Candice A. Welhausen
Volume 6
Chapter Description
As a working professional, you will likely find yourself in situations where you need to create visual forms of communication. For example, many scientists and engineers construct technical drawings like illustrations and sketches. Professionals working in business and marketing may need to visualize financial data by creating tables and figures. And communications experts might use photographs in brochures, pamphlets, and other materials. In turn, the audiences that you create these graphics for—supervisors and managers, co-workers and peers, customers, and clients—will then use these visuals to make decisions and/or take actions. This chapter discusses these visuals and the ways they might be used persuasively. It also provides strategies that can help you create specific visual forms. The chapter begins by describing the way that visuals convey particular meanings and then discusses several visual forms of communication—photographs, technical drawings, and data visualizations—in more detail. It concludes with an extended example that describes how visuals were used in two documents—a brochure and a calendar—created by students enrolled in a graduate technical and professional communication course for Rural Studio Program, housed in Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.
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