical and professional communication, rhetoric, and composition. The collection offers readers theoretically motivated, research-supported, classroom-tested insights on the teaching of visual communication. Visual literacy entails looking, seeing, thinking, and producing, and Designing Texts reflects these areas, with sections dedicated to visual thinking and problem solving; contexts for teaching and learning; evaluation and assessment; and tools and technologies. Each section includes an introduction that relates the individual chapters to one another and to the teaching of visual communication more broadly; additionally, the contributors draw attention to the connections among the chapters. The chapters demonstrate a diversity of perspectives and approaches that characterizes visual communication, integrating Gestalt Psychology, rhetoric, and aesthetics, and spanning disciplinary boundaries rather than reinforcing them. Throughout, readers will find material focused on both theoretical and practical issues that they can apply directly to their own teaching of visual communication. Included are assignment suggestions, sample evaluative rubrics, and numerous visual examples that illustrate the authors' points. The collection concludes with an annotated list of resources that readers will find helpful for learning more about the teaching of visual communication.