Envisioning Collaboration: Group Verbal-visual Composing in a System of Creativity(Baywood's Technical Communications)

The dissemination of desktop publishing and web authoring software has allowed nearly everyone in industrialized countries to combine verbal and visual symbols into text. Serious multimodal projects often demand extensive teamwork, especially in the workplace. But how can collaboration engaging such different traditions of expression be conducted effectively? To address this question, Envisioning Collaboration traces the composing processes of expert graphic artists and writers preparing advertising campaigns to retain a vital national account. It examines the influences on individual and dyadic composing processes of what Csikszentmihalyi terms "the domain," in this case the disciplinary knowledge of advertising, and "the field," in this case the surrounding economic conditions and client, vendor, customer, and agency executive gatekeepers. Based on a 460-hour participant-observation and intensive computerized data analysis, Envisioning Collaboration is the first book to meticulously examine collaborative creative processes at an award-winning advertising agency, including audience analysis, branding, collaborative "moves," power and conflict management, uses of humor, degree of mindfulness, and effectiveness. The findings indicate the role of concepts in generating common texts by artists and writers, the role of the visual in individuals' composing, verbal-visual rhetorical elements in processes and products, and which verbal-visual techniques were most generative. Findings are related to pertinent research in technical and business writing, rhetoric and composition, and some key research in visual design, communication, advertising, neurolinguistics, management, and psychology. The book concludes with a pedagogical/training unit incorporating "gateway activities" for effective verbal-visual composition and collaboration.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments CHAPTER 1: Introductory Framework and Overview Conceptual Framing Contextual Framing Overview of the Study and Completion of the Framework CHAPTER 2: Ping-Pong, Part I: Collaborative Brainstorming of an “Insight-Intensive” Team First Ad Concepting Session 2/14: Forming a Mental Picture Summary of Artist-Writer Brainstorming CHAPTER 3: Ping-Pong, Part II: Development, Elaboration, and Evaluation of Concepts by an “Insight-Intensive” Team Neil’s Composing Lines 2/14 February 15 Evaluation of Lines Meeting: Customer Supplants Client Merging Pictures and Words: 2/16-2/22 Evolution of a Good Idea: The “Lawns are Our Life” Campaign Tip-Ball Evaluative Meeting 2/22/02: “I’m Sure We’ll See a Lawnmower in Here Real Soon” Second Tip-Ball Meeting 2/27/02: “Romance the Product” 3/6 Tip-Ball Meeting: The End of the Lines and a New Assignment Case Conclusion CHAPTER 4: “We Had One Idea That We Liked a Lot”: The Invention of a Preparation- and Evaluation-Intensive Team The Copywriter The Artist Overview of Composing Processes Preparation and Preliminary Ideas Brainstorming Session CHAPTER 5: Less Divergence than Convergence: Analysis of a Preparation- and Evaluation-Intensive Team’s Invention and the End of the Hunt Summary of Artist-Writer Brainstorming Concept Development and Tip-Ball, 2/15-22 2/22-27 Tightening Up Verbal-Visual Cognition: Assimilation and Accommodation in the Dyadic Mind CHAPTER 6: Collaboration Envisioned Initial Verbal-Visual Invention Predominantly Concerned with Visual Rhetorical Elements in Verbal-Visual Composing Comparison of Sequences of Invention of Artist-Writer Teams Comparison of Collaboration Styles: Assertive vs. Supportive Dyadic Self-Evaluation The Pause That Refreshes and Other Varieties: Comparison of Pauses in Dyadic Composing Processes Dyad’s Conflict Management beyond Dismissal Pauses Efficient Principles of Concept Invention: Verbal-Visual Topoi Audience Analysis by Dyads, Artists, and Writers Mindfulness in the Collaborative Efforts Dyadic vs. Large-Group Productivity Contribution of the Study to Existing Models of Verbal-Visual Collaboration The Roles of Concepts and Layout in Group Assimilation and Accommodation Questions for Further Research Recommendations for the Practice, Training, and Teaching of Verbal-Visual Collaboration Appendix: Methods Data Gathering Data Analysis Mode of Representation Locating the Ethnographer Works Cited Author-Subject Index List of Figures List of Tables