Visual Literacy - The Language of Design

Seminar Notes -

Visual Literacy is a communication structure, meaning and context to different target audiences, and a range of different cultures. For example the use of colour alone can completely change the meaning of a piece, such as using a red hue to change an image from a happy atmosphere to one of anger and rage. This communication becomes a message to the audience that is informative and relies on the ability of interpretation of the viewer and the presentation of the image.
Another example of how visual language changes through colour and composition can be seen in the first aid cross, to the European flags through mere manipulation of lines in the cross and the colour of the composition.

England

Sweden

Visual Language is done with a purpose, a purpose to attract a certain age range, to emit a certain atmosphere, to make you think, and is done so based on a level of knowledge and understanding of symbols, gestures and objects. For example well known symbols such as a boy and a girl are used to show which is the male and the female toilets, added with a blue colour for the male and a pink colour for the girl. It becomes a universal knowledge of what these symbols mean, so if you were in a different country and did not know the language, you would still be able to depict which toilet is for which gender.

Visual communication is an unwritten agreement between any language or culture, where one thing will stand for another. This can be seen as far back to the Cuneiform carvings in stone, ( dated back to about 3000 B.C.E )

Visual Literacy can be divided into two parts, syntax and semantics:

• Syntax - The structure of pictorial elements, such as the scale, colour, simplification, any visual aspects of an image.
• Semantics - The contextual and cultural references, social ideals, religious or political ideas, iconic and historical structures.

Semiotics - is a visual metaphor

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification and communication. This is closely related to the fields of linguistics and studies of structure and meaning.