compose design advocate: a rhetoric for integrating written, visual, and oral communication

compose design advocate: a rhetoric for integrating written, visual, and oral communication by Anne Frances Wysocki and Dennis A. Lynch. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.

This book is an amazing, engaging resource, so in-sync with what I believe to be an enlightened approach to composition that it is a pleasure to review. What features of this text did I find so compelling? The arrangement of the text and illustrations is visually pleasing--it breaks information into useable chunks in an aesthetically pleasing and logical manner. The chapters build on prior knowledge in an engaging way--a wide variety of illustrations have been chosen to demonstrate concepts and to keep the reader interested--I found this text to be a real page-turner since it reinforced concepts I would want to cover, supplemented by items I may not have thought of in time. Flipping through the text and stopping on the essay about Periodic Tables caused me to think about composing in a new way--and I immediately began planning the Elements of Composition in my head, and later on paper. If I structured my syllabus on the concepts included in this work, and if I could get students to buy into the process, they would emerge from this class better able to change the world through their skillful use of media within the myriad forms of communication available in our current cultural/digital/technological revolution.

It may surprise you to know that I didn't love everything about this book--the repeticious element: Assignments: thinking through production in every chapter but the fourth may be useful, but annoyed the artistic, less linear part of me that appreciates variety and longs for change. The text is aesthetically pleasing, but if I had control of the colorways, I would have made other color choices. I did, however, appreciate the wide variety of meaningful illustrations and believe that students will find them helpful. In some chapters, I was drawn into the text through the illustrations; after reading the comic strip produced by Lynda Barry (Sniff--Today's Demon: Common Scents)I backtracked and read what I was supposed to read about how to analyze the content of comic strips. This backtrack was a choice, and heigtened my interest in the text. What should I know before I look at the comic strip again? My random approach to this text transformed this review assignment into an entertaining, as well as enligtening experience. I would likely encourage students to first approach the text in a random manner--have a look and stop to read interesting bits--before adopting a more traditional, sequential reading. Setting different purposes in reading is a useful skill--wish I'd known about it while wading through Bleak House earlier in my reading career.