English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Before and After Page Design looks like a very interesting and useful book that I'll be sure to use at some point in the future. However, I noticed some interesting things in the introduction. First, there's the linking of design to "cool." We just read an introduction to cool studies by Liu in Postmodern class, and design is certainly a major part of cool. Liu writes how cool is an attitude or stance taken towards information-- a kind of meta-awareness of how something is making us aware, and often linked to technological skill or prowess. Mcwade writes "design doesn't belong to a certain class of people" (xi). Good, and this is actually accurate with Liu's notions of cool, which requires taking the "right" stance towards information, which is technically possible for anyone. But Liu ignores how there are battles for cool and attempts to define oneself against others who are not cool-- in other words, I think their are power-plays in cool and design which I have not seen fully addressed.

I'm also hesitant about the title of Mcwade's last sub-section, which is called "Let's Make Some Magic." Maybe I'm being nit-picky here, but if he's going to assert that design is for everyone, it seems counter-productive to metaphorically link it with magic or something that is special and reserved for only the few. Magic implies a great grand mysterious force, which is not how I want to look at design or present it to my students. Am I being knit-picky