1st Edition

Envisioning Collaboration Group Verbal-visual Composing in a System of Creativity

By Geoffrey Cross, Charles Sides Copyright 2011

    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.

    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

    Biography

    Geoffrey Cross, Charles Sides