Week 1: August 24

Introduction to visual communication, syllabus, key course concepts

What is culture? What is visual culture?

Semiotics of architecture: a campus tour | Outline for note-taking (.pdf download)

Semiotics of architecture II: BC's column on the Dreamhouse | NYTimes's interactive on Barbie's house over time | 'Seeing' Barbie, sort of

Artifacts: Instagram mansions, museums and factories (simulacra) | Creative Design blog (pretty cool) | BC's column on minimalism and the Notre-Dame

For Wednesday: Carefully read the syllabus for a probable quiz

For Friday:
1. Read Michael Kimmelman on culture | companion piece on the culture police
2. Our first safari, a photo biography; instructions on Canvas and in Safari Guide

To get access to the New York Times, visit Memorial Library online, go to "Research Databases," click "N" before scrolling to "New York Times Activation for Berry College Access," and "Create Account"

Resources for excelling in this course and field (also behind Announcements on Canvas):

• Visual Rhetoric Notetaker (Primer)(.pdf download)
• Safari Guide (.pdf download)

Week 2: August 31 

Signs & Symbols | Color | Vision | Culture

The visual rhetoric of comics (outline for note-taking): What is the grammar of comics and cartoons? The vocabulary? What is the rhetoric of comics?

Light as metaphor: How we see by how we hear  (Munich, 2005) | Light as metaphor (at 9:45) | Eyeball pics

Artifacts: Amsterdam's Comiclopedia | Saudi Arabia to ban the "X" | Swastika on a Buddha | Harvard Law sugar plantation seal | John Coltrane visualized

For Friday: Safari no. 2. Bring in an example of a medium not typically considered to be visual rhetoric. The more unusual the better.

• Some examples from Berlin's Museum of Things: robots |  propaganda culture | travel kitsch | houseware kitsch | devotional kitsch
• And another example: Chinese dragon made from drones
• And another: Bakery cakes??

Week 3: Sept. 7

The Gutter (absence): Chris Rock, Kristi Yamaguchi | Fahrenheit 9/11 open | Sans Forgetica | New Yorker designer Christoph Niemann and visual 'language'

Seeing, sensing, selecting & perceiving

How we perceive:

• COLOR
• FORM
• DEPTH
• MOVEMENT

Artifacts: One second (cancer patients) | BBC's optical illusions | A visual explanation of Fair Use | Designing playing cards | LG's newish logo

NO CLASS Monday: Labor Day

For Friday: Safari no. 3. Bring in a photographic example of light intentionally used by someone else (not you) as metaphor. Original photography only. No photoshopping; no arranging. And no nature. God wasn't creating visual culture when he made the sun, or a tree, or the ocean.

Week 4: Sept. 14

Introduction to visual communication theory

• Gestalt
• Semiotics (Berger, Peirce, Barthes)
• Constructivism

Artifacts: Personification | The Night Watch, Rembrandt | Background on The Night Watch | Logo-ology | Cave drawings in Missouri a millennium old

Visual parody and sature:

• Corporate image ads (Dissolve)
• 'Contemporvant' from Northpoint Church, ATL
• iPhone parody
• A TV news package
• "Breaking" cable news

For Wednesday: Safari no. 4. Bring in a photo you will take of a symbol you don't recognize. Then find out what it means, or is intended to mean.

Week 5: Sept. 21

Visual communication theory

Peirce's symbolic types: iconic, idexical, symbolic

Berger's, analogical, displaced, condensed codes (outline for note-taking)

Denotation, connotation, chains of association, mythic "truth" (Barthes)

Artifacts: Snicker's ad (metoynmy) | Optical illusion: Which car is bigger? | Want to see Starry Night move? | 2025 Super Bowl ads

No class Friday: BC in Philly

For Monday: Safari no. 5. Take a photo of the best example of Gestalt you can find. Describe WHY you believe it to demonstrate Gestalt, explaining how the denoted elements add up to much larger connotations.

For Friday: Safari no. 6. A print advertisement that has or uses  Peirce's iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs. Include a paragraph CLEARLY identifying each of the three in the image, explaining why each representation is in fact what you say it is. You must demonstrate that you know what the terms mean.

Week 6: Sept. 28

Finishing Berger

Denotation/Connotation (Roland Barthes) (outline for note-taking)

Artifacts: Metaphor in The Accountant | generic 'nothing' ad from vmsoftware (UK) | Numan TV ad

Week 7: Oct. 5

Cognitive theory (memory, projection), including memory

Artifacts: Fons Americanus | National Memorial for Peace and Justice (memory) | Monuments, memorializing and 'Take A Knee' from the New York Times | EJI lynching memorial/museum, Montgomery AL | How many numbers do you see? | What figure do you see?

