Judging a Book by its Cover

[barclay_barrios]

I just saw the cover design for the next edition of Emerging and it’s awesome.  But, hey, I’m a visual design geek so no big surprise there. What does surprise me is that as often as we teach visual argument, as many textbooks as there are on the subject, we rarely consider the visual arguments encoded in textbooks themselves. This fall I’m going to change that.  I’m going to ask my students to unpack the argument of our textbook—from the cover design, to the layout, to the font choice.  Then I will ask them to consider the same questions in relation to academic papers.  Why one inch margins?  Why double spaced?  Why Times New Roman? Everything is designed.  Everything is packed with meaning.  I’m hoping these exercises will get students to see that and to practice broader acts of interpretation, analysis, and meaning-making. How about you?  How do you approach issues of visual design and argument?