Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions - Softcover

Kostelnick, Charles; Hassett, Michael

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9780809338788: Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0809338785 ISBN 13: 9780809338788
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2022

Synopsis


From charts, texts, and graphs to illustrations, icons, and screens, we live in an information age saturated with visual language. Yet the underlying principles that provide structure for visual language have long eluded scholars of rhetoric, design, and engineering. To function as a language that reliably conveys meaning, visual language must embody codes that normalize its practices among both the designers who employ it and the readers who interpret it.

In this wide-ranging analysis, Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett demonstrate how visual language in professional communication—text design, data displays, illustrations—is shaped by conventional practices that are invented, codified, and modified by users in visual discourse communities. Drawing on rhetorical theory, design studies, and a broad array of historical and contemporary examples, Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions explores the processes by which conventions evolve and proliferate and shows how conventions serve as the medium that designers use to shape, stabilize, and streamline visual information.

Kostelnick and Hassett extend contemporary theories that define rhetoric as a social act, arguing that visual conventions also thrive within discourse communities and are fragile forms that vary widely in their longevity and scope. Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions is a thorough guide for scholars, teachers and practitioners of rhetoric and business and technical communication and for professionals in engineering, science, design, and business.


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About the Author


 

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Publisher
Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date
2022
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0809338785
ISBN 13 
9780809338788
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
280
Rating
  • 3.44 out of 5 stars
    25 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780809325023: Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0809325020 ISBN 13:  9780809325023
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003
Hardcover