Visual Form,Ethics,and a Typology of Purpose

Abstract

Stallworth Williams introduces concepts of visual rhetoric and ethics for a classroom exercise in the analysis and revision of a sales letter. This article revisits Stallworth Williams’s proposed teaching strategies, suggesting that not only do students need to be instructed in elements of visual design, but they must also be taught to link those elements to specific decorative, indicative, or informative purposes. This method teaches students to design documents that meet shared goals (designer and recipient) and to recognize where designs fail in purpose, so revisions can be made using deliberate choice, based on a systematic framework.

Keywords

visual rhetoric ethics visual information design Peircean analysis

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