television executives also used technical limitations to .... The School of Journalism and Mass. Communication at ... Arizona State and at the University of Utah,.
Beyond the blue-apron ghetto
Curriculum and Instruction in Visual Communication KEVIN G. BARNHURST chanical but cultural. The limitations they cited were rules of long-standing practice. Machines were designed to meet these specifications and artisans preferred the traditional procedures, whatever the capacities of the machinery. In the system of power, what mattered were the ideas of the practitioner, not the specifications of the technology. Nevertheless, the technological mythology has permeated the received history of the media. Many of the old chestnuts from newspaper make-up, for example, enshrine machinery as the root of design. Gothic nameplates supposedly originated because that was the only type available in large sizes. Two-column headlines supposedlyhad to wait for an invention that would hold the type on the cylinder without column rules. Technical limitations or innovations get credit for almost every aspect of newspaper typography and layout. This may be less true of advertising, where creative ideas get more credit, but television executives also used technical limitations to justify conventional practices, as Bob Rucker hints in his essay in this issue. In the lore of the media professions, the machine defined authority. The way the media have adapted to new technologies might be viewed cyni-
A central issue in visual communication education is the role technology should play. In the past, technology often dominated, defining the structure of the curriculum, the content of the courses, and the relationships between faculty. The advent of computers hasn’t changed that dominance. Curriculum is still largely defined by the crafts and machines of decades ago. Photojournalism, advertising design, newspaper make-up, and broadcast graphics remain separate, not because they teach distinct intellectual skills, but because the machinery and procedures of the workplace were once different. In the departmental hierarchy, visual subjects have played a supporting role, considered necessary only to convey, through technology, the real, non-visual work of journalism and mass communication. This pattern of isolation and technical specialization originated not in education but in the media business. Industry enshrined the machine. Artisans often maintained their craft traditions, despite pressure fromtheir colleagues in the professions of design and journalism, by appealing to mechanical limitations. When asked to break typographic conventions, typographers could say, “That can’t be done.” They told a truth not me-
Barnhurst is assistant professor of journalism at the University of Illinois and guest editor for this special issue on visual communication. IOURNAWSM
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eration the traditions and lore of the media professions. But we do students an injustice when we claim that our conventions, our ways of making sense of what we do, have special status as universal, natural, or ethical. Practitioners need no greater authority than their own knowledge of standard contemporary practices. If we teach those practices as one of many possible ways to think about our work, then students will be better prepared to do what they are going to do anyway-to reinvent our professions. The authority of technology has been especially pernicious for practitioners and faculty in graphic arts and media production. Those whose principal claim to authority rests in technology are assigned lower status as technicians. When technology changed, the shape of our authority changed very little. Artists and technicians moved from mechanical, to chemical, and then to electrical devices, but we remained narrow specialists, trapped in a blue-apron ghetto. Our only authority was the power to resist. In the media, visual artists of all sorts have traditionally been second-classcitizens, dedicated to a service role. We rarely become editors, publishers, or general managers, or for that matter department heads or deans. The services we perform rarely count for tenure.
cally as a study in delaying tactics and rationalizations. When photo technology colonized typography, for example, Evans noted its ability “to print a 32 112 pt. headline in purple in the shape of a bishop’s mitre.”’ Given that sort of flexibility, typographers cast about for a set of rules to contain the new system. In newspapers, Arnold suggested holding onto existing practices by codifying the jargon of the back shop.ZJargon is useful, he said, and his book lists the names of many practices. For example,the naming of headline forms, such as kickers, hammers, wickets, tripods, and so forth,3made these practices real. Arnold’s was one way of preserving them. But most typographers embraced modernism. Some discovered design principles, an appeal to supposedly timeless qualities. Others turned to legibility standards, an appeal to physiological limitations. These tenets of modernism made the rules of visual design seem universal and natural rather than ideological. A similar pattern has held for photography,where silver-based technology is being replaced by digital pictures. Faced with a technology that is malleable to the point of being lawless, photographers have cast about for a set of rules to contain the new system. So far they have principally settled upon what is called ethics. All the standard ways of manipulating pictures, from the photographer’s initial framing to the dodging and burning in the darkroom and the cropping during editing, are defined as ethical. The new manipulations are then defined as unethical and proscribed. Ethics, jargon, and design principles are not cynicaltools to maintain established standards. They are the myths and rituals that practitioners use to make their work meaningful. There is nothing wrong with having industry standards. Students need to know what professionals currently prefer. As professors, we are charged with the responsibility to transmit to the next gen-