Public memory, collective memory (and forgetting)

Due Wednesday: Safari no. 7. Berger code safari.  Find one or more print advertisements that use metonymic, analogical, and displaced symbolic codes to persuade. Include a paragraph CLEARLY identifying each of the three and explanations that CLEARLY demonstrate that you know the codes' definitions. If you need multiple ads to find all three, that's fine

Due Friday: Read Dr. Carroll's piece on (not) remembering enslavement in Savannah. Submit on Canvas five (5) good to really good questions for the author, after having read the piece. No AI for this, please.

Week 8: Oct. 12 

Memoria

Visual Persuasion & Advertising: Gestalt, myth, persuasion, aspiration & fear

Artistotle's Logos, Pathos & Ethos

Artifacts: Lloyds Bank of London ad A Fairy Tale | Stallions | 'Your Life is a Story' (Dulux) | The Think Different (Apple, 1997) | adidas 'Originals' (2018)

Due Monday: Safari no. 8. Berger code safari no. 2.  Find an excellent example of a condensed symbolic code. Include a paragraph CLEARLY explaining HOW it works, identifying as many of its signifiers as you can, not just one or two.

For Wednesday, view Joshua Foer's TED talk on memory palaces | Read the Times on the same | and a fun memory palace puzzle

Week 9: Oct. 19

Visual Persuasion & Advertising: Cymbalta case study

• Cymbalta ad
• A clever little card trick
  
• Count the ball passes
  

Eisenstein's collision of images

Artifacts: Anti-gay marriage ad | CatholicVote ad | Rule of Thirds and interior design | Owl & cybersecurity | Logorama | 30 Rock strikes again | Starbucks on Best In Show | Mazda ad with Mia Hamm | Ambient advertising

No class Monday: Fall Break

For Wednesday: Describe the memory palace you created and how it helped you remember something you otherwise couldn't have. The prompt is in the pinned discussion in Canvas. Due by classtime.

Due Friday: First project. Take-home. Submit via Canvas answers only, not entire test booklet, with honor pledge indicated somewhere on the first or last page. No email. The rubric I will use to evaluate your learning.

Week 10: Oct. 26

Typography

Presentation to Georgia College Press Assn. (for notetaking)

Artifacts: Climate Crisis typeface from Finland | Spirit Airlines (seriously?) | Papyrus and Avatar (SNL) | Papyrus Bold and Avatar (SNL) | Ten Infographics on Type | Type sketch on College Humor | Metamorphabet | If typefaces were cats | Designer of Transport typeface on Top Gear | The Kerning Game | Typeface for people with dyslexia (and why it matters) | Speak with conviction  or, you know, whatever  (watch the typography as message)

Schedule update to come: BC at AAC&U Conference on AI

For Monday: Read "Man of Letters" article from The New Yorker magazine (quiz probable)

ALSO: View the film 'Helvetica' available on Kanopy through the Berry library webpage.

For Friday: Safari no. 9 on choosing a typeface. Instructions on Wandering Rocks. A few resources:

• What font are you? (Buzzfeed quiz)
• Free typefaces at FontSquirrel
• Gotham's print shop

Looking ahead: Choosing your favorite school or era of graphic design

Week 11: Nov. 2

Graphic Design | The Six Perspectives

• Balance
• Unity
• Contrast
• Rhythm
• CVI
• Z pattern
• The Big Idea (metaphor)
• Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence (or spiral)

Artifacts: Negative space logos | negative space II | title sequences | great logo examples | Good minimalist logos | Global slave trade in 2 minutes, from Slate.com | Vector graphics in graphic design

For Wednesday: Read mini graphic design history AND The Six Perspectives

Week 12: Nov. 9

Graphic Design II & Artful Design (design + aesthetics)

Case study: Art Deco 

Art Deco in architecture | Art Deco in automobiles | Art Deco in furniture | Art Deco in movie posters | Art Deco in aircraft | Hippy-dippy YouTube walkthru of Art Deco

Steampunk City (Oamaru, N.Z.) | Carolina's argyle

Graphic design presentations Wednesday

For Monday: Read Dr. Carroll's column on Bauhaus, one on midcentury modern, and one on Shaker

For Wednesday: 8-minute group briefings on the various design era or school or philosophy. Instructions on Wandering Rocks.

Week 13: Nov. 16

Photography | Fibonacci spiral (golden ratio)

The explosive power of the image

Should we see mass shooting crime scene photos? The ethics of seeing:  Sandy Hook | Uvalde

The art of memory

Emmitt Till case study: NAACP and images | Emmett Till memoria app | New York Times retrospective | sites of remembrance |

Artifacts: New York Times photo blog | Groundhog Day in Thailand | Photos That Lie | 1930s London colorized and digitally remastered (stunning)

Due Monday: Safari no. 10: Beautiful, artful design safari

Due Wednesday: Second Project
>>Rubric for the project

Due Friday: Safari no. 11 asks you to bring in a still photo you will take of a "broken dream" interpreted as you wish. Include date taken and location.

