Envisioning Collaboration: Group Verbal-visual Composing in a System of Creativity (Baywood's Technical Communications) - Hardcover

Cross, Geoffrey; Sides, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089503400X ISBN 13: 9780895034007

Publisher: Routledge, 2011

Synopsis

The dissemination of desktop publishing and web authoring software has allowed nearly everyone in industrialized countries to combine verbal and visual symbols into text. Serious multimodal projects often demand extensive teamwork, especially in the workplace. But how can collaboration engaging such different traditions of expression be conducted effectively? To address this question, Envisioning Collaboration traces the composing processes of expert graphic artists and writers preparing advertising campaigns to retain a vital national account. It examines the influences on individual and dyadic composing processes of what Csikszentmihalyi terms "the domain," in this case the disciplinary knowledge of advertising, and "the field," in this case the surrounding economic conditions and client, vendor, customer, and agency executive gatekeepers.

Based on a 460-hour participant-observation and intensive computerized data analysis, Envisioning Collaboration is the first book to meticulously examine collaborative creative processes at an award-winning advertising agency, including audience analysis, branding, collaborative "moves," power and conflict management, uses of humor, degree of mindfulness, and effectiveness. The findings indicate the role of concepts in generating common texts by artists and writers, the role of the visual in individuals' composing, verbal-visual rhetorical elements in processes and products, and which verbal-visual techniques were most generative. Findings are related to pertinent research in technical and business writing, rhetoric and composition, and some key research in visual design, communication, advertising, neurolinguistics, management, and psychology. The book concludes with a pedagogical/training unit incorporating "gateway activities" for effective verbal-visual composition and collaboration.

About this title

About the Author

Geoffrey Cross, Charles Sides

From the Back Cover

The dissemination of desktop publishing and web authoring software has allowed nearly everyone in industrialized countries to combine verbal and visual symbols into text. Serious multimodal projects often demand extensive teamwork, especially in the workplace. But how can collaboration engaging such different traditions of expression be conducted effectively? To address this question, Envisioning Collaboration traces the composing processes of expert graphic artists and writers preparing advertising campaigns to retain a vital national account. It examines the influences on individual and dyadic composing processes of what Csikszentmihalyi terms "the domain," in this case the disciplinary knowledge of advertising, and "the field," in this case the surrounding economic conditions and client, vendor, customer, and agency executive gatekeepers.Based on a 460-hour participant-observation and intensive computerized data analysis, Envisioing Collaboration is the first book to meticulously examine collaborative creative processes at an award-winning advertising agency, including audience analysis, branding, collaborative "moves," power and conflict management, uses of humor, degree of mindfulness, and effectiveness. The findings indicate the role of concepts in generating common texts by artists and writers, the role of the visual in individuals' composing, verbal-visual rhetorical elements in processes and products, and which verbal-visual techniques were most generative. Findings are related to pertinent research in technical and business writing, rhetoric and composition, and some key research in visual design, communication, advertising, neurolinguistics, management, and psychology. The book concludes with a pedagogical/training unit incorporating "gateway activities" for effective verbal-visual composition and collaboration.Intended Audience:: Students, teachers, and researchers in undergraduate and graduate programs in technical communication, rhetoric and composition, business communication, advertising/strategic communication, graphic design, communication, and fine arts. Practitioners: technical writers, illustrators, and marketers; advertising copywriters, graphic artists, account executives, and managers; editors, trainers, and writing consultants

From the Inside Flap

"Envisioning Collaboration is a superb ethnographic study of how writers and artists work together in an advertising agency to create highly persuasive messages in words and images. Because advertising entails intense visual/verbal collaboration, it is a unique laboratory in which to study how word and image coalesce rhetorically. Meticulously researched and vividly written, Geoffrey Cross's text greatly expands our understanding of multi-modal collaboration and is likely to make a major contribution to the fields of visual rhetoric, design studies, and professional communication." Charles Kostelnick, Professor and Chair, English Department Iowa State University "The creativity of artists and writers is typically limited to the sphere of either visual symbols or verbal symbols. Here, Geoffrey Cross examines the fascinating collaboration of graphic artists and writers in the composition of advertising campaigns. His meticulous observations of individual and dyadic composing processes unveil the melding of verbal and visual modes of thought in the creation of award-winning advertising. Envisioning Collaboration offers a significant case study in a domain of considerable economic clout that will interest all students of human creativity

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 089503400X
• ISBN 13: 9780895034007
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 218