xi

INTRODUCTION:
VISUAL
RHETORIC
AND THE
SPECIAL
ELOQUENCE
OF DESIGN
ARTIFACTS

LESLIE
ATZMON
xii xiii

Although recent research in neuroscience shows that creative thought

has a fundamentally visual character, visual objects are typically seen as
illustrative and decorative rather than eloquent.1 In What Good are the
Arts?, for instance, literary critic John Carey argues for the superiority of the
written word over visual media (2005, 171–248). “Literature” Carey asserts
“is the only art that is capable of reasoning . . . [and] paintings . . . are locked
in inarticulacy” (2005, 177). Such an attitude ignores the strikingly eloquent
and refreshingly creative aspects of visual thinking. Certain predominant
strands of design scholarship also see aesthetic form as an empty vessel that
carries no intrinsic content.2 The purpose of this project is to address what
I consider to be gaps in interpretive strategies for visual material. I would
like to argue that the material and aesthetic qualities of designed artifacts
likewise embody a range of meanings that owe much to the designer’s beliefs
and intentions as well as to the historical contexts in which the artifacts were
designed. Meaning does not reside solely within the user’s interaction with
an artifact; its material aesthetic form—the physical material that shapes all
visual objects—plays a role in meaning-making. As William Butler Yeats
once asked, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (2000, 185).
Yeats’s quote illustrates beautifully the inextricable links between form and
content. Of course, meanings are apprehended, misinterpreted, or even
glossed over by users. But ignoring the aesthetic material of visual objects
cultivates subjective impressionism and perpetuates a separate but not quite
equal status for an important constituent of visual meaning: the material
and visual qualities of aesthetic form. Neglecting these meanings also masks
the working of what I would like to call visual rhetoric.
This collection spotlights the ways design artifacts
function as articulate rhetorical structures. In particular, the essays in Visual
Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design demonstrate that the creation, use,
and material aesthetic form of design artifacts are profoundly rhetorical.
When we consider rhetoric, we tend to think of verbal or visual messages

LESLIE ATZMON
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that have a tactical persuasive objective—a speech that wants to convince there must be agreed-upon cultural meanings understood by both designer
us to vote for someone or an ad that tries to persuade us to buy a particular and user. A well-trained designer, for instance, would be acutely aware of
product. We tend to ignore or overlook a different level of persuasion that the culturally based messages that his choice of an angled teacup handle, for
has to do not with a calculated objective but with a worldview or a set of example, might communicate to its users. He would likely begin his creation
meta-beliefs.3 Design artifacts are particularly effective at this other level process intent on communicating a dynamic quality through the acute angle
of persuasion; they offer audiences communicative data that orchestrate an as one component of an overall concept or “story” the cup would embody.
array of cultural themes. In this way, design artifacts are involved in the All the choices the designer makes about the form of the teacup would be
generation and proliferation of cultural belief systems. Influencing cultural similarly considered both in relation to formal choices already made and in
themes, they fulfill a profoundly rhetorical function. light of the total meaning he intends to communicate in this cup.8
If the user first responds to the dynamism that is
VISUAL NARRATIVE AND VISUAL RHETORIC suggested by a sharply angled cup handle, she may next relate these ideas to
Most written texts have a narrative or argumentative the shape of the rest of the cup or to its texture, size, or orientation. These
plot that unfolds in a certain order, and syntax at the sentence level is very other material aesthetic qualities will inevitably modify her original reading
significant. Design objects are often organized in narrative structures, of the cup. If the rest of the cup is short and squat, for instance, then the user
though the narratives are frequently not linear or plot-based as they are in may begin to piece together an intended narrative about overstimulation
verbal narratives.4 Instead, design narratives are typically constructed of followed by lethargy. Or she may next pick up the cup, in which case other
layered and interconnected meanings that are articulated in a holistic fashion material qualities will contribute strata of meaning to the cup. If the cup is
both in the physical form of design artifacts and also in their use processes.5 heavy, then the user may grasp the designer’s intention that the dynamic
Design achieves the level of narrative when the meanings generated by the handle plays the role of a cheeky sidekick to a solemn figure. Or the user may
design elements together tell a story. The designer’s intention is crucial to sip from the cup, which would add yet other layers of meaning. If the edge
the trajectory of the meanings, but the designer’s intention is not absolutely of the cup feels thin and curved on her lips relative to the visual weight of
determinative.6 the cup, for instance, then the user might reconstruct a narrative story about
I feel it is essential at this point to touch on the nature how dynamism can be overt, as in the cheeky handle.
of design processes particularly as it reflects the designer’s intention.7 The idea that these narratives exist at all may seem
Designers don’t just make things; as Richard Buchanan puts it so well, inconsistent with some readers’ conscious experience of using a teacup. This
they “fashion objects to speak in particular voices” (1989, 101). Design reaction is not surprising, considering how our culture “aestheticizes” visual
processes often begin with detailed research on the project topic. With this qualities and typically leaves in complete obscurity the complex meanings
information informing her thinking, a designer will frequently consider the that underlie designed artifacts and shape our experience of them. These
overall meaning and the discrete sub-meanings the artifact will embody. meanings are often just beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness but
Transforming these ideas into material form while keeping in mind how an have impact nonetheless on our aesthetic experience of the object. In some
object is to be used is a challenging part of the design process. The designer cases, a linear, plot-based narrative may be explicit on one level in a design
must sort out how these meanings might be manifested in the choices she artifact, but interconnected nonlinear narrative elements may function at
makes about the formal qualities of the designed object. A designer makes other levels. All of these meanings contribute to an overall narrative.
choices about her design’s formal and material qualities in part based on the Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for example,
substance of what she intends to communicate. with its V-shaped pedestrian path leading the visitor-user below ground level
Of course, if certain forms communicate specific ideas and then back to the earth’s surface, can be understood to convey a linear
(such as dynamism, the dangers of totalitarianism, or the value of mourning), narrative of the “ritual enactment of the process of death and renewal,” as

