Today’s Plan
- Syllabus overview (11:00-11:15)
- Introduction to (Visual) Rhetoric / What is New Materialism? (11:15-11:45)
- My review of White Space (11:45-11:50)
- Looking at your objects / First Day Attendance (11:50-12:20)
- Break (12:20-12:30)
- Photoshop tutorial (12:30-1:35)
- Zip it and ship it (1:35-1:40)
- Homework (1:40-1:45)
Today’s Plan
- Go over syllabus
- What is (Visual) Rhetoric?
- Homework
Welcome to visual rhetoric. As I mentioned describing the syllabus, we will be spending this semester analyzing, designing, constructing, sharing, and revising various kinds of visuals (including posters, documents, graphs and charts, and more). I imagine everyone here has a pretty good sense on what “visual” means, but I bet the term rhetoric might cause a bit of confusion. So I want to begin today by explaining what the term means, and I want to invest even more energy setting up the (difficult) Gries reading, by exploring what she means by a “new materialist rhetoric.”
Traditionally, rhetoric means “persuasion.” Its origins trace back to ancient Greece, and it reached its highpoint in ancient Rome. The study of rhetoric and oratory concerned how a speaker could and should construct a speech to have the biggest impact on an audience. Aristotle identified three main components to rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos. Additionally, other sophistic thinkers of the day discussed the importance of kairos. I want to take some time to think about these terms individually. Over the last two centuries, as we’ve seen technological advances particularly with imagery, we’ve seen these ancient principles for oratory and writing applied to the development of images and other electronic media (like web design, advertisements, powerpoint, etc). All in all, this theory works to maximize how a single, autonomous individual can impact others–how they think, feel, and act, through direct communication. And, in terms of visual rhetoric, it often means coming up with guides and rules to aid in the design process (a site like this or our White Space is Not Your Enemy book). It also means teaching people to be intelligent consumers of visual materials and to be alert to clear instances on unethical visual manipulation. And this too.
But we’ve also had a major theoretical shift from ancient times. This new shift goes by many different names and flavors, which include materialism, ecology, network, complexity and other theoretical frames. These theories challenge the agency of an individual, meaning that often our behavior isn’t shaped by direct communication, and that we aren’t necessarily “free individuals.” Our behavior is often limited, shaped, manipulated, impinged by the world around us. New materialism is a new (duh) strain of this thinking, and it emphasizes the extent to which objects “act” independent of human will or intention. Gries’ work–at least the parts that we will be reading–is an extended case study of the Obama Hope image from the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
We’ll be reading Gries’ study in order to shape and inform our first project. Essentially, we want to extract from her case study a recipe for making a viral Presidential poster. We’ll try to identify methods and ingredients, a general plan, that you will alter and transform to produce your own poster. Additionally, we will consider how images travel through and affect culture, the technologies that enable such travel, and the ways human agents receive and transform an individual’s original rhetorical intent.
The Gries reading will be challenging, but I encourage you to stick with it. Read for process, for descriptions of how Fairley (and others, human and nonhuman) contribute to the development and distribution of Obama Hope. Additionally, look for moments in which Gries describes the purpose of her work, look for key terms and definitions.
White Space Chapter 1
I wanted to highlight a few major points from chapter one of the White Space reading. First, on page 6, Hagen and Golombisky’s four rules for good graphic design:
- It captures attention
- It controls the eye’s movement across the page or screen
- It conveys information
- It evokes emotion
Those final two refer back to our discussion of logos and pathos (respectively) last week. But the second one is the one I want to highlight: because it stresses that design involves an amount of research. And they build on this idea, when they advocate that your should know the general rules of design, and know when and why you might break them. Picasso once said: “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist, and I think Hagen and Golombisky are echoing his sentiment. This, then, is a way of thinking about ethos and design. For instance, you might not want to compose a presentation on groundbreaking science in Comic Sans. I have already suggested that if you want to center-align large blocks of text, then I assume you are trying to hurt my soul. There are many, many rules (some good, some silly, some pedantic) regarding design–betraying the basics is likely to cost you credibility not only with designers, but with mass audiences as well. We judge something by whether it looks right (even if we shouldn’t judge the book by its cover, we often in fact do).
A few basic rules to get us started:
- Contrast
- Photography and Composition
- Eye Tracking, Heat Maps, and Magic Square or F Pattern
- Designing Eye Paths
Photoshop Workshop #1
Today we will be working with Photoshop in class. I have posted a number of images for us to work with in Canvas under the file tab. First, I want to go over Photoshop quickly, then we’ll start in our tutorial.
The tutorial I selected today is professional, but moves slow and is quite long (we likely won’t get through the whole thing). But it offers a more comprehensive view of a wide range of tools. Terry White goes through 10 things people want to know how to do in Photoshop (I’m guessing we will get through the first six):
- Touch up a photo (Acne Face)
- Layers and Adjustment Layers (Too Dark)
- Cropping (Liven Up a Dull Exposure))
- Exposure Problems (Liven Up a Dull Exposure)
- Removing an Object (Remove Something From a Photo)
- Content Aware Take 2 w/ Quick Select (Remove from a photo)
Is It 1:35? Then it is Time to Zip it and Ship it
I’ll stop with 10 minutes left in class and ask you to .zip your modified images together and them submit the .zip folder to Canvas.
Homework
Read Gries Chapter 1, pages 1-7 and all of Chapter 6. Read White Space chapter 2 and 3..
As you read the first 7 pages of Gries, look out for why she thinks a new materialist approach to visual rhetoric is important. And be on the lookout for how she defines terms. As you read the other pages, keep track of the materials and methods used to compose Obama Hope.
Do one more Photoshop tutorial on your own (maybe one like this that works with text and layers).
