Notes on “Identity Interface: Rhetorical Analysis, Graphic Design, and Comics”

Notes from another CCCC session that I found engaging. In this session, the presenter spent a good deal of time thinking about design from the standpoint of a writing teacher, and I found her angle on it informative. In particular, I found her categories of balance, unity, gestalt, and hierarchy a more nuanced way of talking about the Robin Williams principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I hadn’t really thought about using Homestar Runner for a writing assignment, but now I might.

Here are some notes:

Chandra Lewis-Qualls – “Identity Interface: Rhetorical Analysis, Graphic Design, and Comics”

  • Intro
    • How is identity created in online comics, analyzing with graphic design theories
    • Her subject position: I am a feminist rhetorician interested in visual design and communication, deeply immersed in gaming
  • Graphic Design
    • Mildred Friedman — “Graphic design is an art form that depends for its efficacy on the degree to which words and images communicate a coherent message.”
    • You get the effect of the intent based on what isn’t explicitly evident
  • Why Use Graphic Design?
    • By focusing on design strategies, we can discern alternate ways to shape idetity online
    • Graphic design has a longer history that visual rhetoric and insights from the field could prove valuable
    • It opens up conversations between academics and designers
  • 1964 “The First Things First Manifesto”
    • Graphic design has a long history of critique and wanted to point out the fact that design is not neutral and has value; they were pushing against the consumer and material aspects of graphic design and wanted to share their thoughts on it
  • New Media Analysis
    • Cheryl Ball has suggested that we need to analyze “the semiotic elements [of new media]”
    • New Media critics often look at five major design features and ignores the sub-texts of design
  • Graphic Design Components
    • Balance — controlling the negative space, creating visual interest
      • How are the elements arranged?
      • What effect does this have on the composition as a whole?
    • Unity — creating harmony with a color, shape, or typeface
      • What are the elements that create unity in this piece?
    • Gestalt — the combination of elements create an idea or message that isn’t explicit, but is an underlying argument in the design
      • What is the opinion underlying the design
    • Hierarchy — dominant element in the design of various levels of interest
      • How to create interest
  • Branding and Identity
    • Multiple experience with the product
    • Created through advertising, design, and media
    • A symbolic embodiment of the product
    • Creates associations and expectations
    • Includes explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, etc
  • Focus on web comics
    • Try to create an embodied experience for the characters
    • Homestar Runner.com
    • Irreverent surreal humor
    • Strongbad’s identity
    • Types answers to visitors and is very sarcastic
  • Using these concepts in class
    • How do you visually convey your identity online (ethos)
    • Freshmen create a MySpace page
    • Upper level students create a digital portfolio to represent their work

Nobis and Cook: Connecting Comics and Essays

Nobis Nobis and Cook: Connecting Comics and Essays

Mitch Nobis and Rick Cook are teacher consultants from Red Cedar Writing Project, and presented a number of ways that they connect graphic novels and expository writing in their writing classes. They will also be presenting a similar session at Bright Ideas.

  • Thinking about what comics are and how they fit in to the curriculum
    • People’s perceptions of “graphic” novels
      • Is it a long comic?
      • Are they just for entertainment?
      • Rick showed up and found out that he had to teach Maus, Mitch always wanted to teach it.
  • Why Comics?
    • Comics offer a way to teach visual literacy
      • Now, Michigan high school content standards address visual literacy and graphic novels
      • Comics are connecting an old media with new technologies
    • Comics offer an engaging meium for memoir
    • Comics invite expository porse and demonstrate how to read with exposition in mind
      • How can comics and graphic novels, especially a vignette, turn into something traditional like an expository essay
  • Comics and Literacy Response
    • Check out McCloud’s Understanding Comics for more on all of this
      • Iconography – everything is a visual representation of something else
        • In a way, we are so involved because we identify all comic characters
      • Closure – the gutter between panels lets you step in to the story and make meaning between the panels
      • Paneling – thinking how motion works between panels
        • From one image of a person to another image of the same person
        • From one moment to another
        • From one idea to another
      • Amplification through simplification
        • Comic art moves from complex to abstract and, in so doing, makes things more general
        • Comics are popular with kids for this reason, because they can connect so easily
        • Universality – we all look like that
    • One of McCloud’s main points is that iconography combined with closure makes something a comic
  • Looking at Maus with McCloud as a lens for visual/literary response
    • Utlizes students familiarity with the graphic medium
    • Capitalizes on the “breaking the rules” nature of using comics in schools
    • Introduces academic discussion of graphic techniques and symbolism
    • Provides scaffolding as students arrempt literary analysis responding the the visual with the verbal gives students a “blank slate” to fill with original responses
      • They are able to go from image to words, whereas they are used to going into the author’s words
    • Introduces using “text” as evidence
    • Text / Terms = Effect
      • By looking at the text, and talking about it with the terminology of visual literacy, they can discuss the effects that the author acheives
  • Comic Prompts for Expository Writing
    • Missouri Boy by Leland Myrick is a graphic poem that covers many adolescent themes
      • Chapter 1 is a prologue about how his grandmother is dying as his mother prepares to give birth to him and his twin brother
      • Writing When You Don’t Know: Visual Memoirs and Research Writing
        • Writing personal experience
        • The move from personal to public
      • Generating prompts = exploring what you want to know more about
    • Moving from personal to public
      • How does Myrick’s birth at the time of his grandmother’s death influence his relationship with his mom?
      • Find broad generalities such as “how do our origins/environments affect who we are?”
        • Context specific: how does farming breed character (it is not the story of growing up on the farm, or the statistics about farming, but the half-way point between the two)
        • How does the structure of school influence laziness, work influences personality, growing up in a church affects morals, etc.
        • How do concrete things have abstract meanings?
          • How is an iPod a shield?
          • How is a football field home?
          • How is a photo a story?