Filling in the gaps: Learning to live with-and teach with-microsoft smartart™

The problem in discussing visual rhetoric is not the erroneous idea that there cannot be a visual rhetoric because only words can communicate meaning. As Goggin (2004) points out, “written verbal rhetoric is visual rhetoric” (p. 88); words are presented in a particular typeface, size, and color, and they function as components of a larger overall visual design of the text in which they appear. Rather, the problem in discussing visual rhetoric is suggested by the title of a 2004 volume edited by Hill and Helmers, Defining Visual Rhetorics. Like the word postmodernism, visual rhetoric is an almost infinitely elastic term, and it is applied, in different ways, by commentators studying painting, photography, advertising, television, film, road signs, architecture, and even crafts such as quilt making.