So what is visual communication? Well it is a
non-verbal form of interaction between a couple to a large number of people
that relies entirely on vision. Visual communication communicates and conveys
its ideas and messages directly to our visual senses. It comes in forms where
it is seen i.e. signposts, typography, illustrations, drawings, Advertising,
animation, Industrial design etc. It is imagery used to persuade, inform,
enlighten and even entertain; an array of audiences. Art directors, visual
communicators & artists, graphics designers, photographer, illustrators,
web designers all utilize the idea and concept of visual communication, using
different media forms to communicate their specific idea and message to their
targeted audience. This essay will analyse and exploit how visual communication
is affecting us as audience on a daily basis, and how we have become so immune
to visual messages that in some situations we are exposed to subliminal
messages without even realising it.
Visual communication has evolved over time and changed
the way we communicate, process understand information. Psychologists, show
that to process information both the Short term memory (STM) and the long term
memory (LTM) are used. When we process textual forms of information they are stored
in our short term memory, however to remember this information the text should
be associated with the correct visuals to be able to retain this information
and store it in the long term memory. Dr Lynell Burmark an educational
consultant has stated in his research that “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are
hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go
out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can
only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2). This is why, by the
way, that we have 7-digit phone numbers. Images, on the other hand, go directly
into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.” Supporting Dr. Lynell Burmark theory it
clearly states that visuals play a huge role in everyone’s life to be able to
understand and remember information we associate words with text as the human
brain is able to adapt, process and interpretate images 60,000 times
faster than text. To support this statement Active learning studies, show that
after when presenting to a group of people a presentation verbally, just after
3 days only 10/20% were able to recall the information, compared to 65% of
people who were given the presentation both visually and verbally.
Images transmit messages much faster than type, as our
eyes can register and are exposed to over 36,000 graphical messages per hour. Media
theorist, John Berger states that “People think using pictures”, this form of communication
begins right from our early life stage when we’re a baby. For a baby to
understand and communicate verbally it is firstly exposed to visual
communication, where images are associated with words do develop a recognisable
connection and form a language. He further states that “Seeing
comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” Visual Communication has
affected us way before we could even understand it, It’s the first form of
communication anyone is ever exposed to. We as adults still use this form of
communication using images to explain and send out messages. An example of this
would be communicating with someone who has a different language to you, there
is a language barrier and therefore verbal communication is not effective so
they rely on the use of images and communicate visually. Symbolism and signage
is another form of visual communication which is used by everyone at this very
day and age, a language understood by people of all verbal languages, a
recognizable image communicating important messages without and text. However, on
the other hand Gestalt theory of perception states that ‘we
“see” or make sense of the world around us through the interaction of
sensations from our eyes, brain, and memory’. Gestalt believes that it takes more than
just our sight to understand a specific visual one must be able to associate
the visual with their personal feelings and experiences creating a perceptive
thought in the mind helping them to decode and understand the visual. This
supports the idea of learning as when we first begin to learn words we
associate each letter, each word with a picture for us to understand what the
letter or word stands for. We not only use our sight but use our memory and
experience to associate the words with visuals and visuals with the text. So if
someone was to describe a particular object we automatically use our memory
from our previous interactions with the object to create an intellectual image
in our minds.
To support John Berger, Dr. Paul Martin Lester states
in the syntactic theory of visual communication ‘for many understanding the world is
being accomplished not through reading words but by reading images’,
living in a media developing era Images are more in demand dominating all forms
of media communication with little use of words as images require less intellectual
processing making them much easier to understand and process than text. This
form of communication demand has now increased as it is used all over the mass
media. Designers convey important messages using visual communication
controlling design, colour, size, scale, movement signs and symbols. It has
increased and dominated social communication in huge amounts that people are
starting to see it as a threat. ‘Philosopher Hanno Hardt warns that the television
culture is replacing words as the important factor in social communication’ this
can be seen a disadvantage as people as people will be limited of education
passed down through text, limiting them of knowledge. In the other this can be
viewed as a form of empowerment, how visual communication is becoming the dominating
form of communication for it to question the existence of words shows how the
human mind would rather learn the easiest and simple way possible. This
way of learning and educating can in one way harm the future education system
of reading as there are ‘too many pictures and not enough words’, people
aren’t so interested in text as it requires time and effort to process the
information which they therefore repress whereas images are more interesting
eye-catching easily understandable requiring little time and effort. To
disagree with this threat American statistics, show the rise in reading books
according to Gallup poll ‘in 1957, less than 25% of Americans were reading a book or a novel’,’ By 2005, that
figure had risen to 47%. This means one if every two Americans are actively
reading a book. Half of Americans also said they have read more than five books
this past year’. This poll provides facts that the increase in reading
had increased 22% in a period of 48 years showing over the years the demand in
books is increasing contradicting the threat posed by visual communication.
