1) VISUAL RHETORICAL ANALYSIS: HOW AN ADVERTISING/PROMOTION/CHARITY CAMPAIGN WORKS (or doesn’t)
For this assignment, your first task is to identify a current print or web-based campaign featuring strong visual elements and substantial textual content (in general this will mean 100+ words and three different type treatments). For our purposes, a “campaign” should be understood as a substantial attempt to persuade an audience or audiences to take specific action within a specific, limited timeframe. Thus, any current and time-limited advertising campaign with a mix of strong visuals and text is appropriate and workable for this assignment. Additionally, any focused promotional or charitable campaign (again, with strong visuals and text) will also be workable, with “focused” being understood as directly articulating goals and specifying a timeframe for action. Please select an artefact from that campaign. (For example: a Chanel ad picturing a model holding or applying a product will not work because there is no specific limited timeframe, but an ad in which Chanel encourages customers to contribute to a cancer-fighting charity by October 15, 2018 will work.) This might be a poster, a brochure, a leaflet, or another brief document. In any case, you must be able to provide me with an electronic copy (screenshots will work here, but no cinematic or television campaigns) of the artefact in your Google Docs folder.
A friendly warning: I strongly recommend avoiding both causes and products that you strongly support (and detest). In my experience, people who choose topics for which they themselves are “true believers” or advocates (or vice-versa) tend to lose sight of the assignment, and tend to build an argument for (or vehemently against) their chosen cause instead of offering an analysis that meets the goals of the assignment. So what are the goals of the assignment, you ask?
GOALS OF THE ASSIGNMENT
• Apply recognized tools for rhetorical analysis to an artifact from a campaign. Among these are Aristotle's ethos, logos, and pathos appeals; Ehses and Lupton’s examples of rhetorical figures; and Phillips and McQuarrie’s “Typology of Visual Rhetoric”. These are tools we will have discussed in class, but you are by no means limited to the class readings. You are encouraged to seek out recognized rhetorical tools that seem fitted to your chosen campaign.
• Offer a brief analysis (a paragraph or so) of the target audience for that campaign.
• Employ the rhetorical tools to explain whether or not the artefact is likely to be persuasive for its intended audience(s).
• Analyze, interpret, and critique specific visual rhetorical strategies employed in the artefact. Among persuasive elements that might merit special consideration are: typography, use of color, graphic elements, page layout (including “white space”), and the overall structure or form of the document or site.
• Quote or excerpt directly from the artefact in order to illustrate key points of your analysis, interpretation, or critique. Screenshots are helpful here. Screenshots of part of the image are helpful here.
• Leave readers with a sense that you are offering grounded explanations as to why your chosen artefact succeeds or fails (or both).
As implied above, recognized rhetorical tools include all of the visual rhetoric tools employed by scholars in our readings to date. Because you are upper-level students, you should not cite elementary distillations of rhetorical theory found on sites like Wikipedia. Reputable translations of Aristotle are available online for those interested in delivering the “classic” ethos/logos/pathos based analysis, but I challenge those who have already done one of these (or will soon do one) in another class to push further in their pursuit of rhetorical tools for analysis, keeping in mind some of the more compelling approaches from our visual rhetoric readings.
How much? Target 1,250 words, exclusive of illustrations. I strongly recommend stopping before you cross 1,800 words.
When? We will have a peer-review draft workshop on Monday, October 8. The final draft will be due Thursday, October 11.
Where? Via e-mail. Don’t forget, I need both your argument (as a Word doc file or via a link) and the artefact (as a pdf or a link).
2) INFOGRAPHIC ASSIGNMENT
For this assignment you must develop an infographic on a topic that would be of interest to other members of the university population (broadly understood, and small subsets of the population are workable). The topic of the infographic is unimportant to me. It could be how to become an intern at a company that you’re interning with, why Mesa Pizza is superior to all other Dinkytown food options, how to stay safe when attending campus parties, or advertising the many merits of an available roommate or friend (this has already been done more than once once). Really. Doesn’t. Matter. What does matter is that whatever topic you choose you must be able to provide or generate a roughly 50-50 mix of text and visual information with at least some of the text being relatively small. And, of course, some of the text being significantly larger. And a different color. I’m looking for 200-250 words sprinkled throughout the infographic. I’m looking for representations of data that are both appealing and ethical. If you’ve never tried anything like this before, there are free tools that will help you (though not all of these will help for this specific assignment).