The opportunityfor change Ironically,the opportunity for change comes in the wake of technology. As the crafts of publishing, advertising, public relations, and even broadcasting computerize, they lose the technical barriers that once defined them. If the same computer can handle typography, still pictures, publication layouts, and video, as well as wordprocessing, then technology neither distinguishes the visual fields from each other nor sets them apart from writing, as David Bennett and Paul Hightower demonstrate with the survey in this issue. Instead, we technicians must find 5
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some other way to define what we do. One the visual explores the history of the field definition might be to stick with technol- and critiques its organization, calling for a ogy, basing teaching, content, and tenure broader scope for visual courses and facon computer expertise. The founding of ulty. The School of Journalism and Mass numerous courses and even sequences in Communication at the University of Min“Desktop Publishing,” “Electronic Dark- nesota adoptedthis approachwhen revising room,” and “Computer Graphics,” may the visual curriculum in 1983. In broad lead in this direction - defining curricu- strokes, Griffin’s essay outlines the fields lum according to techniques. The result that can help define and establish the would be a continuation of lower status for agenda for teaching and research in the visual faculty, utility courses bereft of all field. but technical content, and a record for teaching and service but not scholarship. The introductory course The time has come to place techThe centerpiece of visual communinology firmly in the background and get on cation, proposed by several of the authors with the task of defining the intellectual in this issue, is a core survey course required business of visual educators and their of all students. The rationale behind the courses. These courses spring from the course is that “the use of visual materials craft traditions of individual media forms. and an understanding of visual commuThe practitioners in these specialties de- nication is just as important for a newspaper veloped distinct visual dialects. For them, or magazine editor, or for a television news advertising speaks in a voice unlike director, as it is for those hoping to work as newspaper journalism. Both dialects are photographers, filmmakers, or designer^."^ visual, but the controlling codes differ and The essay in this issue by Linda Schamber are immediately recognizable. Video con- proposes an approach to the introductory ventions differ from cinema, magazines course based on visual literacy, aesthetics, frombooks. The visual codes of these media and Gestalt visual principles. The introgrew up in semi-isolation, defined, sup- ductory textbooks on visual communicaposedly, by differing technology. Skills tion suggest other models based on teachers became trapped in technical semiotics and communication theory. The ghettosoftheir ownmaking, despite sharing survey course has been established or is in an interest in things visual. Increasingly, planning at many schools, notably the since the merger of the photojournalism University of Oregon School of Journalism and graphics divisions of AEJMC in the and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public 1970s, many have attempted to call that Communications at Syracuse University. The advent of a survey course hasn’t common ground “visual communication. ” The question for educators may seem replaced the classes defined by the crafts of categorical: Should the visual communi- photojournalism, advertising design, cation curricula reflect the organization of newspaper make-up, broadcast graphics, the industry and inculcate the traditions of and the like. But these courses are also the professions of advertising, journalism, changing. They no longer define thempublic relations, broadcasting,and so forth? selves as incompatible subjects, playing a Or should faculty teach visual communi- technical role subordinate to the media cation as an academic subject?The answer, professions. Instead they are seen as specialties within the larger field of visual of course, is both. The educators in this issue argue communication. The survey in this issue by Robert persuasively for a general intellectual and scholarly definition of visual communica- Heller shows why the broader definition is tion. Michael Griffin’s essay on defining urgent. Where photography has been de-
with letterpress and laser-printing technologies. Veteran practitioners often teach from the authority of their knowledge of traditions and their own experience in the media. But their “war stories” are harmful when retold without a thoughtful critique that teaches students to reflect on their own practices. The unexamined tale also misleads students by asserting that current practices spring from natural or universal principles. Rucker proposes that these stories be converted into case studies. Unlike an unexamined “war story,”a case study opens a conceptual dialogue. Craft courses at many universities not only transmit the wisdom and lore of their traditions, increasingly they engage in a critique of conventional ways. For example, at Michigan State, Barbatsis says, “I see criticism and creation of television messages as two sides of the same coin and am dedicated to the idea that they are important to bothviewers and producers alike.”7 Craft courses with a strong intellectual base can also contribute to research. In his article in this issue, Van Kornegayshows how a practicum in graphics can serve as a forum, not only to describe and imitate newspaper practices but to explore how journalistic writing and reporting are redefined in practice. Craft courses may provide job training, but they can also encourage critical thinking. Besides learning what professionals do and how they do it, students can explore the questions why and with what effect. These lead back to thegeneral theoretical debatesabout visual communication.