Nevertheless, this poll is now 11 years’ old which means the percentage has
most definitely changed with the rise of the social and visual communication
affecting these numbers drastically. A most recent survey carried out
supports the idea of threat to text i.e. books, ‘The YouGov survey was carried out on a sample of 2,059
adults in January. Shortness of time for reading was a problem for 29% of
respondents, 40% preferred to do something else and 26% said they "didn't enjoy
reading very much".’ This supports the argument of how
people have become more socially involved into other activities and pay not
much attention to reading as it requires more effort. This shows how people are
becoming more inactive risking their knowledge to be very limited, creating a
negative effect on the education system. This could result into a higher
percentage of illiterates or people who are having difficulties to read and
process information, endangering the future of communication. To improve on
theses statistics and to make things better e-books and digital books were
invented to encourage more people to read using the help of technology.
Furthermore, to support Gestalt’s theory of emotion
playing a role studies show that visuals along with emotions have a huge impact
on our ability in making decisions. Studies show that we value appearance more
than any other factors a product has to offer as ‘KissMetric revealed in its survey that 93% of people
surveyed responded to visual appearance when choosing a new product’, ‘88% of
surveyed place color as the primary reason when they are looking to buy a
particular product’. This study shows that people like what they see, the
visual appearance and colour of something is much more appealing and fascinating
than the product purpose itself, we view the design as the main aspect to a product
and base are liking entirely on that one factor. Don Norman author and director
helps us to understand why and how we value visual appearance more as he states
‘emotion and cognition
play two different roles in the apprehension of the world. Emotion makes us
judging the world whereas cognition helps us to understand it.’ These
two work together side by side affecting our judgment on the environment
surroundings then resulting in us to choose the most visually attractive
product over the less visually attractive product. To support Don Norman’s
statement Herbert A. Simon who won a Nobel prize award for his work agrees and
has shown ‘that are decisions
are based on intuitive judgment and emotions’. As the information
that a person receives is either half complete or biased affecting their
ability to make rational decisions. Du to these complications in their decision
making process to a person has to then depend entirely on their emotions. ‘As visual communication affects our
emotion, it affects our decisions’. These hypotheses clearly show that
visual communication plays a huge role in our everyday lives affects our
ability to be able to process and output information but not only to receive
messages through visual images but we are controlled by visuals as it affects
our ability to function. Additional study to support this hypothesis is a study
conducted by Stanford Persuasive Lab, ‘they asked 2,440 participants to evaluate the credibility of a website an
46.1% declared that the design of a website was the first criteria they chose
to make their opinion about it’. The famous saying ‘don’t judge a
book by it’s cover’ applies to this very result people were judging the
credibility of a website based entirely on how it visually appealed failing to
acknowledge the other aspects to the website i.e. the contents. Which shows
that the first thing people notice and pay the most attention to is the visual
appearance to which they then base their entire judgment on that. This reality
not only occurs for a website but for basically everything from books, clothes,
makeup to even life partners! Robin and Holmes (2008) study has ‘shown that this opinion based on the
website appearance is approximately made in 3.42 seconds’.
Wow that is an extremely short time to base an entire judgment on. But it’s
true which is why people say that first expressions really count as the first
time you see something or someone you base your entire judgment on that. These
studies have proved it countless times that visual appearance has a huge impact
and is the dominating tool used to gain the outcomes of everyone’s decisions
To
conclude, this essay has exploited just a few points of how visual
communication affects us on a psychological, cognitive physical and mental
levels. It affects the way we send, receive, interpretate communicate several different
messages, helping us to retain and store Information. As technology is
advancing we rely more and more on visual communication. The former CEO of of
Apple Computers, John Sculley articulates, ‘We live in a visually
intensive society’, that now the world has become dependent on the use of visuals to
function. The use of visual communication has expanded and taken over mass media
becoming more advanced by the day, allowing us to be able to do more than what
we were yesterday. Visual communication plays a huge role in the developing of
our countries as ‘Pictures have never been so powerful’, giving them the dominating
power of each and every aspect in our life. It has affects us and how our body
develops, through our learning process we learn through visual communication
exposed to several different semiotics around us. Our brain is exposed to
visual communication more than we are aware of it taking in so many coded
messages allowing our body to react. The visuals allow us to strengthen
information and retain this into our memory which helps us in our everyday life
i.e. exams, traffic signs, and normal day activities allowing us to recognize
every single object that surrounds us as we associate every word with an
image.