Charlie Kostelnick’s Humanizing Visual Design: The Rhetoric of Human Forms in Practical Communication published

In the book Kostelnick analyzes the role that human forms play in visualizing practical information and in making that information understandable, accessible, inviting, and meaningful to readers—in short, “humanizing” it. Although human figures have long been deployed in practical communication, their uses in this context have received little systematic analysis. Drawing on rhetorical theory, art history, design studies, and historical and contemporary examples, he explore the many rhetorical purposes that human forms play in functional pictures, including empowering readers, narrating processes, invoking social and cultural identities, fostering pathos appeals, and visualizing data.

The book can be found on Routledge’s website.