ABSTRACT
A quarter of a century ago, Barton and Barton (1985) bemoaned the status of visual
design in professional communication pedagogy, given the emergence of potent
computer tools that were rapidly expanding its role. Since then, technology has become
the main driver in the proliferation of visual design, and most of today’s students have
grown up with access to digital tools that were unimaginable a generation earlier. As a
result, most students are reasonably proficient with technology, or at least not intimi-
dated by it, and many students are more advanced in its use than their instructors and
have difficulty imagining information design-text, data, pictures, Web sites-without
it. And although rhetoric has been increasingly integrated into visual communication
instruction, as Barton and Barton had rightfully hoped, that pedagogy has largely failed
to reconcile itself with computer technology.
