Diana George’s From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing has a lot in common with some of the texts discussed in previous posts. One of these commonalities is simply the emphasis put on the importance of visual communication. George opens the text with a powerful anecdote of a teacher using maps to teach history. The anecdote results in this powerful quote: “It takes very few words for Boikhutso to tell the class what these maps show them: Precolonial Africa cannot be recovered.” This quote and anecdote shows firsthand the effectiveness of visual communication. By opening the article with this anecdote, George shows us the importance of visuals in the learning process.

One place where this text differs though, is the focus on the uncertainty of the future. George isn’t sure where this is all going. This point is summed up at the end with the line, “Whether that question will lead us, as the New London Group and others suggest, toward multiliteracies or toward composition as design or simply toward a more complete way of understanding verbal and visual communication practices is not resolved.” George doesn’t know how this will pan out. Will we focus on the multiliteracy aspect and teach literacy in various forms? Or will we just shift to thinking in terms of the writing and the way it looks? Or is this just a step towards more fully analyzing the relationship between written and visual communication? This uncertainty is something George acknowledges that previous texts haven’t.