Explicit pedagogy that focuses on visual design and composition principles can affect students' responses to and understanding, interpretation and analysis of images, as well as the creation of their own visual representations. This article considers the why, the what, and the how of teaching various visual elements of art and design to students through the description of two classroom-based studies. Multimodality, social semiotics, visual literacy and sociocultural theory framed the studies described in this article. As well as explaining some of the activities that the students engaged in during the studies, this article features examples of students' written responses to various picturebooks and graphic novels. The students' text-based writing reveals their knowledge, appreciation and interpretation of various visual elements of art and design. The article concludes with a discussion of the need for teachers and researchers to include and value the teaching of visual texts in language and literacy curricula.