The essays in VISUAL RHETORIC AND THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIGN foreground the rhetorical functions of design artifacts. Rhetoric, normally understood as verbal or visual messages that have a tactical persuasive objective-a speech that wants to convince us to vote for someone, or an ad that tries to persuade us to buy a particular product-becomes in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design the persuasive use of a broad set of meta-beliefs. Designed objects are particularly effective at this second level of persuasion because they offer audiences communicative data that reflect, and also orchestrate, a potentially broad array of cultural concerns. Persuasion entails both the aesthetic form and material composition of any object.