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 xvi xvii
Jack Williamson notes in his contribution to this collection. But Lin’s font service of a political agenda. In a reiteration of design processes, I assembled
choice of all uppercase, hand-carved Optima letters also communicates this story first from my readings of the meanings suggested by the material
pertinent nonlinear meanings on a more subliminal level. Optima capitals aesthetic whole of the monument—the V-shaped granite walls incised
are based on Roman lettering that classical stone carvers chiseled into stone into the earth—and then added to this meaning by connecting to it my
monuments. But, for me, the unadorned letterforms are simultaneously interpretations of the separate parts of the monument—the character and
evocative of the sans serif fonts that, as Lori Young notes in her essay for this history of the typeface and its orientation. As a designer, I knew that Lin had
collection, were embraced by corporate America—and also by the military- considered the historical meaning her chosen font would suggest and that
industrial complex that boosted the Vietnam War.9 she’d thought carefully about how to craft the material aesthetic form of the
Unfortunately, Lin does not describe how she chose the incised granite walls so they would present a narrative of death and rebirth.11
font for the Vietnam Memorial in her book Boundaries. But we can gain some Design narratives resemble those found in verbal texts
insight into her thought process for the Vietnam Memorial font from her but they also possess unique characteristics. I’d like to argue that our
comments about the font choice for her civil rights memorial: traditional understanding of narrative—of the ways in which our minds
What this movement was really about was the acts of habitually weave meanings together over time—is extremely limited. Along
an entire people . . . I wanted to convey this even in the with the traditional notion of narrative in which the meanings expressed
specific typeface I chose for the memorial. The lettering by an artifact are explicitly arranged in a chronological sequence, the term
style is based upon a Roman text and was designed by “narrative” also ought to include constellations of meanings embodied in a
John Benson, a master stone engraver and type designer. material artifact that are assembled and reassembled by its users over time.
It’s what he described as the common [Roman] people’s Some readers may argue that this process of assembling
text as opposed to the more formal [Roman] serif meanings embodied in a design artifact is neither universal nor verifiable.
lettering. Benson, who also acted as a consultant for the Some may argue that what I am calling “design narratives” have no
Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, has a different approach to clear beginning, middle, or end and that they lack the kinds of syntactic
letter cutting than a typographer might . . . when text is “directional” markers that would allow an interpretation to gain a secure
excised into stone, the tablet is read as a whole before it is purchase. But I would argue that the kinds of “free” associations we make
read line by line. (2000, 82).10 when we interpret a design object are, in fact, not free at all. I contend that
The monument’s typographic structure—equally spaced the structure of an object’s content, the messages transmitted, and the user’s
and consistently sized names in columns that are flush on one side with a interpretation of these messages are all programmed on a deep level by
deep “rag” (lines of type of different lengths that create an uneven shape) on various cultural beliefs and attitudes.
the other—and the granite into which the text is incised contribute to the The Vietnam Memorial’s narrative statements are not
overall content as well. Indeed, seen from a distance, the ragged text blocks organized according to the rules of linguistic syntax, but they do come
against the black stone resemble a tattered shroud relic encased in granite. together to structure complex narratives that are also rhetorical. Although
The monument would offer a rather different set of meanings if the text was each individual narrative or narrative element could function separately, I
printed on vinyl, for example, instead of incised into granite. am certain that Lin was acutely aware of the powerful ur-narrative she could
Each of these meanings and narrative elements construct by bringing all the narrative strands she was considering together
associated with Lin’s design—death and renewal, classical military grandeur in one artifact. Lin clearly considered the overall rhetorical function of these
juxtaposed with corporate self-interest, and tattered shroud reliquary—for multilayered narratives when she designed the Vietnam Memorial.12
me come together in a rich narrative about the timeless phenomenon of Designers may consciously focus on only the aesthetic
conflict and monumental sacrifice followed by personal loss and grief in the qualities of the form of their design, or they may devise an arbitrary process

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to produce a designed object. If they are not trained, designers may not even processes of making meaning and rhetorical processes of persuasion have
be aware of the meanings underlying their process and the communicative been useful for explicating some communicative aspects of messages that
power of the choices they make. Whatever the design process, though, have a tactical persuasive objective in graphic design and, to some extent,
the designer’s beliefs and attitudes shape choices made about the material in work from other design disciplines. I would like to stress again that, for
form. The designer’s aesthetic convictions are necessarily influenced by the design artifacts, persuasion can entail the production and transmission of
culture(s) in which the designer is immersed, and the material form of the less obvious cultural messages.
design object frequently embodies these beliefs and attitudes. Visual rhetorician Marguerite Helmers believes that
These embodied beliefs and attitudes, in turn, can be assembling semiotic “blocks of meaning” is a rhetorical act that is relevant
construed as narrative in that they come together in an artifact to structure to visual entities (2004, 17). Indeed, semiotic theory has played a significant
complex overt or covert meanings that are transmitted to users in time; role in the development of the discipline of visual culture studies, and the
these accounts can, at the same time, be construed as rhetorical in that discourse of visual culture studies, in turn, has informed much contemporary
they inevitably have some felt or unfelt impact on the users’ beliefs and visual scholarship. However, it seems to me that visual culture studies
attitudes. Visual rhetorical analysis therefore involves apprehending the is only partly successful as a method for understanding the important
constitutive elements and structures of these messages and deciphering their rhetorical functions of design artifacts. Helmers also wisely advocates for
meanings. Gaining insight into this sort of visual rhetoric also deepens an the investigation of material aesthetic qualities as rhetorical entities:
understanding of the culture in which an artifact was created and was, or One of our projects as visual rhetoricians is to
is, used. differentiate ourselves from semiology by studying
material as rhetoric. What does the character of a texture
RETHINKING VISUAL THEORY of pencil on paper or a smooth and reflective wall with
In his basic textbook Type and Image: The Language of names etched into its face impart to the meaning that the
Graphic Design, Phillip Meggs explains that semiotics, which he describes spectator takes from the object? (2004, 18)
as the study of signs and their meanings, is applicable to graphic design as Material aesthetic qualities such as the character of
communication. He notes that “graphic designers use signs and symbols as pencil line on paper or a smooth granite surface are crucial to the content of
powerful vehicles for communication. Elemental forms can be combined most designed objects. I would like to argue that visual culture studies falls
to signify content” (1992, 8).13 Meggs’s ideas are based on the theoretical short in its ability to deal with these material aesthetic qualities.
work of semiotician Roland Barthes, who explains that visual entities can The discipline of visual culture studies, which has been
be understood as a group of visual syntactical symbols (signifiers). Each thriving since the early 1990s, embraces a theoretical approach developed in
signifier’s meaning depends on what it signifies for a particular spectator. A response to nineteenth-century “reflectionist,” object-focused art historical
signifier has no intrinsic meaning, according to semiotic theory, but takes models. Author Jessica Evans describes these models in the seminal
meaning when, by convention, it comes to stand for something other than introductory text Visual Culture: The Reader: “in the historicist narratives
itself (signified) for a spectator or group of spectators (Barthes, 2006). upon which art history’s early disciplinary rationale was founded, successive
Scholar Judith Williamson broke new ground in Decoding schools of painting move steadily toward a goal of the perfect reproduction
Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, her 1978 study in . . . of an external ‘reality’” (Evans and Hall 1999, 12). Evans and coeditor
which she utilized semiotic theory to understand the covertly and overtly Stuart Hall point out that the “linguistic turn” or “cultural turn” in the social
persuasive rhetoric of advertising imagery. She argues that advertising sciences makes it impossible for the analysis of visual entities to “turn back
makes meaning by effectively associating our desire for material objects to the pre-semiotic assumptions of reflectionism” (1999, 2). The evaluation
with our nonmaterial desires.14 The interrelationships between semiotic of the aestheticized object in art history, Evans and Hall further explain,

