Lecture 2 - Visual Literacy

Visual Communication: 

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

Visual Literacy:

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

Principle 1: Ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. 

Principle 2: Idea that pictures can be read

Principle 3: Agreement on what stands for what

Principle 4:

• Presentational symbols whose meaning whose meaning results from their existence in particular contexts.
• Conventions of visual communication are a combination of universal and cultural symbols.

Principle 5: 

Visual Syntax

• Pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements. 
• Basic building blocks of an image that affect how we read it.
• Scale, color, font, shape, motion, light, mark, texture, etc..

 Visual Semantics

• The way an image fits into a cultural process of communication.
• Relationship between form and meaning and the way meaning is created.
• 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.
• Related to Linguistics (structure and meaning of language.)
• Studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy.
• Elements: Symbol, Sign, Signifier, Metaphor, Metonym and Synecdoche.
• Symbol: Logo
• Sign: Identity
• Signifier: Brand

Visual Synecdoche:

• A part is used to represent the whole or vice versa.
• Main subject is substituted for something inherently connected to it.
• This only works if what the synecdoche represents is universally recognized.  

Visual Metonym:

• A symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning.
• Viewer makes a connection between image and intended subject.
• The two images bear a close relationship but are not linked.

Visual Metaphor

• Used to transfer meaning from one image to another.
• Conveys an impression about something unfamiliar comparing or associating it with something familiar.