Mar 2, 2020
The Rhetorical Eye
Uncover the overlooked role of rhetoric in modern graphic design. As we navigate the digital age, shaped by fast-moving trends, interfaces, and product-centered thinking, visual communication has shifted toward function and efficiency, often at the expense of expressive intention.
This reflection revisits the value of rhetoric as a fundamental tool in design, and why reclaiming its presence is essential for building meaningful visual messages.
Author
READ
Category
#StopTrashPlant - Do not waste life, become an Organ donor.
The organs recreated in this print advertisement aim to raise awareness about organ donation.
To celebrate the National Organ Donation Day, Fundación Argentina de Trasplante teamed up with advertising agency DDB to launch a campaign on the streets of Buenos Aires. The campaign had two main goals: to raise awareness about organ donation and to encourage people to express their willingness to become organ donors.
González Ruiz, in his book Estudio de Diseño sobre la construcción de las ideas y su aplicación a la realidad (“Design Study on the Construction of Ideas and Their Application to Reality”), states: “To imagine design as a trade born from the labor system and not as a discipline that builds a social aesthetic implies accepting a market-driven determinism and confusing the type of work demanded by the market with that which the field of action can generate.” Ruiz’s words are critically important to me as I reflect on this topic.
If graphic design is to be understood as a discipline that builds a social aesthetic, it must become fully aware of the scope of its impact and act accordingly to meet the demands of that role. Acting accordingly means that whoever takes on this role must make it clear, through all available means and tools, that they will exercise their responsibility as a builder with intention and care, since they mediate the communication process visually. These means and tools become accessible to the designer through the development of visual thinking, which, as Rudolf Arnheim points out, is ultimately imaginative and reflective, perceptive and rational, creative and intelligent, with each of these qualities functioning in interactive pairs. In other words, an intelligent person is creative, and a creative person is intelligent, provided we understand intelligence as the process of acquiring knowledge and connecting it meaningfully.
Later, in the process of shaping the visual message (the communication instance) that emerges from the development of visual thinking, two interacting channels will be opened: the “What” and the “How.” The second will respond to the first. Only once the content, meaning, and the “What” have been established can the “How” be structured. It is in this second stage where various tools come into play, and where the designer must act with full awareness as a builder of social aesthetics.
One of the key tools available for constructing the “How” is rhetoric. According to Cecilia Luvaro and Beatriz Podestá, what rhetoric brings to the visual message is a set of rules that help identify the appropriate “metalanguage” for crafting the message (the “What”). These rules energize the logical structure of visual thinking because they are both flexible and general, thus enhancing the possibility of constructing a social aesthetic through conscious decisions, aimed at reinforcing expressive intent.
In this three-piece campaign by the Fundación Argentina de Trasplante, we can clearly see how the designer relies on rhetoric to shape the visual message.
To do so, they first needed to understand what they wanted to communicate, through a thoughtful study of their field of action. Only then could they articulate their visual thinking and approach the design by applying a set of flexible, general rules to determine how the message should be constructed.
This system not only reveals the designer’s technical skill but also their sensitivity in addressing the conceptual values tied to the scope of the campaign’s purpose, with full awareness of graphic design as a discipline that constructs social aesthetics.
Through this process, the designer achieved the most appropriate metalanguage for the message, while
reinforcing and elevating its expressive intentions.