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has been superseded by analysis of “visual metaphors and terminologies constructs such as “visual spectacle” and processes of “looking and seeing,”
of looking and seeing” in cultural studies. Since Evans and Hall’s book the rhetorical functions of aesthetic material is not central to the authors’
came out in 1999, most of these same themes—“the society of the spectacle theses.
and the simulacrum; the politics of representation; the male gaze and the In Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design, I am
possibility of a female gaze; the ‘mirror stage’; fetishism and voyeurism; the calling for a reconception of formal analysis of visual objects, for a new focus
reproduction of the image”—have obsessed the discourses of visual culture on visual form as a site of rich rhetorical material. At the same time, I would
studies and visually based work in the humanities (Evans and Hall 1999, like to clarify that I am not suggesting we eliminate existing verbally based
1).15 The material or aesthetic form of the visual entities considered is rarely techniques for the analysis of visual phenomena. Instead, what I am saying
discussed in depth, if it is even mentioned, and there is typically no attempt is that the approach taken in this book could fortify this verbally based
to explore the meanings generated through intense analysis of the material scholarship by foregrounding visually based theory situated in the rhetoric
media of visual objects. of material aesthetic form.
I sometimes wonder if our love affair with linguistically Deep-seated analysis of material aesthetic form, however,
based theory is a self-aggrandizing attempt to ensure that visual research highlights problems with certain commonly used terms in contemporary
is perceived as rational and intellectual. This approach has tended to visual theory. “Image” is the most commonly used term for visual entities
“verbalize” the discourse in visual culture studies by positioning visual of all kinds in visual culture studies and kindred scholarship. Design writers
entities as passive objects of looking and seeing or as visual representations Anne Bush (1994), and Gunther R. Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen (2006),
(images) that circulate in a given culture. In such a world, we can lose sight of for instance, refer to design objects as “visual images.” The term “image,” I
the power of material aesthetic form as itself—already, before any linguistic would argue, actually diminishes the material aspects of visual entities—it
turn—a site of complex theoretical constructs. Even though visual culture impedes material analysis by construing artifacts as copies or likenesses or
studies has left form out, I suggest that there is no intrinsic opposition as entities that represent something else. Almost anything can, of course, be
between material aesthetic form and theory. fruitfully construed as an image in this sense of the term. It is imperative,
Visual discourse has been stuck in a no-win situation: first however, to realize that we lose the “object”—the fully embodied material
comes the notion that aesthetic form can be easily and entirely articulated or artifact—when we use “image” promiscuously. Such promiscuous use of the
interpreted by superficial aesthetic contemplation, followed by an affective term “image” has denuded it of meaning.
response or thin aesthetic description, and then comes the denigration of As noted earlier, semiotics helped foment a range of
such object-based analysis. This modus operandi has been an impediment to theoretical approaches that have been embraced by visual culture studies.
visual research, hampering the development of innovative ways to consider Labeling all visual objects “images” also lumps the varied array of visual
visual form. Even some fascinating new work on visual topics fails to attend artifacts into one undifferentiated group. In semiotics, Evans explains,
to the rhetorical function of material aesthetic form, and when scholarship “Language is a series of ‘negative’ values, each sign not so much expressing a
does consider material form, the role of material aesthetic form is not central meaning as marking a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs
to the arguments. In their introduction for The Nineteenth-Century Visual within the collective symbolic system of language” (Evans and Hall 1999,
Culture Reader, editors Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski 13). She offers the pragmatic example of how a
challenge preeminent visual culture studies scholar Nicholas Mirzoeff’s call set of distinctions between dead/living, cooked/raw
for a “move away from a certain kind of object-orientation”; they demand operate in English . . . to distinguish between the signifiers
“attention to the formal elements and conventions of the material objects” mutton and sheep, whereas the French signifier mouton
(2004, 7–8). Although a number of the essays in this collection endeavor to
insert the material object into the inevitable web of external visual culture

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cuts only one conceptual unit. It is not the case that there this idea is represented by illustrator George Cruikshank’s “rising balloon in
is pure, positive content, which is then “clothed in the the frontispiece to Sketches by Boz” (2000, 11).
form of a signifier” (1999, 12). I would argue, however, that the symbolism Flint
Our commonly used terms (or signifiers) are constituted, finds in Cruikshank’s rising balloon is limited in its scope and focus. Her
according to these ideas, not so much by what they positively represent interpretation deals with the literal elements of this visual artifact narrowly
(signifieds) but by contrast with what they don’t represent and by the conceived as an image. For starters, her analysis fails to comment on the
network of neighboring meanings. If semiotics is the basis for visual culture other representational imagery in Cruikshank’s design that is evocative of
studies, then why is the catch-all signifier “image” so widely used for the “vision”—such as the tall, curved shrubbery and the three-dimensional title
whole range of visual entities (signifieds) in the discipline? While semiotics letterforms structured out of ball shapes, Examined closely, the shrubbery
focuses on the relational character of meaning, I suggest that labeling all can be read as a group of strange creatures who hold and point to the title
visual entities “images” obliterates crucial contrasts and differences and text. The vignetted form of the title, the “wall” on which the title sits, and the
slights the consideration of visual artifacts in the context of a network of surrounding shrubbery likewise can be envisioned as an incised bird’s eye
neighboring meanings. The very premises of semiotics, then, seem to militate view—a panoptic scene that seems to be cut into the page. There is also no
against allowing a single term like “image,” which comes to us without a analysis of the material aesthetic form of the illustration—such as the line
contrasting term against which to define it, to carry so much weight in visual quality, the character of the ink on paper, or light and dark areas—that might
scholarship. Semiotics suggests that theory should reconnect with material offer more detailed information about “vision” in the nineteenth century.
aesthetic form. We ought to be able to refer to visual entities by using a rich Rather than extracting and disclosing the subtle discourse embedded in
and varied set of descriptive terms, and, in the meantime, visual scholars visual work as she does so brilliantly in the literature she discusses, Flint
should seek a terminology that acknowledges the materiality of visual focuses on more superficial visual meaning, presenting paintings and
artifacts and deepens our understanding of their rhetorical potential. illustrations that literally portray the cultural themes she discusses.
Flint asserts a “visual bias within Western culture
RECONSIDERING VISUAL ANALYSIS [in which] . . . our language is infused with visual metaphors, the visual
The visual has lately become a hot topic in traditionally manifesting its dominance not merely in terms of perceptual experience,
non-visual fields. In much of this scholarship, however, art frequently serves, but also as a cultural trope” (2000, 8). She rightly notes that visuality is a
at best, as perfunctory evidence. In The Victorians and the Visual Imagination, pervasive cultural theme and that visual metaphor suffuses spoken and
for example, literary critic Kate Flint persuasively argues that in the late written language. Despite the prevalence of visually saturated cultural and
nineteenth century visuality played an important role in catalyzing shifting verbal language, however, there is no true visual ascendancy without deep
notions of the self. Yet she misses the deeper visual meaning of the works she and rigorous analysis of visual entities. The authors in Visual Rhetoric and the
invokes. Her illustrations tend to serve the function of superficial addenda Eloquence of Design, on the other hand, aspire to situate a whole range of visual
to rich verbal texts. Flint argues that particularly in the work of Dickens and artifacts at the very center of their analyses.
Thackeray, “fiction’s appeal to the imagination could find itself circumscribed Book history scholarship fares somewhat better than most
or supplemented . . . by illustrations,” which, she notes “could provide an visual work in literary criticism in its attempts to equalize visual and verbal
interpretive gloss on the written word” (2000, 4). She probes suggestive verbal form and content. In Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth Century
vocabularies of “scrutiny and surveillance” in the literary works of Charlotte Novel, author Janine Barchas explains how during the genre’s formative years
Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot that allude to a nineteenth-century “in the first half of the eighteenth century,” the novel’s “material embodiment
“panoptic awareness.” Flint elaborates “Dickens’s commitment to” the as printed book rivaled its narrative content in diversity and creativity” (2003,
concept of “literal overview” with critical aplomb; she goes on to claim that i). Her fascinating chapters include discussions of the power of author images

