Aligning trends in mainstream media and data visualization with teaching practice

The emergence of the infographic in mainstream media presents an important challenge to the ways in which technical communication instructors teach visualization and visual rhetoric. Nicholas Felton´s work, in both his Annual Reports and Facebook Timeline, is representative of how modern visualization techniques disrupt traditional approaches to teaching visual communication. However, this explosion of interest around visualization also offers a strong opportunity for dialogue about visual genres, communities of practice, and aesthetics that can help move the teaching of visualization beyond heuristics and push students towards a deeper understanding of visual design. This paper examines Felton´s graphic design work in order to demonstrate how it both challenges and enriches visual design pedagogy.