A Modern Composer

 A cool idea for the serious photographer and social-media participant.

Near the beginning of the essay “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing,” written by Diana George, she shares the idea that tension exists within electronic modes of expression, specifically between writing and images.

She writes, “I actually believe that some tug of war between words and images or between writing and design can be productive as it brings into relief the multiple dimensions of all forms of communication.”

As a visual-writer – a phrase my fingers just typed, which means this author (as most other social-media participants) creates documents using design and text together electronically on a daily basis. Ironically, the concepts of writing and text, versus photographs and graphics or design appear to be innately opposite on the surface. The two mediums require different sets of skills for understanding and interpreting, yet scholars such as George, and The New London Group state that writing and visuals work together as a unit, and both help to develop more-relatable multi-modal designs. According to scholars, the use of mass media, beginning with the originally perceived threat of television’s passivity in the mid-20^th century, all really seem to connect the dots for students, and inspire new and more interests for them, rather than lead students astray. And, the 21^st century student has grown up in a visually aggressive culture therefore combining writing with visual components intuitively, innately almost, and possibly modern students understand writing better delivered in this way …than text without any design element.

Wordsmiths have argued for a longtime the superiority of words over pictures because of the directness of writing. And, the communication of meaning through images, graphics and layout, as in advertising for example, were historically treated as a genre to critique George states, not one that incorporated and imparted subtle meanings. As time has passed though with the growth of technologically mature audiences, it is now understood that employing both images and words is a form of communication all its own – this revelation was a long-time coming. She makes sense when stating that the image, photograph or graphics becomes the “central thesis,” or main idea, such as in the traditional argumentative essay students are assigned. And as mentioned above, students are probably more visually sensitive today as opposed to verbally sensitive due to television, computer and Internet exposure. But, despite the obvious changes of mankind, George questions and states rhetorically, halfway through her essay what every teacher of writing composition must:

“Are images strategies for getting students to pay attention to detail? Do they mimic the rhetoric of verbal argument? Are they a dumbing down of writing instruction making visible to nonverbal students what the verbally gifted can conceptualize? Certainly, there is the message in much of this work that images may be useful, even proper stimuli for writing, but they are no substitute for the complexity of language.” 

George continues though, by discussing David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky’s reprinting of a portion of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in their 1987 composition reader “Ways of Reading.” She states a writer’s language is absolutely linked with the visual arts, according to these two authors.

“That idea, that images are not a reflection of a fixed reality, that, instead, our ways of understanding the world around us are somehow commingled with how we represent the world visually was a notion that appealed to teachers of writing like Bartholomae and Petroskey who were searching for ways of incorporating cultural theory into the composition classroom.”

She also writes that as humans we have progressed in many scientific and linguistic areas including cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, semiotics …and writing and visual thinking have proven to be used in combination. Maybe writing has always been a visual language? Is design the act of producing literacy in a material form? Born before computers, and growing up during the development of modern technology and a witness to what is now a mobile-phone society, this writer agrees with George that the advent of desktop publishing may be the pivotal point that changed the face of teaching writing - pushing it into a design world. The transformation of knowledge has become one that occurs through a redesign says George. An electronic Internet document is now focused on colors, font, placement, space, and images to assist the controlling theme of a piece of writing. As a means of understanding writing, teachers and society are now paying attention to a more visual way of thinking.

George has shown that the focus of writing will continue to merge composition with design and there is no turning back. She states the new questions to be answered will be: Does the visual make an argument? How well does the visual communicate that argument? Is the argument relevant to the course and to the assignment? Is it interesting, clear or focused?  This writer is convinced that literacy practice intertwined with the production and distribution of text …and the visual arts all together create the 21^st century composer’s work.