Week of Nov. 23

Thanksgiving week: No in-person classes 

Week 14: Nov. 30

Photography to Cinema (still to moving images)

Ethics of seeing (handout) 

La Jetée | On Kanopy (free) | Creating a wormhole

The first moving images: serpentine dances

Artifacts: the first moving images: Best typefaces of 2022 | The James Webb telescope explained by our very own Dr. Todd Timberlake

Moving images

Full circle: The Future

Due Monday: Safari no. 12, as divided up in class, one photo of a. the mundane, everyday, banal, b. the ugly, grotesque or hideous, or c. the poignant, timeless, poetic. With writeup/explanation.

Due Friday: Safari no. 13. One photo to sustain you in an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic future. A rebellion against time: The future cannot deny the past. (Safari based on La Jetee)

Read some filim crit for Monday: Martin Why Marvel movies aren't cinema (Martin Scorcese) AND Hollywood's color blind past (New York Times Sunday magazine)

Take-home final exam due by 10 am, Wednesday, Dec. 9.

Standard take-home final exam booklet and the rubric

• Alternate short film version and, for this alternate version, the book chapter that goes with the instructions

Examples of alternate (film) responses:

• MegaMegaUpload, a tech ad satire
• Nolan and Elizabeth (Nolumbo and John Hardy)
  1. script
  2. storyboards
• Addison, Mike and Phillip (The Metaverse)
  1. script
  2. storyboard
• Claire Voltarel (a video diary)
• Lizzy Jones (Hardee's/Carl's, Jr.)
• Annabeth Crittenden (advertising and body image

keep your eyes on the prize!

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

“It is a paradox of the twentieth century that while visual images have increasingly come to dominate our culture, our colleges and universities traditionally have devoted relatively little attention to visual media.” Sturken and Cartwright, Practices of Looking (2001)

• Visual Communication, Paul Martin Lester (Thomson)
• Ways of Seeing, John Berger (Penguin)
• The Image, Dan Boorstin (Vintage)
• Ourspace, Christine Harold (University of Minnesota)
• Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, Philip B. Meggs and Alston W. Purvis (Wiley)
• Visual Methodologies, Gillian Rose (Sage)
• Graphic Communications Today, Ryan and Conover (Thomson)
• On Photography, Susan Sontag (Picador)
• Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright (Oxford)

Professor: Dr. Brian Carroll
Office: Laughlin Hall 100
Office phone: 368.6944
E-mail: bc@berry.edu
Home page: cubanxgiants.berry.edu
Blog: WanderingRocks.wordpress.com

Office hours: T/TH 10am-2pm, with some of these days interrupted by 11 am meetings; MW 11-noon; walk-ins are also welcome outside of office hours

Class format 

The professor has planned a combination of dynamic out-of-class activities (safaris), a range of media to examine in the classroom, and a bounty of discussion themes and lines of inquiry. Class time, then, will be spent learning ways of seeing and reading images, then applying these methods as we examine artifacts from our various media or visual culture safaris. The professor believes in discussive and collaborative learning experiences, realizing that we all bring something unique and valuable to pursuit and discovery. For each credit hour of registered coursework, Berry expects students to commit two hours of outside engaged learning (readings, safaris, projects, etc.). Because this is a three-credit hour course, successful students should expect to spend three hours per week in-class and an additional six hours of outside learning activities.  

Policies

Attendance: Be on time, just as you would for a job, surgery, or even a haircut. Everyone gets one unexcused absence or late arrival, maybe two, with no questions asked. Stuff happens. After that, unexcused and/or unexplained absences and/or lateness will result in point deductions from the "professionalism and participation" portion of your grade – one point for each unexcused absence and/or late arrival. And late is late, be it one minute or ten minutes. What is excused is at the instructor's discretion, so you are best served discussing situations and extraordinary circumstances prior to class whenever possible. Medical attention is typically excused. Weddings, family reunions, vacations, job interviews, grad school visits, Winshape retreats, and your roommate’s birthday, to name some examples, are not typically excused. Save your free passes for these non-academic excursions and events.

Late submissions (deadlines): Be on time, just as you would for a job, surgery, or even a haircut. Everyone gets one unexcused absence or late arrival, maybe two, with no questions asked. Stuff happens. After that, however, unexcused and/or unexplained absences and/or lateness will result in point deductions from the "professionalism and participation" portion of your grade at the rate of one point for each unexcused absence and/or late arrival. What is excused is up to the instructor, and late is late, be it one minute or 20. You are best served discussing situations and extraordinary circumstances prior to class whenever possible. Medical attention is typically excused, but documentation of this care is required. Weddings, family reunions, vacations, job interviews, grad school visits, Winshape retreats, and concerts in Atlanta, to name a few examples, are not typically excused.

