1) The document outlines an in-class activity where students will break into groups to discuss key ideas from assigned readings, focusing on how images convey meaning and how that meaning is culturally constructed. 2) The groups will select 1-3 main ideas from their assigned reading, support them with quotes, and find examples for discussion. They will then email their materials to the instructor. 3) With remaining time, students will continue working on designing a header for their class website and response blog. The document provides reading assignments for the next class on how repetition and contrast relate to document design.

2. Today
1) Icebreaker
2) Quick overview of a few ideas from the readings
3) Your turn – group work with readings
4) Report back/email to Dr. Phill
5) Some work time
6) Next week…

3. Icebreaker
For today…
Share your name, obviously, and tell us what the oldest thing
you own is (excluding antiques… the thing you’ve had the
longest, presumably acquiring new or newish).

4. Dr. Phill still has one of these:
It’s a talking Alf doll (it took cassettes,
like Teddy Ruxpin). I got it for my 9th
birthday. Interesting– perhaps—fact. I
used it as a guest speaker as part of my
senior capstone presentation.
It’s from 1986. Which means it’s older
than most Miami students. *cringe*

5. Random digression: does my dog look like
Alf?

6. Today…
… I want us to engage the readings and really sort of grapple with
them, but as you might guess, if we tried to grapple with every part of
all five of those readings we’d end up sitting here a long, long time
grappling with a big ol’ bunch of ideas.
So I’m going to suggest a strategy– pull key ideas and illustrate how
they work/see if we can convert them to a sort of tool, or a roadmap, if
you will, to understanding visual rhetoric.
Something like this:

7. Barthes challenges us thusly:
“Now even– and above all if– the image is in a certain manner
the limit of meaning, it permits the consideration of a
veritable ontology of the process of signification. How does
meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it
ends, what is there beyond?”
Roland Barthes

8. What?

12. So….
.. Images carry meaning. But how’d the meaning GET there, Barthes
asks us to consider.

13. Gunther Kress
Kress tells us:
“The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention
to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design,
but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the
fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their
cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those
cultures.”

14. Like…

17. These images have meaning…
…because we know them.
They emerge from our culture and are reinforced by our culture.
Recognize this?
That isn’t this, is it? =
Or is it?
S

18. Walter Benjamin
Benjamin, who I promise is not the bad guy from Apt Pupil
even if he looks like him, reminds us:
“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-
made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas
were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for
diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the
pursuit of gain.”

20. More on copying later…

21. Wysocki reminds us:
“Because we have all grown up in densely visually constructed
environments, usually with little overt instruction or awareness of
how the construction takes place, it is easy to think of the visual
elements of texts as simply happening or appearing…as though…
television sitcoms were the result of a camera crew following a
typical family through their day.”
Anne Wysocki

22. Single, nerdy college professor on TV

23. IRL

24. This remind you of your friends sitting
around?

26. And these are just normal people enjoying
normal products, right?

27. What Wysocki would ask us to do is…
..ask why. Think about why those images are chosen.
And maybe more importantly… why don’t people think about it/why
isn’t it sort of a big deal to most Americans?

28. Now it’s your turn
Break into five groups. That should mean 4 or 5 per group.
Once you’re grouped, from my podium going clockwise around the
room:
Group 1: Kress
Group 2: Barthes
Group 3: Wysocki, Eyes
Group 4: Benjamin
Group 5: Wysocki, Meaning of Texts
Pick between no less than 1 and no more than 3 main ideas, support
them with source quotes, and find examples for discussion. As you
finish, email me your materials: alexanp3@miamioh.edu

29. With our remaining time…
..please resume working on your class website headers.
Also note that design task 2 is to create a header– much like the class
one– for your response blog. You may work on that during this time if
you wish as well.

30. For Tuesday
Read for class: Williams non-designers design book Chapters 4
& 5: repetition & contrast; Kimball & Hawkins Chapter 1
In class, we will begin talking much more about how all of this
relates to down and dirty document design.