REVIEW OF CONCEPTS AND VOCABULARY
FROM EARLY PART OF THE SEMESTER
USE AS YOU SEE FIT IN YOUR DESIGN WORK AND
VERBAL ANALYSES
List of articles
and chapters:
Kostelnick
and Roberts Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10.
Sturken
and Cartwright
Myers
Horton
Tyler
Hall
Tufte
1. Rhetorical
Situation: audience (users, readers, viewers); purpose (enable discussion,
persuade, inform, entertain, give pleasure); context of reception (where will
the reading take place? What should readers do or know or learn?)
2.
“Cognates”:
Conventions: flexible or relaxed (depends on rhetorical
situation). Important aids to composition.
Gestalt
Focal points
Past experience
as filter
Completing a task
(goal-directed looking)
Visual field
Context and perception
Figure/ground
Grouping
Visual Noise
Textual Elements, spatial elements, graphical elements
Serifs and sanserifs
X-Height
Line quality
Type faces
Point size
Line thickness
Leading
Kerning
Shading
Iconic typefaces
Word Shapes
Layout
Headings,
numbers, letters
Paragraph blocks,
lists, columns
Bullets, shading,
lines
Text fields
Conventions for
designing headings (172)
Creating
hierarchies with headings
Number and letter
hierarchies
Columns
Grids
Line work for
segmenting
Line work for
boxing
Gray scale
Field Orientation
and Size
Line length and
treatment (e.g. justified)
Visual clutter
Margin width
Centering versus
flush left or right
Chapter 7 Data
Displays
Tables
Pie charts
Bar charts
Multiple bar charts
Line graphs
Multiple line
charts
Adding textual
elements
Vertical
Pictographic
Horizontal
Divided
Scatter plots
Data maps
Graphical tables
Gantt charts
X- and y- axes
Bar thickness
Grid lines
Shading
Perceptual
problems
Paper size,
shape, stock, orientation
***Cohesion
devices
Hypertextual
network
Navigation system
Titles
Header and
footers
Backgrounds
Watermarks
Color
Grayscale
Insignia
Section titles
and headings
Drop caps
Tabs and dividers
Graphical
elements to tie pages together: borders, icons, shadings, nav bars
Textual,
graphical, spatial elements
Texture
Binding
Mimesis
Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (an image represents but does not
signal photographic or pictorial truth)
Images and visual
contexts (OJ Simpson photo on Time’s cover)
Manipulation of
images (OJ’s skin color)
Images
and cultural contexts (United Colors of Benetton’s car on fire in the 60s or
post 9-11)
Cultural
icons (M. Monroe)
Establishing
relationships between words and pictures
Iconic
relationship
Indexical
relationship
Anchorage
Relay
Definition
Point of View and
address
Associative
meanings
Collocative
meanings
Reflected
meanings
William
Horton, “The Almost Universal Language: Graphics for International Documents”
Suggest but don’t
mandate directional reading
Puns
Colors
Animals
Translation space
Minimal use of
letters, punctuation, abbreviations
Mythical and
Religious symbols
Depicting people
Hand signals
Provincialisms
Gender and ethnic
neutrality
Theories of audience: adopts a belief; takes action; reads displays of values (for approval or rejection); decodes and receives information; audience as spectator of aesthetic or information display; audience as passive consumer; audience as active participant (interactive); semiotic theory (audience holds beliefs or ideology to be played on)
Tyler’s area of interest: Rhetorical design as argument (designer identifies audience beliefs and values in order to introduce new beliefs and values). Goal is social change.
Stuart Hall, “Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices” (graduate student reading)
Theories of
representation: reflective, intentional, constructionist
Sign, signified,
signifier
Structuralism:
langue and parole
Semiotic theory
(if you taught English 102 last year, think Signs of Life)
Denotation and
connotation (cultural icons)
Myth
Discourse as a
system of representation
Velasquez’s Las
Meninas and looking/seeing/spectating
Analysis of the Challenger tragedy: series of bad graphics that do not take into account all of the available information, pictorial graphics that obscure information, inconsistent naming of shuttle trials, bad presentation (use of overheads that prevent viewing of the big picture), and finally, the good display where shuttle trials are arranged in a table by outside temperature (not launch date) so as to display a CAUSE.
Smallest possible
difference (ear graphic)
Lifting “weight”
from the graphic (ear graphic)
Edward Tufte,
ereserves packet # 2 from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Moiré effect
Chartjunk (clip
art for decorative or illustrative purposes only)
Data density
High information
graphics
Edward Tufte,
ereserves packet # 3 from Envisioning Information
Visual noise,
surplus information, clutter
1 plus 1 = 3
effect (a single new line actually adds 2 new lines)
Small multiples
as a good design strategy