Once you finish the infographic, you have a brief follow-up assignment entitled “Rationales.” In a brief (500-750 word document, please explain your decisions for choices including type styles, size of type, color choices, image choices, location of design elements, white space, and any other major choices you have made. In these explanations, please offer grounded explanations wherever possible. This may involve some research. There is a difference between saying “I chose blue because I think people find it soothing” and saying something like:
My client has built a substantial brand identity around Pantone’s 'TangerineTango' and my infographic will reinforce that connection because — though it addresses a smaller subset of the client’s audience — this subset (teenagers) has a demonstrably positive association with the brand, as evidenced by their substantial record of purchases of clothing featuring this color (Brand Datametrics 2016)
In short, I’m encouraging you to think of your infographic as an overtly persuasive instance of visual rhetoric. And in the “Rationales” document I am looking to you to offer reasonable support for your claims that your choices are appropriate and/or persuasive for the infographic’s intended audience(s). This, of course, will be driven by your own audience analysis as you develop the project. Because data is so very persuasive, you might benefit from factoring in whether data about your target audience is available via research when you plan your assignment.
PEER REVIEW WORKSHOP (Infographic and "Rationales" both due): Wednesday, October 24.
FINAL DRAFT DUE: Friday, October 26.
3) FINAL PROJECT: THE VISUAL RHETORIC OF _____________________
For this assignment you must identify a specific complex artefact or closely related group of artefacts that would benefit from rhetorical analysis. Ideally, these artefacts would be drawn from an area where you either have special expertise or substantial interest in learning more about how the artefact(s) set(s) about persuading the(ir) intended audience(s). We'll provisionally term this artefact or group of artefacts "X" and your final project is, at root, "The Visual Rhetoric of X". "The Visual Rhetoric of X" should be understood as a sustained and scholarly critique and analysis of how and whether the visual rhetorical choices within your chosen "X" are effective for the intended audience(s) or not, with recommendations for improvement being a possible approach to your conclusion.
This project will involve two deliverables: 1) an in-class pecha-kucha presentation directed at your fellow students in WRIT 3671; and 2) a sustained digital document we might term an "unpaper" (examples include websites, slideshow presentations, Prezis, Padlets, and similar non-paper formats) of about 2,000-2,500 words in length, with significant graphic content. Though the format of this project may be non-traditional, my expectations for depth of analysis, clarity, and effective citation practices remain high. For example, I expect that your analysis will be grounded in one or more of the analytical tools we've been studying (e.g. Aristotle’s appeals, Phillips’ and McQuarrie’s matrix). Further, I expect you to use one of the existing and recognized systems for scholarly citation or to develop an alternative approach that you believe delivers as much information to your readers with greater efficiency. (If you pursue an alternative citation format, please prepare a brief appendix explaining and defending your approach.) As you prepare your project, please keep the following guidelines in mind:
• Your goal is not to show that something is persuasive or effective in the abstract. Rather your goal is to show an artefact is persuasive or effective for its intended audiences. The more you can show or prove or demonstrate about that audience, the better.
• Ground your claims. Take steps to ensure that every claim you present has the support needed to connect with your intended audiences.
• Describe in order to argue. Description — especially in a time when readers can often be offered easy access to the artefact you’re examining — is of limited value. Description that is needed to set up an argumentative point is valuable for your readers. Pure description untethered to an argument is, perhaps, not.
Also, heed this warning. I will be assessing the effectiveness of your presentation of your argument. I will be evaluating the surface of that argument. I will not be evaluating the hours spent achieving particular visual effects or wrestling with an intransigent software program. Be mindful of the time spent chasing the “just so” visual or multimodal effect. Make sure that these expenditures of time and effort do not come at the cost of a clearly presented argument.
To maximize your opportunity for a successful project, I will be requiring a project proposal. A successful proposal should be a solid, weighty paragraph with the following elements clearly articulated:
1) The topic that fills in the blank in “The Visual Rhetoric of ________________” and whether you are pursuing synchronic (snapshot in time) analysis, diachronic (over a stretch of time) analysis or some other structure.
2) The recognized tool or tools that you anticipate using to analyze and interpret the visual artefacts you have selected.
3) Which digital delivery format you have chosen for your project (Prezi? YouTube? Or what?).
My hope is that you choose a topic that is compelling to you, either in your professional/scholarly life, or in your life more generally. My expectation is that you offer your readers/viewers a clear sense of how and why a particular type of visual rhetoric works (when it does). Finally, I look forward to you building your skills in presenting your arguments in ways that underscore your visual rhetoric ethos.
PROJECT PROPOSAL DUE: Noon, Thursday, November 8 (or sooner, if possible).
PECHA-KUCHA DAYS: December 3, 5, and 10
PROJECTS DUE: December 12, 3pm, via Google Drive
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