Visual Literacy - The Language of Design

LECTURE NOTES

• It is our job to communicate/solve problems through it and we need to be able to effectively communicate to different audiences in a range of contexts.
• VISUAL COMMUNICATION: The process of sending and receiving; it is based on a shared understanding, affected by audience, context, media and method of distribution.
• VISUAL LITERACY: The ability to construct meaning from image/motion, interpreting images of present, past and different cultures and producing images to communicate a message to an audience.
• The ability to interpret, negotiate, make meaning.
• Once we understand the basics of these things we can start to change the meaning. (bring humour to it)
• Visual language is based on the idea of images that can be read, although there has to be an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another for it to be a global language.
• Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between Visual Syntax and Visual Semantics.
• VISUAL SYNTAX: The building block of an image relating to how we create logical meaning (pictorial structure & visual organisation)
• More can be interpreted from an image than a word as the meaning is undefined.
• Our job is to control the image so that people can interpret it how we want them to.
• VISUAL SEMANTICS: The way an image fits into a cultural process of communication, we cannot change or interfere with this, only consider it. (Cultural references, social ideals)
• This includes a relationship between form and meaning.
• SEMIOTICS - The study of signs and processes, indicate, designation, likeness, symbolism - closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language.
• It also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy. (Symbol, Sign, Metaphor)
• SYMBOL: What it symbolises (example used Apple)
• IDENTITY: It becomes a sign for apple products and the company
• BRAND: What it signifies (In this case: quality, innovation)
• The 'Big Apple' could symbolise NY and new meaning can come to symbols.
• VISUAL SYNECDOCHE: When a part is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. The main subject is simply substituted.
• VISUAL METONYM: A symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning, two images bare a close relationship.
• VISUAL METAPHOR: It is used to transfer the meaning from one image to another, conveys an impression about something unfamiliar, comparing or associating it with something familiar.
• "WORK THE METAPHOR"
• Work on what things can mean, say or stand for.
• You can start to control visual communication and work visual literacy this way.