Opening comments, class overview.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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
Rhetoric
5) His/her favorite logo
6) One piece of information that will
help all of us to remember
him/her.

9. 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.

10. 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.”
-Burke
More! And citation for these two.

11. And Visual…
Adjective
1.of or pertaining to seeing or sight: a
visual 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 nat
ure of a mental vision: a visual impres
sion captured in a line of verse.

12. YOUR DEFINITION HERE.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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?

18. 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.

19. 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).

20. 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.

21. 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.