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in frontispieces, how placement of printers’ ornaments symbolizes the passage notes, often utilize a nineteenth-century art historical aesthetic approach
of time, and the ways that punctuation was graphically significant in some to scholarship (1994, 220). They typically look to other design and art
early novels. movements, with prominent cultural phenomena presented as background or
Barchas cites Gérard Genette’s 1991 essay “Introduction influence, to reinforce their arguments—which results in what Teal Triggs
to the Paratext” in which he says that “no reader should be indifferent to has called a “familiar assortment of critical biographies, historical narratives
the appropriateness of different typographical choices, even if modern and anthologized readers” (2007).
publishing tends toward standardization” (quoted in Barchas 2003, 61). Some recent work in graphic design history, such as
In her chapter on title pages, Barchas presents intriguing discussions of Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation Since 1800 by Paul Jobling
audience recognition of certain typographic printers’ conventions, and and David Crowley (1994), Graphic Design as Communication by Malcolm
she points out the impact of title pages that are practically bursting at the Barnard (2005), Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna
seams with typography and typographically conveyed meaning. In the end, Drucker and Emily McVarish (2008) usefully detail the technological,
though, she declares that “The hurly-burly of the typographical pie does social, and political environments in which design functions. But even these
not require my augmentation. The cacophony of type speaks for itself” books don’t address more subtle, but equally fascinating, cultural factors
(2003, 67). Here I would disagree. Barchas overlooks deep interpretation that can be read in the creation, material form, and use of design artifacts—
of commonplace eighteenth-century typographic form in favor of what is factors such as contemporaneous philosophical or scientific themes that
more familiar territory for book historians: the orientation of text on the are not obviously connected to the life of design artifacts and are typically
page, imagistic printers’ elements (such as fleurons), and textual content. less evident than those cultural facets discussed in existing culturally based
Barchas has published an exciting cross-disciplinary book, but she does not graphic design historical work.16
interpret typographic form the way graphic design historians can. Some of Histories of architecture, product design, and interior
the authors in this collection pick up where Barchas leaves off. Ryan Molloy design all tend to be more closely linked to design theory or linguistically
and Lori Young dig right into the “hurly-burly of the typographical pie,” based theory than graphic design history is, although some work has retained
Gerry Beegan argues that rhetorical meanings may shift dramatically when a strong focus on styles and periods (along with technical discussions of
the form or content of contiguous type and image changes, and Guillemette manufacturing, materials, site, or place). In History of Architectural Theory:
Bolens compares a typographic logo with a Holbein painting. From Vitruvius to the Present, Hanno-Walter Kruft defines architectural
It is worth noting that in Barchas’s Works Cited section theory as “the history of thought on architecture as recorded in written
there is not one book or article by a graphic design historian. Why? form” (1994, 13). This book, which surveys the ways that politically or
Although there is little graphic design historical work on eighteenth- socially based architectural theory influences the design, form, and use of
century design, there is some research on preeminent eighteenth-century architecture, offers a comprehensive look at the philosophical underpinnings
British typographers William Caslon and John Baskerville, for example, of architectural form. Kruft’s methodology characterizes most historical
that Barchas might have found useful. But even this scholarship is not or theoretical work in the major design disciplines.17
rigorous enough—not broad or deep enough—to offer much to research as Some recent design historical research rethinks the
disciplined as Barchas’s. notion that the form of design artifacts is indebted to certain cultural
Barchas’s fine book, which never completely breaks away constructs. Fran Tonkiss’s treatise on social process and spatial form,
from the perception of graphic design as an adjunct to the written word, Space, The City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms,
nonetheless does what much graphic design historical research fails to do: asks: “How do social processes—such as political mobilization or economic
it puts forward a thesis that attempts to challenge the status quo in book change—take shape in the city” (2005, back cover blurb)? Her particular
history and literary criticism. Graphic design historians, as Bush perceptively focus shows how “debates in urban studies” relate to “wider concerns

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 xxvi xxvii
within social theory and analysis.” Christopher Lindner’s fascinating When discussing visual rhetorical analysis, Sonja K.
collection Urban Space and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modernism Foss warns that the analytical response must be rhetorical and not merely
and Contemporary Culture (2006) presents an exciting cross-disciplinary aesthetic—even when considering such qualities as color, form, or texture.
series of essays that demonstrate the dynamic relationships among In any aesthetic response, according to Foss, the viewer may enjoy color,
cultural forces, visual and verbal texts, and urban design. sense form, or value texture. In a specifically rhetorical response, on the other
The work in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of hand, she argues that “colors, lines, textures, and rhythms” in an artifact
Design, however, considers design artifacts from a different vantage. While provide a basis for the viewer to infer the existence of images, emotions, and
scholarship based on design theory elaborates the ways that cultural factors ideas (2004, 306). Such a distinction can be useful, although the dividing
influence or relate to the creation, form, and use of design artifacts, Visual line is a delicate one. When experiencing a visual object it is hard to know
Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design’s authors position design artifacts when the mere observation of a texture, say, evolves into analyzing why that
front and center as visual rhetorical texts to be scrutinized. They decipher texture has the value it does.
cultural themes in the creation, form, or use of artifacts that offer insights The rhetorical meanings expressed through an artifact’s
into the historical contexts in which these artifacts were created and used.18 representative content, its various media, and the material aesthetic qualities
The meanings extracted from these artifacts may or may not concern the of both representations and media are not easily disentangled from one
sorts of political and social issues commonly addressed in design history and another. It is difficult to ferret out, for example, whether a “mathematical”
theory. Some of Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design’s contributors sense gleaned from an illustration is suggested by geometric subject matter,
tap into liminal cultural themes—including contemporaneous scientific by the fact that the illustration is drawn on grid paper, or by the sorts of
and philosophical discourses that, as I have already noted, are not typically geometric shapes included in the piece. One could add to this list of visual
considered in historical or theoretical design scholarship. A number of the considerations the character of the formal relationships among geometric
cultural themes examined by the authors in this collection are not obvious elements on the page, the sense communicated by “clean” technical-looking
in the artifact’s form (or its creation or use); they are subtle and they must pen lines, and the impact of the rich black ink against smooth white paper.
be teased out through sustained visual analysis. The authors’ readings reveal Foss’s description of visual rhetorical analysis features the sorts of meanings
fascinating insights gleaned from close scrutiny that resists simply repeating one can find in the first three items listed, but she hopes to isolate the equally
visual culture clichés and received ideas. The contributors to this collection relevant last three items—elements that might be called rhetorical aesthetic
have a fresh, even revisionist, take on the communicative functions of material.19
aesthetic material. In this collection, a number of authors show how design
objects yield information through their material qualities. For example, in
THE RHETORICAL MATERIAL OF DESIGN ARTIFACTS my essay “Supernatural Selection: Sidney Sime’s Weird Science,” the visual
I would like to point out that aesthetic form should not form of the luminous-looking cone-shaped rays of light that are prominent
be taken to mean merely “the look” of composition, line, texture, color, in Sime’s illustrations evoke Victorian ideas about the concentrated power
and other general formal features. This definition ignores the expressive of light rays of the new X-ray technology. To emphasize the revelatory
possibilities contained in choices about formal elements and material. The power of X-rays, Sime’s rendering method engages a material aesthetic that
formal structures of design artifacts are powerful communicative stuff, insinuates the luminous quality of light against the atmospheric heaviness of
and the meanings generated through the creation and use of design objects darkness into accepted ideas about how these invisible rays might look. He
typically involve the material aesthetic form. Each formal element carries thus reinforces for his audience that luminous-looking cone-shaped forms
specific meanings, and each formal element offers insights into the creative suggest X-rays.
intent of those involved in the design of an object.

