TODAY

1. Icebreaker: introducing ourselves.

2. Visual Rhetoric: what’s up with that?

3. So what are we going to be doing?

4. Did someone say Tumblr?5. Activities, activities,

activities

Icebreaker

To start today, I want you to complete what is likely to be a familiar sort of icebreaker activity. You will pair up with someone you don’t already know, and over the course of a few minutes you will interview that person.

The info you need to get is on the next slide.

Find out…

1) The person’s name (obviously)2) What he/she goes by (if it’s

different)3) His/her major and progress in the

program.4) Why he/she decided to take Visual

Rhetoric5) His/her favorite logo6) One piece of information that will

help all of us to remember him/her.

Defining visual

rhetoric

Our starting point for the semester will be this: defining visual rhetoric. I’ll be opening a Word document to take notes as we talk. But first, a few quick slides with some elements to consider.

Rhetoric is…

…"the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.”-Aristotle

…”the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.”-BurkeMore! And citation for these two.

And Visual…

Adjective1.of or pertaining to seeing or sight: avisual image.2.used in seeing: the visual sense.3.optical.4.perceptible by the sense of sight;visible: a visual beauty.5.perceptible by the mind; of the nature of a mental vision: a visual impression captured in a line of verse.

YOUR DEFINITION HERE.

So let’s talk

about why

The visual

matters

One of the easiest places to go to see the essence of visual rhetoric is to look at posters. Let’s look at a series of movie posters from the last year, compliments of Empire magazine.

Now, then…

…let’s talk more specifically about what we will be doing as a class.

At this point, please either focus on the screen or open the website at http://www.phillalexander.com/vis

That course website, btw, will serve as our activity hub and your syllabus.

Let’s talk about class.

And now, Tumblr

I will show you how to start a Tumblr, so follow along if you’re not familiar with the site.

Please go to http://www.tumblr.com

Once you create your site, please email the URL to me at alexanp3@miamioh.edu

Your First Tumblr

For your first Tumblr post, I want you to give me a skills overview. On the next slide you will find a series of questions. Please answer them as completely and accurately as you can.

Skills Overview

How much experience do you have with:

1) Adobe InDesign? Adobe Photoshop? Dreamweaver?

2) Desktop publishing? 3) Document design– working on a

magazine, newspaper, website, or designing any sort of paperwork?

4) Creating art? If so, what kind?5) Taking photographs? 6) Any visual rhetoric-ish skills you

want me to know you have?

And from that…

Let’s work on design activity one. Turn to the website at phillalexander.com/vis. Notice that the header is… not fantastic.

Please form groups so that someone in your group knows how to use either InDesign or Photoshop to the point that you can edit images.

Group up– no less than 2, no more than 3.

Make a better

banner!

Thinking about what we’ve discussed so far, make a more compelling, useful, visually pleasing banner for the course website. The image needs to be 160 pixels high and should be roughly 1200 wide (though it can repeat, or be shorter).

For Next Time

You have numerous tasks, due to the week off for MLK day. Please:

1) Start the InDesign tutorials described on the syllabus. You have time to complete these, but the sooner, the better. 2) read:Williams non-designers design book Chapters 1,2 & 3, and Chapters 4 & 5: repetition & contrast; Kimball & Hawkins Chapters 1 and 2, Golombisky & Hagen Chapters 1-3, and Missy is Missing, and Wysocki “The Multiple Media of Texts” and “With Eyes That Think and Compose and Think,” Barthes “Rhetoric of the Image,” Benjamin “The Work of Art in the Era of Mechanical Reproduction,” (all on Niihka) and Kress “Reading Images” . We will work in particular with the last set (the Wysocki, Barthes, Benjamin and Kress pieces) next time we meet. 3) You have two design tasks, and should write two reading responses. All four of those things should be posted to your Tumblr.

And now…

… let’s finish by talking about community partners and what our major projects for the semester will look like.

And, of course, answer questions.