An article written by Charles Kostelnick analyzes the different aspects of data displays in terms of visual rhetoric. The article called, Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays, examines different topics related to visual rhetoric including:
- comprehension of the data
- rhetoric of science
- rhetoric of adaptation
- social rhetoric
- emergence of digital data design
- rhetoric of participation
The rhetoric of data display is different than the rhetoric we have heard about from Aristotle and Plato because it is visual rhetoric not written or spoken. More specifically it is the rhetoric of visual data such as graphs, charts and scatter-plots.
First, Kostelnick touches on the comprehension of the data. He takes a quote from Tufte that covers all the bases for his impending article about the visual rhetoric of data displays,
“‘graphical excellence consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision and efficiency’ that it ‘gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space’ and that it ‘requires telling the truth about data'”
Data displays are meant to give information in the most efficient of ways; they are perfectly concise. Data displays are created to be read easily and to provide a large amount of information. The thought process behind creating a successful data display is much like the thought processes in advertising. This idea becomes even stronger when Kostelnick goes on to discuss social rhetoric.
Advertising is focused on catering to the interests of the public and in much of the same way so are data displays. Kostelnick frequently uses the word “popular” in this section of his article to stress the idea that the display needs to be visually appealing to the public. Advertising is always angled towards their audience, for example, this Covergirl ad features Taylor Swift. She is a country music icon and role model to millions of girls from a wide range of ages. By using Taylor Swift in their ad they are directing their products at an obvious group: teenage girls. In very much the same way, data displays are created for the public but with a slightly different purpose:
Circumscribing the designer’s available design choices helps enculturate readers into a finite group of familiar forms and thereby reduces the reader’s interpretive stress. In this way, data design software both enhances and constrains visual literacy, ensuring that a wide range of readers become enculturated in a certain genres…while at the same time limiting data visualization to those forms
Data displays are targeted towards the public in the way that the public can clearly understand the information that is meant to be taken from the display. It needs to be visually appealing and straightforward for the display to hold good visual rhetoric and for the message of the display to be read properly. Data displays are created for the understandability of the public just as advertisements are created for the appeal of their targeted audience.
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