abstract: mla 2007

Manifesting Corporate Culture using Visual Rhetoric

Professional communication teachers strive to develop curricula that accurately address the types of communication tasks that students will face in the workplace. In the past fifteen years, visual rhetoric has been a popular subject in business communication literature. We teach our students that visual rhetoric improves the readability of their documents, presents quantitative information more efficiently and effectively than text alone, and enhances the persuasiveness of their writing. But do we teach them how visual rhetoric can be used to represent corporate culture?

Corporate visual identity (CVI) is a manifestation of corporate culture that typically includes “a name, a symbol and/or logo, typography, color, a slogan, and—very often—additional graphic elements” (van den Bosch, de Jong, and Elving 2005, 108). CVI functions both as “curb appeal” and as content: its creates a meaningful image that represents the “personality” of a company, an image that customers remember and associate with the reputation of the organization. Marketing and graphic design literature is rich with examples of CVI programs for large and/or famous organizations, but the role of CVI in start-up organizations is not as widely addressed. Wally Olins (1978) called the start-up phase the “heroic” period in which the personality of the founder dominates the organization. Yet a British study of CVI revealed that “CEOs struggled to identify the central message they wished to convey about their organization. Those messages they did create suffered from being either banal or grandiose, and the task defeated many” (Inskip 2004, 360).

This presentation, part of a dissertation investigating the role of CVI in establishing entrepreneurial ethos, will analyze the ways in which principles of visual rhetoric in professional communication literature are used by professionals to create, think about, and talk about corporate visual identity.

van den Bosch, Annette L.M., Menno D. T. de Jong, and Wim J.L. Elving. 2005. How corporate visual identity supports reputation. Corporate Communications: An International Journal. 10 (2):108-116.

Olins, Wally. 1978. The corporate personality: an inquiry into the nature of corporate identity. London: Design Council.

Inskip, Irene. 2004. Corporate branding for small to medium-sized businesses - A missed opportunity or an indulgence? Brand Management 11 (5):358-365.