Our world just ended. Are we allowed to breathe for even a minute? (Or, Being Human Amidst the Academic Pandemic Scramble)

The University of Washington was the first to shutter its doors to students amid the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a precedent that would lead to the shuttering of Harvard, Yale, and other universities and colleges throughout the United States. Most of these institutions have issued a directive that face-to-face courses be moved online. As COVID-19 spreads,

Crossovers in Visual Digital Rhetoric: Arcade Gaming Website & Audience Stance

In her article, Understanding Visual Rhetoric, Mary Hocks examines three key elements of visual design in digital environments. These elements, audience stance, transparency, and hybridity, were designed to help make rhetorical meaning in digital spaces like the internet while maintaining visual rhetorical principles. I have chosen a website for analysis that won an Awwward for

Revisualizing Simple Data: Teaching Alternative Data Visualizations to Students through Bernie Sanders’ Social Media Graphic on the Digital Divide

Brumberger’s critical piece on teaching business student’s data visualizations presents complications about software usage in cases of charts and graphs. While complex data visualization creation may be necessary, another approach may help ease students into the understanding of visual rhetoric surrounding data. This approach, involving simple data statistics, creates a representation of the data through

Hassett’s Rhetorical Design Functions & the Zillow Website

According to Hassett, business document design needs special attention to four “basic rhetorical functions”: alignment, invitation, credibility, and persuasion. Since business document design has come to include digital writing and design, I thought it would be especially useful to analyze a website with these points in mind. I’ve chosen the popular realty website Zillow, which

We the People Defend Dignity: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the Iconic Women’s March Poster

“The rhetorical transformation of a new media image unfolds at differing speeds and in different spatial configurations, depending on what material forms it takes on, whether these manifest in physical or cyberspace, and any number of institutional, economic, political, or personal forces that shape their design, production, distribution, and maintenance.” Laurie Gries, On Rhetorical Becoming

Photo of Chip and Joanna Gaines sitting on their porch with a dog.

Passive Consumption of Images: Examining Instagram “Reality” in the First-year College Writing Classroom

“No visual perception is a pure apprehension of objective reality.” Charles HIll, “Reading the Visual in College Writing Classes” Hill recognizes the “epistemic power” of images and argues that college writing courses should make an effort to expose students to the complexity of visual communication in order to study and analyze it—largely because United States

Hidden Communications: Understanding the Effect of Typography in an Email Advertisement

The study of typography is something that concerns both print and digital designers. Asa Berger focuses his chapter on Typography on two principles, effective communication and reader pleasure, while outlining the specifics of design within typography. I’ve chosen an email advertisement from Territorial Seed Company to analyze using those principles of design. The email is

Lester’s “Visual Cues” in Lowe’s Video Advertising

Using Lester’s Visual Cues, specifically the information on colors, I wanted to examine a video advertisement by Lowe’s and examine it for the basic principles he discusses of the objective, comparative, and subjective methods, and sociological uses of color. Regarding colors within the video, there are two different color palettes that play out between the

Reclaiming Architectural Narratives in Poverty: Tiny House Movements and the Economy of Aesthetics

 “Black Vernacular: Architecture as Cultural Practice” by bell hooks reveals the complicated history of African-American architecture in the United States and the restrictions placed on it by the “politics of race, class, and gender” (148). The socioeconomic expectations of homes then, and now, continues to revolve around square footage as an indicator of class. In