LESSON 1 Visual Literacy

TOPICS COVERED Objective of Visual Communication Skills , Visual Literacy

OBJECTIVES This lesson will give you an overview of visual communication skills. This knowledge will be indispensable in whichever field of media you may choose to work in. It will teach you the importance of observation and is an interactive session where you are required to participate fully. What do you understand by visual communication? How important do you think it is in everyday life? (From your morning toothpaste, to the late night movie..you are surrounded by images,graphics, visuals throughout your life…)

Visual Communication Skills Rationale: “If the invention of movable type created a mandate for universal verbal literacy, surely the invention of the camera and all its collateral and continually developing forms makes the achievement of universal visual literacy an educational necessity long overdue. Film, television, visual computers are modern extensions of the designing and making that has historically been a natural capability of all human beings and now seems to have been isolated from human experience.”

Intent of Course: To open up a broader knowledge of some of the essential characteristics of that intelligence, this course proposes to examine the basic visual elements,principles, strategies and options of the visual techniques, the psychological and physiological implications of creative composition, and the range of media and formats that can be appropriately categorized under the heading of visual arts and communication. This process is the beginning of a rational investigation and analysis designed to expand the under-standing and utilization of visual expression. Even if you don’t intend to be an art director, typographer, photojournalist, creative director, stylist or designer, if you work in journalism or communications it is likely you’ll be making decisions (or working with those who make decisions) involving visual communication. At the very least, this information should prove useful to you as a consumer of visual messages and communication. Visual communication serves a purpose greater than decoration. It is an important tool for effective communication. The organization of information on the screen can make difference between a message users and that leaves users feeling puzzled or overwhelmed. Even the best application functionality can suffer and be underused if the visual presentation does not communicate it well. We choose what we read and how we think about information by its appearance and organisation. We read a screen in the same way we read other forms of information. The eye is always attracted to coloured elements before black and white elements, to isolated elements before elements in group, and to graphics before text. We even read text by scanning the shapes of groups of letters. Visual literacy is the ability to see, to understand, and ultimately to think, create, and communicate graphically. Generally speaking, the visually literate viewer looks at an image carefully, critically, and with an eye for the intentions of the image’s creator. Those skills can be applied equally to any type of image: photographs, paintings and drawings, graphic art (including everything from political cartoons to comic books to illustrations in children’s books), films, maps, and various kinds of charts and graphs. All convey information and ideas, and visual literacy allows the viewer to gather the information and ideas contained in an image, place them in context, and determine whether they are valid.

Like traditional literacy, visual literacy encompasses more than one level of skill. The first level in reading is simply decoding words and sentences, but reading comprehension is equally (if not more) important. That understanding requires broad vocabulary, experience in a particular content area, and critical thought, and teachers have various approaches and strategies to help students build contextual understanding of what they read. The first level of visual literacy, too, is simple knowledge: basic identification of the subject or elements in a photograph, work of art, or graphic. The skills necessary to identify details of images are included in many disciplines; for example, careful observation is essential to scientific inquiry. But while accurate observation is important, understanding what we see and comprehending visual relationships are at least as important. These higher-level visual literacy skills require critical thinking, and they are essential to a student’s success in any content area in which information is conveyed through visual formats such as charts and maps. They are also beneficial to students attempting to make sense of the barrage of images they may face in texts and Web resources. Visual literacy skills are already employed in a variety of disciplines. Observation, as we’ve noted, is integral to science. Critique, useful in considering what should be included in an essay in Language Arts, is also a part of examining a visual image. Deconstruction, employed in mathematical problem solving, is used with images to crop and evaluate elements and how they relate to the whole. Discerning point of view or bias is important in analyzing advertisements and works of art. Specific visual formats require specific approaches to visual understanding. Information contained in various types of images, to analyze that information, and to use those types of images to build their visual communication skills. Visuals with Messages attempts to explore several questions. Since the widespread use of Gutenberg’s printing press, there has always been the cultural assumption that information is best communicated through written formats. But since the invention of the computer and desktop publishing, the role of visual messages in the communication process is expanding. Much of the information in the book will be new to you. Such a predicament is not your fault because you have been raised to consider words mainly as the most important form of human communication. This book is an attempt, as many others have tried, to even up the score between words and images. It is important to understand, however, that an emphasis on visual messages for this course does NOT mean that words are considered less important than images. The most powerful, meaningful and culturally important messages are those that combine words and pictures in equally respectful ways. Visual Communication is an exploration into the idea that memorable visual messages with text have the greatest power to inform, educate and persuade an individual.

Earliest form of Visual Communication