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Similarly, in “Visual Style and Forms of Science in the CREATION AND USE NARRATIVES OF ARTIFACTS
Cold War,” Michael Golec examines the visual form of abstract, close-up Design thinking, which includes the gamut of formal
photographs of scientific handiwork—what he calls “the stuff of science”— choices made while designing, likewise contributes to the full rhetorical
that graced the covers of Science magazine in the late 1950s. He suggests experience. Kate Catterall argues that the Northern Ireland Bloomfield
that these compelling images confounded their cold war audience. The Commission’s ignorance about design processes—in particular, the
rocky forms that construct the close-up photomicrograph of a fractured principle that designers’ decisions about the material aesthetic form of
quartz crystal on one Science cover, for example, were at once familiar and any design creates content—led to monument design guidelines that are
intimidating—only a visually unobtrusive written caption reassured the inadvertently and inappropriately “politically charged, and . . . politically
audience that they were in the presence of fractured crystal quartz rather coercive.” Whether or not the maker intends it, all designed artifacts carry
than a cleaved mountain range. Golec argues that the visually ambiguous meaning. Professional designers are trained to consider the ways that an
aesthetic forms in these photographs embodied the coexisting cold war audience might construe meaning embodied in material aesthetic form.
themes of military expansion and containment through a simultaneous Before she designed her font entitled Magneto Motivity, designer Lori Young
visual rhetoric of scientific progress and scientific estrangement. investigated specific historical examples of ornamental typography and the
The material aesthetic forms of Sime’s rays of light and ways their material aesthetic forms were expressive of contemporaneous
the Science covers are rhetorical because they embody cultural themes cultural themes. When designing her own font, Young was acutely aware
dealing with the character of X-rays in the Victorian era and the nature that Magneto Motivity’s visual form would be, in part, constructed by
of the coexistence of cold war military expansion and containment, her forethought about its communicative functions. Her intention was to
respectively. Their designers intentionally or unintentionally instilled ascertain how the meanings generated by “a sans serif font would evolve if the
meaning through the formal choices they made during the creation process, design parameters included ornamentation.” In her essay, Young speculates
and their audiences consciously or unconsciously gathered meaning from about what sorts of meanings Magneto Motivity’s material aesthetic might
these designs in great measure through the material aesthetic qualities of the provoke for contemporary users (in this case, “users” would include those
representations. These qualities include the luminous aspect of Sime’s cone- who must make sense of her letterforms in their communicative contexts as
shaped light rays and the textures they create against adjacent dark areas well as those who literally use her font when producing design work).
and the juxtaposition of the pebbly-looking surface of the crystal imagery Young’s thoughts highlight another important
against the matte surface of the Science cover page. consideration: designed objects have “spectators” who are typically users.
These examples suggest that we ought to judge a book, “Spectator,” which is another common visual culture studies term, implies
in part, by its cover. Although most people are only narrowly aware of their remote consumption of a visual subject. Users, on the other hand, gather
impact—and most people are unaware of the interpretive framework that rhetorical meaning from interacting with the material form of design
they are implicitly adopting when they “like” a particular kind of car or artifacts; they also bring meaning to and generate meaning about artifacts
“prefer” Helvetica to Times—the typographic form and configuration, through the ways that they use them. Additionally, design artifacts frequently
materials, color, texture, size, shape, and other physical qualities of a book construct meaning through physical spaces or real or imagined qualities of
cover and interior add meaning to the book content. They are a participatory touch, smell, and sound; these are material aesthetic qualities as well.
part of the full rhetorical experience that includes the verbal content of the The rich physical nature of the sensory attributes of
written text. design artifacts is not well served by a theory that casts these objects as
“images” that are interpreted by “spectators.” In his essay for this collection,

