Lecture 1: Visual Literacy- The Language Of Design

This lecture is about both visual communication and visual literacy.

Visual Communication is the process of sending and receiving messages using type and images, a level of understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects and it is affected by the audience and media.

Visual Literacy is the ability to construct meaning from image and type, interpreting images from various cultures past and present and most importantly producing images that effectively communicate a message to the audience. 

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. 

For example: 

From looking at each image you can immediately tell that these signs are for the correct toilet to enter into without needing the word toilet on the sign. This links with the idea that visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be read.

Example of the idea images 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. For example the + and x symbol are the same but rotated and the = and divide symbol are similar also.

Visual Syntax: the syntax of an image refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements. it represents the basic building blocks of an image and that effects the way we read it.

The Semantics of an image refers way an image fits into a cultural process of communication. It includes the relationship between form and meaning and the way meaning is created.

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. 

Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language. Semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy.