Genre Analysis
In the field of graphic design, genres tend to take different forms from what people are used to. Usually they have more to do with pictures than written words when used in design fields. There are a few problems with communication between fields that have resulted in the need to expand the realm of graphic design genres. Some individuals in the design field have created journals addressing misunderstandings and relationships between design and rhetorical language to help solve the problem.
Graphic designers have found the need over the years to better communicate their field’s connection to rhetorical language and communication in general. Because graphic design is a form of language itself, it is important for writers and educators to understand how it is influenced by their own fields. The ultimate goal within the graphic design community is to communicate through artistic mediums and genres. It is easier for them to communicate if others understand how they use language to help meet their goal. In the journals focused on in this paper graphic designers attempt to explain this connection with language and communication to the targeted readers. In these journals some of the targeted audience includes educators, health and childcare workers, other graphic designers, and people in differing language fields. The journals are located in various easily accessible areas and data bases to make it easier for those outside the field to view them.
Graphic designers create art that has a purpose relating to communication; whether it is to persuade, inform, market, advertise, or warn. In order to be able to communicate through a medium that is not as clear as written or spoken language, it is important for people to understand the connections between design and language in order to better understand the purpose of the art. For example, in the journal about cleanliness around childcare facilities, it shows the design used depicting a logo for a manual on childcare cleaning. It is important to understand the kind of response one is trying to get when people view the logo. The cute, childlike design of the logo communicates that the purpose of the manual has to do with cleaning (shown in the water drop) and with children (the childlike drawing technique) (Barnes 158). So the graphic design industry uses appeals and rhetoric just like in written language, just through a visual means.
The journals are written by graphic designers and are mostly for the use of other graphic designers to help them understand how to communicate to their audience through art in order to achieve their goal or marketing, informing, or warning. They express their credibility and knowledge of the graphic design field by including multiple outside resources and using lexis specific to the industry. But they are also meant for those outside the field specializing in either language or education so they can understand why designers need to be able to communicate on a level similar to written language. It is easier for people in these fields to incorporated designs of they understand what is being communicated and why. The writer of the manual mentioned before has better use of the logo if they understand how it relates to what they have written, and writers or editors of magazines or books might be more inclined to use graphic design with their written aspects to better communicated their own ideas. The use of both written and visual communication can enhance the understanding and meaning of both aspects when used together. “The art of combining words and images into arguments
represents one further step in the evolution of human communications” (Almeida 187).
There are multiple examples used in the journals to show how language and design work together; for instance, in Barnes’ journal the main focus is on how to use graphic design to communicate within the health and child care field to promote cleaner environments around children. In all three journals pictures are shown for examples of graphic design and language as well. These pictures are again sometimes used to explain how certain images result in certain communicatory responses, such as with signs (Storkerson 21). We see a circle with a line through as an attempt at communicating not to do something, whether smoking, driving, or etcetera.

 

 
Barnes, Carolyn. "Multiple Information Failure: A Case of Different Investments in Form and Content in Graphic Design." Visible Language (2009): 144-68. Print.

De Almeida, Cristina. "The Rhetorical Genre in Graphic Design: Its Relationship to Design Authorship and Implications to Design Education." Journal of Visual Literacy(2009): 186-98. Web. <http://www.ohio.edu/visualliteracy/JVL_ISSUE_ARCHIVES/JVL28(2)/28_2_Almeida.pdf>.

Storkerson, Peter. "Antinomies of Semiotics in Graphic Design." Visible Language (2010): 6-37. Web.