Communication as essential
consequential and ubiquitous human
activity
From Latin ‘communicare’ to make
common, to share.
‘A process of using messages to
generate meaning’
Source, receiver, ( Human ) The nature of the receiver
and the source are of immense importance in visual
communication. Human beings visual perception
operates according to certain given perceptual
tendencies. Understanding of visual perception helps
to discover the manner in which a visual stimulus will
impact the viewer.
Message, channel ( Media ), the media of visual
communication can influence the nature of the
message. Think of the virtual medium versus the print
medium.
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Course: Visual communication 101
Instructor: Rabia Nadir
Lahore School of Economics
Lecture 1
Articulation and Interpretation
Communication is not a thing but an event with some
specific process. It is not the utterance or the strip of
film that comprises the communication event, but rather
the fact that the sound or the strip of film is treated in a
special way. It is the way we treat the signs that makes
an event communicative, rather than the signs
themselves…..Sol Worth (filmmaker and theorist).
These icons developed by a web designer are illustrative
of the visual nature of many words associated with some
act of knowing, vision is a way of knowing and
understanding
Describe: From Latin describo (write around).
Define: From Latin definio (put limits).
Inform: from Latin informo (put into shape,
shape up).
"Paintings
as ancestral designs do not simply represent the
ancestral beings by encoding stories... As far as the Yolngo are
concerned, the designs are an integral part of the ancestral
beings themselves... The designs themselves possess or contain
the power of the ancestral being."
Power of the Visual
• Visual communication is when pictures, graphics, and other images
are used to express ideas and to teach people.
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They range from the simplified and reduced language of signs including alphabets,
pictograms etc to the confection of images and words of printed and digital media and
the one to one correspondence of the ‘real’ of the filmic image.
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For visual communication to be effective, the receiver must be able
to construct meaning from seeing the visual image.
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The study of visual perception offers considerable evidence that the world or the image is not
‘given’ as sometimes people say, but constructed. In visual perception we are not like passive
cameras, the mind engages in active interpretation of the world. A good way to understand this is
to simply compare the visual abilities of different species of animals on the planet. The visual .
ability differs in acuity, the focal distances, it is highest in birds but insects are very short –sighted.
The position of eyes also varies with animals as does the ability to distinguish colors. Reality (
visual) is different for all these creatures.
Icon — An Icon sign is a sign that resembles something,
such as photographs of people. An icon can also be illustrative or diagrammatic,
for example a ‘no-smoking’ sign.
Index — An Index signs is a sign where there is a direct link between the sign
and the object. The majority of traffic signs are Index signs as they represent information
which relates to a location (eg, a ‘slippery road surface’ sign placed
on a road which is prone to flooding)
Symbols —
A symbol has no logical meaning between it and the object.
Charles Sanders Peirce an American philosopher proposed that signs can be
divided into the above three types
Power of the Visual
‘We thrive in information thick worlds because of our marvelous
and everyday capacity to select, edit, single out, structure,
highlight, group, pair, merge, harmonize, synthesize,
focus, organize, condense, reduce, boil down, choose,
categorize, catalog, classify, list, abstract, scan, look into,
idealize, isolate, discriminate, distinguish, screen,
pigeonhole, pick over, sort, integrate, blend, inspect, filter,
lump, skip, smooth, chunk, average, approximate, cluster,
aggregate, outline, summarize, itemize, review, dip into,
flit through, browse, glance into, leaf through, skim, refine,
glean, synopsize, winnow the wheat from the chaff and
separate the sheep from the goats.’ Edward Tufte
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Course: Visual communication 101
Instructor: Rabia Nadir
Lahore School of Economics
Lecture 1
Japanese Noh Dancer
The human body is the earliest
medium of visual communication
A Tribal Dancer
Hall of Bulls at Lascaux France
Tibetan Thanka
17th century engraving to assist in memorising the
‘Digest’ of 50 books of law. Allegory, bizarre
associations and punning are used to aid memory.
El Lissitzky Self Portrait, The Constructor
Book Jacket, Graphic Design, USA 12
Edward Tufte has used the following two as examples of the sophisticated and elegant versus
the impoverished and ugly visual confection. Note the visual rhetorical devices in both pictures