fined as a separate major or sequence it thrives, but elsewhere it exists as the odd freestanding course, with little support. Visual communication gives photography an intellectual and curricular home. The move can also strengthen established majors. The photojournalism sequences at Arizona State and at the University of Utah, for example, are considering redefining themselves as “photo comm~nication”~ or planning to take a visual communication approach.6The changeis momentous when it reaches beyond a cosmetic label to embrace the analytical, historical, and critical study of visual communication.
The crafc courses Then the craft courses need no longer bear the burden of basic visual training. After an introductory survey, students can move into intermediate skills courses with an understanding of the context of visual communication. The craft courses have a clearly articulated purpose as a place where students learn the history and traditions and master the contemporary practices of the media professions. In their article in this issue, Elaine Wagner and Andrea Smith show how the practices in advertising can be turned into a coherent set of exercises that lead to mastery in an intermediate skills course. The craft courses don’t exist in isolation from or opposition to the survey course. The intellectual perspectives of the introductory survey strengthen the teaching of crafts. For example, in their study in this issue Patricia Thompson and Robert Craig give a withering critique of the computer boosterism inherent in the term desktop publishing, drawing on its history, use in the trade press, and consequences in the workplace. They propose an emphasis on the traditional craft of typography, taught with the computer as a tool. Many schools, Illinois included, have discontinued their typography courses, but a few, such as the University of Iowa, continue to teach typography workshops
The capstone course A number of programs provide advanced undergraduates a terminal or capstone course that may also serve graduate students as a starting point in the field. The course may fuse critical analysis with hands-on training. At the University 7
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communication. Although the journal Studies in Visual Communication was discontinued, Design Issues began publishing in 1985. Besides this special issue, the Journal of Communication Inquiryhas recently published a symposium on visual communication, and Communication has an upcoming issue on the topic. From all this activity will emerge not a new, orthodox curriculum but a broader discourse, one that welcomes journalism educators, about visual communication. Q
of Utah, Denton charges “both graduate students and selected seniors with the task of challenging current assumptions in publication design with experimental magazines and newspapers.”8 But more often, the course is a seminar. The University of Texas at Austin and the Universityof Coloradoat Boulder, along with several other universities already mentioned, offer a seminar in visual communication, where students explore the varieties of theory Griffin lists in his essay in this issue. By introducing students to the methods of visual inquiry, qualitative as well as quantitative, these seminars can build a research tradition that escapes the administrative pattern found, for example, in the literature Kornegay survepd and the boosterism of the trade press identified in this issue. As Thompson and Craig observe, “There is certainly substantial change in the air.” The authors in this issue and the programs, courses, and faculty described here9 suggest an emerging pattern that redefines the field of visual communication and its curriculum. Although the pattern is clear, the variations are many. Other fields are also experimenting with the curriculum. In some departments of speech communication, visual communication is being integrated into the fundamentals course, rather than standing as a separate requirement. The International Visual Literacy Association has attracted more members from departments of journalism and mass
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‘Harold Evans, Newspaper Design, vol. 5 , Editing and Design, 5 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1973). p. 3. Edmund C. Arnold, Modern Newspaper Design (New York: Harper and Row, 1969). 31bid.,pp. 103-114. “Michael Griffin, letter to the author, November 13, 1990.
Craig Denton, associate professor, University of Utah, letter to the author, January 28,1991. Frank Hoy, associate professor of photojournalism, Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommuni cation, Arizona State University, letter to the author, November 26,1990. Gretchen S. Barbatsis, associate professor of Telecommunications,Michigan State University, statement of teaching and research interests, n.d. Craig Denton, associate professor of Communication, University of Utah, letter to the author, Jan. 28, 1991.
sBased on responses from deans and directors of schools of journalism and mass communication identified as exemplary by Jerrold K. Footlick, “Eleven Exemplary Journalism Schools,” Gannett CenterJournal2 (Spring 1988):68-76,and by Jack Gourman, Gourman Report, 7th ed. rev., (Los Angeles: National Education Standards, 1989).Of these twenty-five schools, twenty responded with descriptions of their programs, syllabi, and faculty resumes.
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