Envisioning Collaboration

by Cross, Geoffrey A.

• ISBN13: 9780895034007
• ISBN10: 089503400X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Baywood Pub Co

Summary

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, Envisioing 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.Intended Audience:: Students, teachers, and researchers in undergraduate and graduate programs in technical communication, rhetoric and composition, business communication, advertising/strategic communication, graphic design, communication, and fine arts. Practitioners: technical writers, illustrators, and marketers; advertising copywriters, graphic artists, account executives, and managers; editors, trainers, and writing consultants

Author Biography

Geoffrey A. Cross, Professor of English at the University of Louisville, received the National Council of Teachers of English/Association for Teachers of Technical Writing 1995 Best Book in Scientific or Technical Communication Award for his ethnography Collaboration and Conflict (Hampton Press, 1994), and the Association for Business Communication Outstanding Researcher Award in 1997. His second ethnographic study of collaborative writing, Forming the Collective Mind (Hampton Press, 2001), received both The Association for Business Communication Distinguished Publication Award and the NCTE/ATTW 2002 Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication Award. In 2005, he won the Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activity Award in Humanities from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Louisville. His research articles have appeared in several edited collections, including Landmark Essays on Bakhtin and Writing, and in journals including the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Business Communication, Computers and Composition, Across the Disciplines and Research in the Teaching of English.