Rhetoric of Design: A Pedagogical How-to

The word ‘rhetoric’ has a bad reputation. When most people use it, they use it negatively: “That company just spews rhetoric about their political views.” But most of us who live in the academic world know that rhetoric is much more than this. For Aristotle, rhetoric was “the available means of persuasion,” which is still a pretty good definition today. Recently though, our available means have shifted to include means that many of us never could have imagined as children, not to mention what Aristotle never imagined. Now, we can include items in our persuasion tool belts like fonts, layouts, and even web design. Of course some of us possess internet skills that others don’t, and that’s always okay, but because you clearly know enough about digital writing to be reading this Keep Learning blog, I want to explain how important knowledge of digital design is to have in our pedagogical tool belts.

It is becoming increasingly important for writers to think visually. If we are going to survive in a world of screens, we need to begin to think about how to go about it. One of the tools we already have is design. We already think about the margins and fonts we use when we create a traditional style essay. And those of us who tweet, blog, or use Instagram are thinking about the presentation the 140-character message, the blog we keep about running, or the Instagramming we do of our food. In 2002, rhetoric and composition scholar Diana George claimed in her article, “From Analysis to Design” that “to talk of literacy instruction in terms of design means to ask writers to draw on available knowledge and, at the same time, transform that knowledge/those forms as we redesign” (26). George goes on to quote the New London Group on the matter: “Designing transforms knowledge in producing new constructions and representations of reality.” For both George and the New London Group, design is an impactful part of our rhetorical approach to whatever project we’re working on. Further, design is not a neutral space. Think about the colors you might chose for the background on a blog about your travels to Germany. If you chose to make the background colors red, white, and blue, what message(s) are you sending choosing this color palette over a red, black, and gold one?

If I transfer this little bit of abstract thinking into my writing classroom, or my speech classroom, or even a science classroom (because I can ask my students to design and write online in any of these settings) I am now faced with a new set of rhetorical tools to present to my students. I must provide them with enough direction to keep them away from websites that look like they might have been built in the mid-1990’s. But how do I do this?

Last week, I guest lectured in an undergraduate course called “Digital Document Design,” which is a rhetoric and writing course at my institution, and I showed the students three tools: Prezi, WordPress, and Tumblr. I chose these three because the majority of students are familiar with at least one of these – some of them already use these actively. This way, I have a good base of knowledge from which to start. Then I provided examples of the various ways each could be used. We discussed how each is good for presenting a project, but in vastly different ways, and then we discussed their differences. What I did not do was limit my examples to good examples. Together, we searched WordPress sites, Tumblr pages, and Prezis and looked for really ugly ones. This provided a platform for excellent discussion on what not to do. Eventually, the students decided they wanted to look at different news sites. They ended up comparing CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and BBC – which eventually led to some of them pulling out their smartphones to compare the design of the desktop versions of the websites we were viewing with the phone applications they often use away from their computers and laptops. It was a pleasant surprise, completely student led, and really fruitful.

I can’t promise that your students will take the lead like the students I was lecturing did, but I can promise that your students think about design in their lives away from school. They understand that phone applications have a different design than web applications, and they understand when a website is difficult to look at — and most of them can tell you why. This is an excellent entry point into discussion how design is rhetorical, or even why old conventions like paper margins and Times New Roman font are still requirements in some classes. And the best part is that design discussion is fun.

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