Itba_Kauser: Year 2 Theory as Practise

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.

In a pair we chose a brief in where we had 30 minutes to come up ideas and a final concept. Having our brief as cities & Puzzles in which we had to make a game and showcase our ideas on a wall we came up with the obvious Ideas of having some sort of a puzzled game about cities.
some of our Ideas we came up with:
- Large 3D square picturesque puzzle of the wall of a image of the city in which the person had to play in order to figure out which city it is
- Massive 3D jigsaw on the wall
- Digital interactive game where your in control and find yourself on a map and you find you way around
- Cities with the wrong landmarks for the player to solve the puzzle and locate the correct landmarks with the correct city

We decided to go with the large picturesque game and play with the rules e.g. timing or movement restrictions to make the play of the game interesting we could limit the player with 3 minutes and after the time's over the picturesque moves to jumble up the picture again.

However after some group discussion we felt it was to simple and straightforward ideas we wanted to create something with more depth and thought.

We then came across a idea of having a app for people who were lost to find their way back or locate themselves so they have a idea of where they are. We called the app 'Puzzled', We have pinpoints like codes engraved on the sides of building or any source of object in the different areas around the city e.g. sides of buildings, trees, walls etc.. These pinpoints are located on the map of the app which then locates both the person and these pinpoints on the app in which the person has to 'play' some sort of a puzzle game to get to the nearest pinpoint. At the pinpoint will be a code in which the person then enters the code into the app for the app to inform the person about the place nearest transport, hotels, Restaurant's etc...

This short exercise helped me to improve my skills in working in a short scale time under pressure to meet a deadline. This shows me and motivates me to say I could always complete my work set to a certain deadline. It also helped and boost my confidence skills and the skills which I acquired in tackling any brief.