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Jack Williamson elaborates the stunning physicality of the users’ interactive distinctions among all visual media, including the separate design fields.
journey along the Vietnam Veterans Memorial monument’s “polished black The work in this collection is interdisciplinary at several levels; the essays
granite” reflective walls: span a number of design disciplines including manufacturing design,
The wall’s two sections . . . gradually descend below graphic design, architectural design, and monument design. A number of
grade, as the side-by-side columnar lists of names, the authors write about or present what has traditionally been considered
which march along the wall, grow progressively longer. design: illustration, typography, commercial products, war monuments,
As the mourner approaches the low point of the path and building structures and sites. Other authors, however, juxtapose the
descent and reaches the juncture of the two walls, the evolving visual form of popular icons with design creation processes or body
lists of names are the longest and the death toll the most gestures and written texts with traditional design artifacts. All of the authors
overwhelming. treat the objects they discuss as sites of visual rhetoric. This method also
As they walk this path, mourners make rubbings of allows for unexpected connections with non-visual discourses by reframing
the names of fallen soldiers from the wall. Visitors touch the wall, they see all components in rhetorical terms. The essays in this collection suggest
their own reflections in the wall, and they leave offerings by the wall. The alternative methodologies for a provocative intertextual practice of the sort
monument’s visual rhetoric of death and rebirth is a participatory narrative that Maureen Goggin has described as “a rhetoric of the visual” in which, she
that is generated by the material form of the monument together with its users. argues, both verbal and visual analyses can be brought to bear on verbal and
visual artifacts alike (2004, 105). To some extent or another, of course, all of
THE ESSAYS Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design’s contributors rely on verbal texts
Design artifacts are ideal subjects for the study of visual to help make their arguments. Their interpretive methodologies, however,
rhetoric. Unfortunately, design artifacts have been given short shrift as they are heavily reliant on visual analysis.
are not, outside of design history, typically addressed in recent works that Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design not only
examine visual phenomena. This collection resists the visual dominion includes ten scholarly essays steeped in visual analysis of artifacts, but
of fine art; the essays in this book foreground the rhetorical functions of the collection also features two visual essays on the topic of ornamental
design. Design artifacts are different from fine art objects because their typography with accompanying verbal texts. Both visual essays feature
creation process is typically more inclusive. The production of a print fonts designed by their respective authors. Both authors consider how
graphic design artifact could include, for example, one or more designers, intentionality figured in their creation processes, and both authors interpret
clients, copywriters, offset printers, and photographers or illustrators. the visual forms they have created in the context of contemporary Western
These multiple influences typically introduce diverse points of view during cultures. Their visual essays demonstrate how typographic form and its
the creation process that may affect how artifacts are used and color how application can foreground specific cultural themes. Verbal and visual texts
they are understood. Artifacts’ forms and use patterns don’t just reflect the become equal partners in these two essays; they come together to elaborate
cultures in which they are created, though; they also influence the character the rhetorical meanings generated in the creation processes and expressed in
of cultural patterns—and their impact is broad. Mass-produced design of the formal structures of the authors’ typographic designs.
the sort discussed in several of the chapters is typically available to large Michael Golec inaugurates the collection by revealing
numbers of individuals within a culture, and almost all design artifacts hidden political agendas in the cover illustrations of cold war era scientific
across design disciplines are created to be used. magazines. The cold war era was characterized by a perpetual balancing act
The approach taken in this collection highlights between ideologies of technological and political expansion and containment.
common traits and functions among different sorts of design. This method The editorial staffs of scientific magazines—such as Science and Scientific
dispenses with the usual hierarchy of fine over applied art, and it levels the American—and popular magazines—such as Fortune and Life—positioned

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themselves on the front lines of this battle for scientific and ideological building as an expression of communist political ideology or alternatively as
supremacy. But there were holdouts—skeptics who had to be convinced that a visual expression of Dobrović’s interpretation of the ideas of philosopher
science was all for the good—and the magazine Science took up the gauntlet, Henri Bergson (1859–1941). At the same time, Kulić notes, the design of
celebrating technological discovery and innovation by parading grippingly the Generalštab—which he describes as “two identically cantilevered
abstract photographic representations of scientific phenomena on its covers. nine-storey-high volumes on either side of the street separating [two city
According to Golec, however, this alluring abstraction cultivated a visual blocks]”—evokes the iconic visual form of the Sutjeska canyon in which
ambiguity that simultaneously represented the coexisting and contradictory Partisans battled German soldiers in 1943. Finally, Kulić suggests that a third
political themes of expansion and containment. layer of meaning emerged after the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999; the
Kate Catterall also deals with political themes in her essay. badly damaged Generalštab building today stands as a pockmarked symbol
She explains that excluding design from the strategic planning for guidelines of this recent conflict, representing at once the highest and lowest points in
for a Northern Ireland memorial allowed inadvertent political agendas to recent Serbian history.
emerge in the recommendations contained in the Report of the Northern In “The Essential Outline: John Flaxman and
Ireland Victims Commission (commonly referred to as the Bloomfield Report) Neoplatonism,” Jane Webb examines layered meanings in “the transmission
(Bloomfield 1998). Consideration of relevant sociopolitical factors and how of Renaissance Neoplatonic theory” into the work of early nineteenth-
these concerns are communicated through the visual form of an artifact century artist/designer John Flaxman. According to Webb, Flaxman
(a process utilized by most designers) necessarily plays an important role believed that his line drawing technique allowed him to capture and visually
in effective monument design. Catterall analyzes a series of compelling represent the Neoplatonic “essential form” of any object, including his
twentieth-century war monuments to demonstrate how proficient design designed objects. She explains that Flaxman’s illustrations were echoed in
manages “the rhetorical power of memorial design,” and she ends her essay “the popular graphics contained in pattern books for manufactures that
with practical design strategies for a future Northern Ireland memorial. pared down the designs of Classical works to a simple outline, providing
Teal Triggs also looks for design strategies, but the subject the designer with a repository of archetypes from which to select and draw.”
of her analysis is do-it-yourself (DIY) feminist fanzines, which provide, she Webb offers fascinating connections between early nineteenth-century
argues, an insightful and often hidden layer of social, political, cultural, and Neoplatonist thought and the narrative inherent in Flaxman’s design and
economic documentation. Her essay discusses the ways in which the design design process. These insights help manifest her engaging thesis, which
of texts and images in Riot Grrrl fanzines—the limited run, photocopied and proposes that Neoplatonist philosophy was a verbal catalyst for the visual
stapled alternative “fan” publications so popular in the last few decades— language of early manufacturing design.
are combined to represent a unique brand of cultural resistance. Riot Grrrl In “Akimbo Stories: Kinesic Analysis in the Visual
fanzines take up issues of interest to their readership (typically young girls) and Verbal Arts,” Guillemette Bolens uses kinesics—the science of body
that range from notions of the personal (e.g., the body and sexuality) to the movements and gestures—to interpret cultural themes behind the akimbo
public (e.g., social identity and equality in the music industry). gesture in both visual and verbal texts. Bolens, a literary critic who specializes
Vladimir Kulić likewise considers multiple identities, in medieval literature, brings a fresh and intriguing point of view to Visual
but his focus is on Serbian architect Nikola Dobrović’s 1963 Generalštab Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design; she revamps her interpretive skills in
(“General Staff” in Serbian) building in Belgrade. In “Architecture and order to analyze both visual and verbal texts as sites of visual rhetorical
the Politics of Reading: The Case of the Generalštab Building in Belgrade,” meaning. In the first part of her essay, Bolens relates Hans Holbein’s painting
Kulić argues that the structure of the Generalštab Building, which he of an akimbo Henry VIII to the abstract akimbo gestures in a contemporary
explains housed the Federal Ministry of Defense and Yugoslavia’s Army website, in two contemporary logo designs, and in a photograph of 1960s
Headquarters, “allows for multiple readings” that could position the TV icon Superman. She argues that a Renaissance narrative of male power

