Shaping Information

Charles Kostelnick, a professor and chair of the Department of English at Iowa State University, is a coauthor, with David D. Roberts, of Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators.Michael Hassett is Director of Implementation at Envision Technology Solutions in Midvale, Utah. He has taught at Brigham Young University and is the author of numerous articles on rhetoric and the teaching of writing.

“Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett have written a useful and informative book that explores the relation of textual conventions of all sorts to the visual display of information. . . . [Shaping Information] significantly enlarges how we think about conventions, and it will influence its readers to reconsider the arts of visual rhetoric.” — Stephen A. Bernhardt, Rhetoric Review “[Shaping Information] is a useful and important part of the discussion of visual communication. . . . This is a book worth reading and re-reading.” — Susan N. Smith, Information Design Journal Document Design“Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions by Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett provide[s an] accessible and welcome [addition] to the previously slim selection of book-length studies exploring the processes by which designers shape-and readers or users interpret-visual communication. . . . Shaping Information [is a] fascinating [study] that promise[s] to enrich the teaching and study of visual communication now and in the future.” — Bege K. Bowers, Technical Communication Quarterly“Kostelnick and Hassett have written a sound and much needed book. Their framework for visual convention not only organizes unexplored territory in visual theory but also provides a theoretical system and structure of convention that can be used by theorists of writing. Their book makes a satisfying and thoroughly convincing case for the rhetorical basis of visual design.”—David Kaufer, Journal of Business and Technical Communication