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Meeting the Challenge of the Rhetorical Situation

A Review of Charles Kostlenick's and David D. Roberts' Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators

Reviewed by Richard Garner

Author Bio

Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators by Charles Kostlenick and David D. Roberts is a thorough and worthwhile analysis and presentation of the strategies that may be used by professional communicators for the visual design of their documents. It is part of a series of textbooks for students in undergraduate and graduate programs in technical communication.

Before we begin the process of visual design, the authors say, we must consider the rhetorical situation we face. This consists of the audience for our communications, their purpose, and the context.

Kostlenick and Roberts describe how design elements can be organized in responding to this rhetorical situation according to the following six strategies:

Arrangement

Arrangement is defined as the "order or organization of visual elements so that readers can see their structure—how they cohere in groups, how they differ from one another, and how they create layers and hierarchies."

One possible arrangement strategy might include the numbering of different parts of the text. Another might consider the spatial relationships among different parts.

Emphasis

Emphasis strategies take into account that some parts of a communication are more important than others. The prominence or intensity of expression that reflects this is what is meant by emphasis. Emphasis strategies are about controlling what stands out and occurs on screen as well as in print.

Clarity

Clarity strategies help the receiver of a communication "decode the message, understand it quickly and completely, and, when necessary, react without ambivalence."

Conciseness

Conciseness refers to the visual bulk and intricacy of the design, e.g., the number of headings and lists, lines and boxes, and colors and gray scales; the detail of drawings and data displays; and the variations in size, ornateness, and spacing of the text.

Tone

The tone of a document refers to the attitude of the communicator that is conveyed towards her or his readers and the subject. This comes across visually as well as verbally. You can sound serious, humorous, excited, concerned, technical, and so on.

Ethos

In any communication, the speaker or writer tries to establish a trusting relationship with the listener or reader. To do that, they need to cultivate a sense of character or credibility that will appeal to their audience. This is what is meant by ethos.

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These different strategies for organizing the visual design of professional communications are interdependent, the authors say.

Kostlenick and Roberts describe how visual communication is governed by certain conventions or expectations that readers of different types of documents will tend to have. Professional communicators need to identify what these conventions are, consider how rigid or flexible they are, and think about them in terms of their readers, who give them meaning and significance.

The authors also describe how perception issues affect visual communication. Gestalt principles of design, i.e., the study of figure-ground organization, is among these.

They present a taxonomy for the visual analysis of documents. This taxonomy distinguishes the different levels of design. They are:

Intra

Intra-level design refers to the linear components, the most basic elements of text design.

Inter

Inter-level design refers to the fields that text is organized into and the nonlinear components of local design.

Extra

Extra-level design concerns data displays, pictures, icons, and symbols.

Supra

Supra-level design concerns how parts of the document as a whole fit together and make for usability.

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In the rest of the book, the authors analyze how their six strategies for organizing visual design can be applied at these four different levels of design. At each level, they describe how the application of their strategies involves trade-offs or striking a balance that is appropriate to the particular rhetorical situation.

They also describe how the application and development of their strategies involves first analyzing the rhetorical situation and then inventng, revising, and visually editing.

The text is supplemented throughout by illustrations that help demonstrate the points.

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There could be a more lengthy discussion in this book of how the use of color might be relevant to the use of these different design strategies. In addition, the authors do not discuss how best to integrate visual design with the use of language. (Although we do not want their number to be excessive, words remain the most important element of technical communication.)

However, this book is an invaluable source of knowledge of visual design so the technical communicator can find their own way to integrate visual and verbal rhetoric.