Visualizing the Verbal, and Vice Versa

Good public speakers know that words have sounds, and that the sounds of the words they choose have an important influence on their listeners. Good graphic designers know that words also have looks, and those looks can similarly influence readers. This project asks you to think about the visual aspects of written language and to design a piece of writing that will communicate both through your word choice and usage and through the appearance of those words.

By this point in your academic career, you already know which fonts take up the most space (and thus require you to write the least to satisfy page-length requirements), and which fonts look the “coolest” to you. This project requires you to move beyond mere font choices to think about the effect that style, size, position, arrangement, and even the color of words can have on readers. You will be composing a piece of visual writing that will achieve a purpose you will set forth in your proposal for this project through its carefully chosen and constructed prose as well as its look.

You will get to choose the topic of your visual/verbal project, as well as its ultimate purpose. Once you have chosen your topic and goal, you will need to research that topic to gain knowledge and insight into what may be effective strategies to achieve your goals.

The Visual/Verbal project consists of four elements: a proposal, in which you explain your rhetorical goal and the research that will inform your project; a draft version of your visual/verbal project (5% of your final grade); an analysis of your project, examining what worked, what didn’t, what you would do to improve it, and why you think that would (5% of your final grade); and a revised form of your project (10% of your final grade).