Email etiquette: When emailing your instructor, please keep in mind that he is a human being, not a vending machine for information, grades, etc. Begin each email with a greeting, something like, “Dear Dr. Carroll. I hope this finds you well.” It’s courteous, and it doesn’t take much time to write. It’s also polite to thank someone for whatever was provided in response to your request, and yet so very, very rarely do students take time for this courtesy. Email the authorized communication channel for faculty and students at Berry, so students are responsible for checking their email and promptly responding to instructors as needed.

Distractions: The instructor needs your attention and your respect, and they are inter-related. Your peers seated near or around you need these, as well. Because your instructor is easily distracted, he needs your help. Practically, this means:

• ZERO unauthorized device use of any kind, including laptops, iPads, smartphones, and Apple watches. Put your devices away (off your desk; unseen) and make sure they are either off or on silent. If you use a device without permission, even a quick scroll of your Apple watch to check a text from Mom, you could be marked as “absent" for that class session. If such checking is habitual, the student can count on point deductions.
• Doing homework for other classes somewhere else, just not in our classroom.
• Avoiding the zipping up of backpacks and the clearing off of desks prior to being dismissed.
• Avoiding repetitive noisemaking, such as clicking pens, crinkling food wrappers, and clanging water bottles.
• Speaking of water bottles, please prevent their rather loud and even dangerous toppling from desks onto the floor or onto classmates’ feet or belongings.

Decorum: The classroom is the professor’s and your fellow students’ workspace and our shared learning space. It’s not your family room. Be respectful, avoid going to the bathroom during class sessions unless nature is screaming, and change out of those PJs into something more appropriate. In the absence of medical documentation, repeated exits for the restroom will result in deductions from the professionalism and participation portion of the course grade. Students are not permitted to leave and re-enter the shared learning space whenever they wish.

Academic integrity: Because academic integrity is the foundation of college life at Berry, academic dishonesty will have consequences. You are invited to consult the Berry Catalog for an articulation of the College’s policies with respect to academic integrity. Specific to this course, academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to: unauthorized collaboration, fabrication, submitting the same work in multiple courses, hiring a ghostwriter, asking an AI generator to write something for you that you later submit as if you wrote it yourself, failing to cite sources or AI tools for your research and writing, consulting non-authorized sources or texts during an exam or test period, and aiding and abetting academic dishonesty by another student. Students who are sanctioned for violating the academic integrity policy forfeit the right to withdraw from the class with a grade of “W.”

Class recording (Zoom): Per Berry policy, students are required to attend class in-person. Classes will not be available for remote learning, at least not regularly or without advance warning and authorization. Any recordings will only be available to students registered for this class and cannot be retransmitted, distributed, or otherwise shared without the expressed, written consent of the instructor.

Use of genAI: We will responsibly collaborate with generative AI, including LLMs, and you will receive instruction on what that looks like. The general rule is to treat AI as a research or learning assistant, which means collaborating with but not substituting or surrendering authorship and ownership, including what might be eligible for copyright protections. We must prevent any AI tool from becoming a co-author of our submitted work. AI tools are powerful, wonderful collaborators when we know what we are doing and what we are writing; AI tools are not good substitutes for either the knowledge or the writing.

How you will be graded

For daily projects and blog posts, grades of check plus, check, check minus, and zero will be awarded. Roughly translated, check plusses = As; checks = Bs; and check minuses = Cs. The wide variability of subjectivity of these daily assignments, such as “bring in three examples of metonymic symbolism,” preclude a more precise grading scheme. The check system also facilitates a faster turnaround time.

To compute your final grade, add up your point totals, apply the appropriate percentages, then refer to the grading system summarized here:

Accommodation Statement

The Academic Success Center provides accessibility resources, including academic accommodations, to students with diagnosed differences and/or disabilities.  If you need accommodations for this or other classes, please visit berry.edu/asc for information and resources.  You may also reach out at 706-233-40480.  Please note, faculty are not required, as part of any temporary or long-term accommodation, to distribute recordings of class sessions. 

Academic Resources

Consultants at the Berry College Writing Center are available to assist students with all stages of the writing process. To schedule an appointment, visit berry.mywconline.com

The Academic Success Center provides free peer tutoring and individual academic consultations to all Berry College students. The ASC Session schedule is available on ASC Website: berry.edu/ASC. The goal of these meetings is to help students study smarter, not harder.

Finally, I believe we are here for a good time, not a long time so let’s have some fun!