VISUAL
COMMUNICATION
Visual Communication
▪ Visual communication refers to the use of any image to
communicate an idea. Visual communication may take place
through pictures, graphs, and charts, as well as through signs
and symbols.
▪ These visual images inform, educate, or persuade a person
or an audience.
▪ We communicate in a variety of ways.
▪ But we have to remember that our success or failure in the
communication process may depend on which among these
ways to use at any given communicative context to maximize
our success.
Visual Communication
▪ Among the most important figures who explored visual
communication and sight-related theories is Aldous
Huxley.
▪ He suffered from near blindness when he was young
because of an illness, but it set the stage for his becoming
one of the most influential intellectuals to have explored
the field of visual communication.
▪ For him, seeing is the sum of sensing, selecting, and
perceiving. One of his most famous quotes is “The more
you see, the more you know.”
Tracing the History of Visual Communication
Evidence that visual communication is the oldest form of communication:
1. Cave paintings
✔ Cave paintings are believed to be a primitive form of communication that
was etched or drawn on cave walls and ceilings.
✔ These paintings include representations of animals, landscapes, and
religious images, among others.
2. Petroglyphs
▪ These are images carved on rocks believed to have originated from the
Neolithic people some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
▪ These images are also believed to have deep cultural and religious
significance to the societies that created them.
Tracing the History of Visual Communication
3. Geoglyphs
▪ These are drawings or designs on the ground produced by arranging gravel,
stones, or soil.
▪ The purpose of geoglyphs is rather uncertain, although some researchers
believe that they were built for religious purposes.
▪ Some of the most widely known geoglyphs are the Nazca Lines in Peru.
4. Pictograms, Ideograms, and Logograms
▪ Pictograms are images that represent physical objects.
▪ Pictograms (pictures which resemble what they signify) and ideograms
(pictures which represent ideas) were the basis of early written symbols.
▪ They were used by various ancient cultures all over the world since around
9000 BC and began to develop into logographic writing systems around 5000
BC.
Tracing the History of Visual Communication
5. Cuneiform
▪ One of the world’s earliest systems of writing is the cuneiform script invented by the
Sumerians.
▪ They did so not to write stories or letters but to organize labor and resources.
▪ Their population had grown larger and their society had become complex, hence the need
for accounting and accountability.
▪ The writing system employed signs to represent numbers, things, words, and the sounds of
words.
6. Hieroglyphics
▪ It contained a combination of logographic, alphabetic, and ideographic elements used by the
Ancient Egyptians.
▪ It is said that hieroglyphs emerged from the pre-literate artistic traditions of Egypt.
▪ As writing developed and became more widespread, simplified glyph forms developed.
▪ They eventually became the basis on which Phoenicians structured the modern alphabetic
system.
Tracing the History of Visual Communication
▪ Indeed, visual communication has come a long way, and it is now
one of the most common forms of transmitting ideas and
information.
▪ We are bombarded with a variety of signs and symbols all around
us which makes the transfer of information readily available.
▪ In an academic context, the study of symbols and visual
communication is called semiotics.
▪ Broadly, the purpose of semiotics is to analyze how people make
meaning out of images and symbols, and how those images and
symbols are analyzed and interpreted.
Major Perspectives in Analyzing Visual Images
1. Personal Perspective
• This view posits that the analysis of an image depends on
the individual’s thoughts and values and the way he or
she looks at things using his or her lens.
2. Historical Perspective
• This perspective refers to the determination of the
importance of the work based on the medium’s timeline.
• Historical perspective may be used to support a personal
perspective, which may make it more valid.
Major Perspectives in Analyzing Visual Images
3. Technical Perspective
• This perspective takes into account how different media convey
messages differently based on the platform used.
• The analysis of the image takes into consideration its different
technical aspects like lighting, focus, tone, position, and
presentation.
4. Ethical Perspective
• This perspective considers the moral and ethical responsibilities
shared by the artist or the producer of the image, the subject, and
the viewer.
Major Perspectives in Analyzing Visual Images
5. Cultural Perspective
• This perspective brings to the fore the idea that all cultures use
symbols to communicate meanings within groups.
• It involves the analysis of metaphors and symbols used in the
work that convey meaning within a particular society at a
particular time.
6. Critical Perspective
• This perspective allows the audience to look at the larger issues
associated with the image, meaning, the issues transcend the
image and shape a reasoned personal reaction.