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and virility is encoded into visual depictions of the akimbo body expansion. fictional prototypes and various articulations of evolutionary theory. Curtis
Bolens explains, moreover, that the medieval text Beryn (an anonymous demonstrates that designers and users of designed objects each participate in
fifteenth-century text in which the word akimbo first appears in English) the construction of narrative meaning embedded in artifacts.
is a fascinating example of a written text in which a reader is required to My essay recontextualizes the late nineteenth-century
visualize kinesic plot and character elements. In a final and intriguing fantasy illustration of Sidney Sime by relating it to Victorian science.
turn, Bolens relates the “visualizing” of gesture in Beryn to the expressive Nineteenth-century advances in optics and the invention of scientific and
movements described by the terms “delivery” and “gestus” used in classical popular optical devices amplified the realm of vision, calling into question the
oral rhetoric. distinction between the visible and the invisible. I show how the elaboration
In his essay “Industrialization, Human Agency, and the of that which is not commonly visible—helped along by the invention of
Materiality of Illustration in the Victorian Press,” Gerry Beegan investigates X-rays, by Darwinian evolution, by ideas about the hallucinating mind, and
the ways that users understood mass-produced disaster illustrations by theories of contorted space and time in the fourth dimension—challenged
featured in the popular nineteenth-century magazine the Illustrated London late-Victorian notions of selfhood. Sime’s work probes these issues and
News.20 He relates a shift in the visual rhetoric of disaster imagery in the presents a range of visual renderings in which interiors are exposed and the
mid-nineteenth century to a transition in public perception of devastating invisible is illuminated. My rhetorical analysis reveals complex historical
industrial disasters—and of industrialization in general. While the earlier narratives in the visual form of Sime’s fantasy imagery.
illustrations were reproduced as engravings in which the illustrator had Jack Williamson highlights the role of user experience in
much artistic license, the later illustrations emulated the real-life immediacy the narrative structuring of non-digital design artifacts. In his essay “Visual
of photographic imagery. The detached quality of these illustrations, Beegan Design Narratives: Participated Meaning and the Interior User in the Era of
argues, “cushions the intensity of the anxieties they arouse” in a public that Convergence,” Williamson argues that the advent of html and now xhtml
is beginning to feel powerless in the face of accelerating industrialization. programming and the video gamelike structuring of dynamic information
According to Beegan, less obvious, technologically experiences, in addition to the rise of the discipline of “experience design” in
generated formal qualities in both phases of disaster images need to general, have made the existence of visual design narratives more conspicuous.
be analyzed in conjunction with these illustrations’ “interpretive” or Most pre-digital design experiences and artifacts, however, express covert
“photographic” visual features. Furthermore, Beegan argues, both sorts of themes. In his essay, Williamson analyzes the range of purposes for which
illustrations are modified by paratextual relationships with their captions these “hidden narratives” are typically employed. “Participated meaning”
and other adjacent texts, which together produce a rhetoric of public fear of is a term—coined by Williamson—for the visual and verbal subtext,
relentless industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century. internalized by the user or viewer, which has been instilled knowingly or
The invisible and imaginary are memorialized in Barry unknowingly into an artifact during the design process. Williamson, who
Curtis’s essay “Dinosaur Design.” Curtis explores the role of visualization considers objects from a range of design disciplines in this essay, examines
in popular imagery of dinosaurs. These extinct creatures possess a the potential for the “new frontier” of “tailored” design programming
form of scientific fact and a high order of speculation. They only exist in (digital and otherwise) in the new millennium.
representation—as creatures of visual culture. Curtis looks at the ways Typographic elements are typically the most “invisible”
that illustrators have represented dinosaurs and investigates the ideas that sorts of design artifacts. The typographic artifacts discussed in Lori Young’s
have determined the appearance of these ideologically overdetermined and Ryan Molloy’s visual/verbal essays are not merely elements of written
creatures. He considers, in particular, how representations are indebted to communication—each type object expresses meaning far beyond human

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verbal language. These artifacts embody intricate symbolic visual language Notes
1
of the sort Young attracts with her neo-Rococo font Magneto Motivity, and According to the contemporary neurobiologist Antonio
Molloy captures in his ornamental font based on hip-hop bling-bling. In Damasio, the mind’s workings demand a visual vocabulary steeped in visual
their written essays, Young and Molloy explicate the cultural meanings that narrative. Twenty-first-century scientists propose that images are integral
they brought to bear in the creation, form, and use of their respective font to thought—perhaps this is the reason our verbal language is infused
designs. with visual metaphor. Damasio, who suggests that images are the absolute
My own experience as a design practitioner has made me medium of the mind, argues that the mind works not only in words but
acutely aware of the meanings my choices for the material aesthetic form of utilizes also a profound synesthesia based in imagery: “[T]he ability to
my design may make for my users and how these meanings fit in my own transform and combine images of actions and scenarios is the wellspring of
cultural context. In critique, design practitioners commonly discuss and creativity . . . . [T]he path-breaking novelty provided by consciousness was
analyze these embedded meanings. Many design scholars, though, have yet the possibility of connecting the inner sanctum of life regulation with the
to address this process in more than a superficial way, and most scholars processing of images . . . .Consciousness generates the knowledge that images
from other disciplines do not see material aesthetic form as an inexorable exist within the individual who forms them.”
component of the rhetorical meanings an object makes. Damasio argues that the ongoing processing of a mental
Narrowly constructed ideas about the aesthetic form of image-narrative is intrinsic to the medium of thought. Damasio’s “thought
visual objects—including Carey’s ideas about visual inarticulacy and the images” include perceptions from other senses such as smell, taste, and
absolute rejection of aesthetic analysis in visual culture studies—have stifled hearing, along with sight. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens:
innovative discourse that I believe will reshape how we understand aesthetic Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (San Diego: Harcourt,
form. In Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design I am calling for what 1999), 24.
2
I have dubbed a renewed visual culture of the object. I hope that as more In his paper “A New Dialogue,” Richard Thomas claims
people become aware of the ideas presented in this collection, people’s lives that “In essence, form has no meaning; it is an invitation, a window to
will be enriched with awareness of the historico-cultural forces shaping our possibility. Meaning resides, and is latent within us [the users]” (Richard
reality as well as with a keener sense of the made-ness of inner and outer Thomas, “A New Dialogue.” In “Design and Semantics of Form and
reality, which brings with it the quietly revolutionary thought that things Movement,” edited by Loe Feijis et al., 10–19. DeSForM 2006, 10). Klaus
can be remade differently. Krippendorf’s astute book The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design
presents a complex semantic theory of meaning for visual design. This theory
similarly details how the meanings of design artifacts are fully generated
by the ways that individual users or groups of users engage with them and
respond to them. Klaus Krippendorf, The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation
for Design (Boca Raton FL: Taylor and Francis, 2006).
3
It is possible that visual artifacts are not the best med-
ium for logical reasoning but that logical thought is only one particular sort
of articulacy.
4
I would like to thank Paul Morsink for his challenging
discussions on this subject.

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Design artifacts always carry meaning, but this content The designer’s intended meanings and these “transactional” meanings come
may not be structured as a narrative. Non-narrative design typically together as a designer-generated narrative that is created over time.
9
communicates one or more conceptual propositions. Lin has said that she did not want the Vietnam Memorial
5
I have noticed that when discussing graphic design, to make a political statement.
10
graphic designers use the expression “narrative” in an unconventional sense The Wikipedia entry on Optima font explains that
without first defining the term. Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by
6
In their seminal work of literary criticism, “The Hermann Zapf between 1952-1955 for the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt,
Intentional Fallacy,” W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley dispute Germany. Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtle swelling
the role of the author’s intentions in the meaning of a work. They argue at the termini producing a suggestion of a glyphic serif. Optima’s design
that although a text’s words and their meanings are appropriate for literary follows humanist lines, but its italic variant is merely an oblique, essentially
analysis, information about the author is not. They claim that focusing on a sloped roman without the characteristic italic letterforms such as a single
the author “leads away from the poem”—that a poem does not belong to its storey a and rounded base of v and w. This is more typical of a realist sans-
author but that “it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the serif such as Helvetica or Univers. A significant feature of the design, also
world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs unconventional for a sans, Optima’s capitals (like Palatino’s) are directly
to the public.” I agree that a design artifact does indeed “go about the derived from the classic Roman monumental capital model . . . It is clear
world” mostly beyond the control of its designer. The designer’s intention from the reverence in Zapf’s designs that he regards the Roman capitals as
and the ways her intention manifests itself in the design’s material form, ideal forms, and his executions in type prove the thesis.
however, are informed by a broad set of loosely agreed-upon meanings that “Optima,” Wikipedia, [Link]
influence but do not necessarily determine the user’s interpretation of the Optima (accessed June 11, 2007).
11
meanings of the artifact. W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The See Lin, Boundaries, Chapter 4, pp. 3–29, for a
Intentional Fallacy,” in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry discussion of Lin’s thought process that led to the formal character of the
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954). Vietnam Memorial.
7 12
There are a variety of design processes, but, as Richard See Boundaries. In an interview from June 2000, Lin
Buchanan says, all design processes “situate the designer as a speaker talks about how her design presents information to her audiences. Other
who fashions a world, however large or small, and invites others to share designers may be more or less heavy-handed communicators than Lin is,
it.” Richard Buchanan, “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and but all well-trained designers know that their designs present information.
Demonstration in Design Practice,” in Design Discourse: History, Theory, Interviewer: If I read correctly you once said that you
Criticism, ed. Victor Margolin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), don’t want to tell people what to think, you want to present them with
95. information. Can you talk a little bit about that?
8
Kress and van Leeuwen suggest that in three- Maya Lin: That probably is very eastern. It’s the idea of
dimensional objects narrative can be realized “by the designer, as forms the well. You take from the well. You offer up information, but you have to
to be ‘read’ by a viewer, as when a cup has a dynamic vectorial handle [literally let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what
physically angled up in a dramatic way] . . . or they can be realized by the they should think, then you’ve lost it. That’s not the goal. I think that is very
user of the object, as when a cup is held or drunk from, in a ‘transactional’ much an eastern approach.
action with its user.” Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading “Seeing the World Differently,” Academy of Achievement:
Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge, 2006), 244–45. A Museum of Living History, [Link]
lin0int-8 (accessed June 16, 2007).

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13
Meggs elaborates graphic design’s semiotic function by and Drucker and McVarish’s approaches are invaluable to the field of
noting how the designer Dietmar Winkler’s title page for an article titled graphic design history. Paul Jobling and David Crowley, Graphic Design:
“The Times They Are a Changin’” has “used a sequence of squares that Reproduction and Representation since 1800 (Manchester: Manchester
contract followed by semicircles that grow into full circles to give visual University Press, 1996). Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish, Graphic
form to a concept—change over a period of time.” Phillip Meggs, Type and Design History: A Critical Guide (New York: Prentice Hall, 2008).
17
Image: The Language of Graphic Design (New York: John Wiley, 1992), 8. This methodology is also utilized in the impressive
14
Judith Williamson argues that advertising “‘works’ volume Twentieth-Century Design by Jonathan Woodham (Oxford: Oxford
because it feeds off a genuine ‘use-value’; besides needing social meaning University Press, 1997, and the broad-based survey Design: The History,
we obviously do need material goods. Advertising gives those goods a social Theory and Practice of Product Design by Bernhard Burdek (Basel: Birkhäuser,
meaning so that two needs are crossed, and neither is adequately fulfilled. 2005). As I mentioned in an earlier note, Klaus Krippendorf’s The Semantic
Material things that we need are made to represent other, non-material Turn: A New Foundation for Design presents a complex semantic theory that
things that we need; the point of exchange between the two is where argues for the primacy of user-centered meanings in design artifacts.
18
meaning is created.” Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology In his fascinating 1957 essay “The New Citroën,”
and Meaning in Advertising (New York: Marion Boyars, 2002), 14. Roland Barthes presents an eroticized description of the material form of a
15
See, for example, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual Citroën in gorgeous, sensuous prose of the sort that is usually reserved for
after the Cultural Turn by Margaret Dikovitskaya (Cambridge: MIT Press, a lover. He revels in the Citroën’s streamlined shape and seamless, rounded
2005), Visual Culture Studies: Interviews with Key Thinkers by Marquard form, which he suggests evoke a spiritual evolution of “relaxed” speed.
Smith (London: Sage Publications, 2008), and Practices of Looking: An Barthes professes that “This spiritualization can be seen in the extent, the
Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright quality and the material of the glass-work. The Deesse [Goddess in French]
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For an interesting discussion of is obviously the exaltation of glass, and pressed metal is only a support for
visual culture studies, see Guy Julier’s essay “From Visual Culture to Design it.” Barthes celebrates the material form of the Citroën by invoking visual
Culture.” Julier calls for a discipline of design culture that would combine language and visual metaphor:
the approaches utilized in design historical research and material culture Here, the glass surfaces are not windows, openings
studies. He explains that design culture would consider “the designer’s pierced in a dark shell; they are vast walls of air and
role in the creation of value,” the movement of material and nonmaterial space, with the curvature, the spread and the brilliance
elements that “shape the productive processes of design culture,” and private of soap-bubbles, the hard thinness of a substance more
and “socially constituted activities” that perform “collective . . . conventions entomological than mineral (the Citroën emblem with
and procedures.” Julier does not directly address the collective meanings its arrows, has in fact become a winged emblem, as if
generated by the rhetorical content of material aesthetic form. Guy Julier, one was proceeding from the category of propulsion
“From Visual Culture to Design Culture,” Design Issues 22, no. 1 (Winter to that of spontaneous motion, from that of the engine
2006): 73–74. to that of the organism).
16
To their credit, Jobling and Crowley and Drucker Reading Barthes’s essay requires the audience to visualize the textures,
and McVarish deftly sidestep the established design canon and predictable colors, and sensibilities presented in his verbal depiction. Barthes, unlike
graphic design historical methodologies. They feature “low” design when the authors included in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design, neither
such design correlates with the social, technological, and political influences speculates on what insights can be gained from elaboration of the form of
they highlight. Jobling and Crowley also spotlight the neglected realm of this delicious Citroën nor explores what the creation or use of the Deesse
early and mid-nineteenth-century graphic design. Jobling and Crowley’s

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can teach us about its historical or cultural context: 1950s France. Roland Bibliography
Barthes, “The New Citroën,” in Mythologies (1957; repr., Canada: Harper Barchas, Janine. Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the
Collins, 2001), 89. Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
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I would like to thank Jack Williamson for several Barnard, Malcolm. Graphic Design as Communication.
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