C.O.P Lecture 1: Visual Literacy - The Language of Design.

Context of Practice –

Lecture 2: Visual Literacy – The language of design.

Graphic Design

• It’s our job to communicate
• We solve problems of communication through type, image and motion.
• Interested in words, language, message, and meaning.
• We need to be able to effectively communicate ideas, concepts and content to different audiences in a range of contexts.

Visual Communication

• Process of sending and receiving messages using type and images.
• Based on a level of shared understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects.
• Affected by audience, context and media and method of distribution.

Visual Literacy

• Ability to construct meaning from visual images and type.
• Interpreting images of the present, past and future, and a range of cultures.
• Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience.

Visual Literacy is the ability to:

• Interpret
• Negotiate
• Make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, based on the idea that pictures can be read.

Visual communication is made up of presentational symbols whose meaning results from their existence in particular contexts.

…The conventions of visual communication are a combination of universal and cultural symbols.

We already have a large vocabulary of symbols on a complex level. We can understand so much by one simple symbol.

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that will stand for another.

Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between:

• Visual Syntax
• Visual Semantics

Visual Syntax:

• The syntax of an image refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements.
• Represents the basic building blocks of an image that affects the way we ‘read’ it.
• E.g. framing, format, scale, motion, rhythm, direction, mark, tone etc.

Visual Semantics:

• The semantics of an image refers way an image fits into cultural process of cultural process of communication.
• Relationship between form and meaning.
• These elements include: cultural references, social ideals, religious beliefs, political ideas, historical structures etc.

Semiotics:

• Study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy metaphor, symbolism, signification and communication.
• Closely related to the field of linguistics – structure and meaning of language.
• Also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy.
• E.g. Symbol, sign, signifier, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche.

Symbol – Logo

Sign – Identity

Signifier – Brand

Visual Synecdoche:

• When a part is used to represent the whole or visa versa.
• Main subject substituted for something that is inherently connected to it.
• It only works if the substitution is universally recognized.

Visual Metonym:

• Symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning.
• Associating the image and the intended subject.
• Unlike a visual synecdoche, the two images bear a close relationship, but are not intrinsically linked.

Visual Metaphor:

• Used to transfer the meaning from one image to another.
• Although the images may have no close relationship, a metaphor conveys an impression about something unfamiliar comparing or associating it with something familiar.
• “Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.” – Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – Bruce Mau.