Visual Literacy
"Visual expression is the product of highly complex intelligence, of which we have pitifully little understanding. What you see is a major part of what you know, and visual literacy can help us to see what we see and know what we know." (Dondis, 1973, p.19). Images such as photographs and drawings have been a part of printed educational materials including textbooks for years. The combination of words and images has proven to be a useful way to teach content and illustrate the topics being addressed.
According to Lester (1994), text supplemented by images is one of the most powerful communication strategies used in the media. When both are equally expressive and obviously related to one another, words and visuals merge to offer a doubly powerful psychological tools. "The words that are associated with a picture and the pictures that accompany words should never be chosen casually. Both symbolic systems have enormous impact upon the reader" (Lester, 1994, p. 6).
Dondis (1973) pointed out that language and the written word has long held a unique place in society. It has functioned as a way to store and transfer information, as a way to exchange ideas and a vehicle for conceptualization. "Writing's great limitation grows out of its great strength: its abstractness. It is a system of representation, or code, that represents another system of representation, another code: spoken language" (Stephens, 1998, p. 63).
The addition of carefully chosen images adds new impetus to the impact of written materials. Dondis (1973) further emphasized that choosing the images knowledgeably depended on the level of visual literacy. Visual literacy does not imply a visual "language" but rather an ability to judiciously use images to convey particular content and meaning.
An attempt to create such a language is evident in the study of semiotics, the study of systems of signs (Stephens, 1998; Lester, 1994). The theory purports that images are a collection of signs that viewers cognitively link together in some meaningful way. The study of semiotics has been divided into three related areas: pragmatics, semantics and syntactics (Lester, 1994). Pragmatics looks at the origin and common uses of signs as well as their communicative effects. Semantics is the study of the significance of signs within various cultures. Syntactics looks at how signs combine to form complex visual messages.
Lester (1994) described three foundational tenets in syntactic theory that illustrate how images and visual cues operate within the communicative process and enhance visual literacy. The first tenet is the notion that mediated words and images are equally important. As well, both are symbolic representations of the intended content. His final tenet pointed out that images are remembered by thinking about them in words. Viewers perceive visual signs and internally related them to memorized personal and cultural experiences. "Signs have no meaning outside of their context. Visual and verbal thoughts combine to create the context that links signs together" (Lester, 1994, p. 9).
Berger (1989) elaborated by describing condensation, the process through which people combine elements of various signs together to form a new composite sign. She also described displacement, the process of transferring meaning from one sign or symbol to another, such as a rifle could represent a phallic symbol. An image is a collection of signs and symbols, presented as a tangible representation, with many different levels of meaning.
Narrative in verbal or written language tends to be linear and discursive. Images, on the other hand are presentational, representational and fluid. Images provide visual reinforcement, often providing direct and realistic information. As Dondis surmised, "Seeing is a direct experience and the use of visual data to report information is the closest we can get to the true nature of the reality" (1973, p. 2). Words and images together provide a useful and effective combined mode to present both abstract and concrete content to the viewer/reader.
Stephens predicted that the new visual culture that continues to grow will provide a new role for words. He pointed out that up until now images have been used to illuminate clear and precise words or text. He predicted that a reversal will take place in the future. "Narration and text now serve as handmaidens to images" (1998, p. 190). Words that serve images are often not presented in complete sentences. Rather they tend to be captions or phrases that are colourful, playful yet concise. He also predicted a resurgence in the use of visual icon codes, symbols that are offspring of computer graphics which "likely will be less abstract and more visual than the letters of our alphabet, more like earlier systems of writing, such as hieroglyphic" (p. 192).
Hoffman (1998) described the phenomenal sense of vision as "the way you visually experience things" (p. 6). He also described the relational sense as "what you interact with when you look" - what people see relationally must actually exist in outer reality while phenomenal sight can include internal visuals which only the viewer can see as well as the internal constructions of what is viewed in the external world. Both modes of vision occur unconsciously and automatically, constructed through a multiplicity of steps or stages. As Berger mused, "We must learn to select from all the information that is available to us and, in a sense, construct the world we see" (1989, p. 20). Dondis elaborated, "visual data has three distinctive and individual levels: the visual input, which consists of myriad symbol systems; the representational visual material we recognize in the environment and can replicate in drawing, painting, sculpture and film; and the abstract understructure, the form of everything we see, whether natural or composed for intended effects." (1973, p. 13).
Important compositional elements and principles work together to form the essence of all visual communication. These include the dot, the line, the shape, volume, scale, spatiality, balance, direction, lighting, colour, perspective, movement, dynamics, texture, tone, unity and proportion (Berger, 1989; Dondis, 1973; Arnheim, 1974; Solso, 1994; Gatto, Porter & Selleck, 1987).
"The tool box of all visual communications is the basic elements, the compositional source, for all kinds of visual materials and messages and objects and experiences:
- the dot,the minimal visual unit, pointer, marker of space;
- the line, the fluid, restless articulator of form, in the probing looseness of the sketch and the tighter technical plan;
- shape, the basic shapes, circle, square, triangle, and all their endless variations, combinations, permutations, planal and dimensional;
- direction, the thrust of movement that incorporates and reflects the character of the basic shapes, circular, diagonal, perpendicular;
- tone, the presence or absence of light, by which we see;
- colour, the co-ordinate of tone with the added component of chroma, the most emotional and expressive visual element;
- texture, optical or tactile, the surface character of visual materials;
- scale or proportion, the relative size and measurement;
- dimension and motion, both as frequently implied as expressed."
(Dondis, 1973, p.15).
Dondis went further to declare that of all the visual elements and techniques available, contrast controls the conveyance of the visual message. He explored how contrast has the capacity to unbalance, shock, stimulate and arrest the viewer's attention. Contrast is a strategy to control visual effects and their meaning. It is simultaneously a tool, a technique and concept. For instance, we can understand the concept of smooth better if we juxtapose it with the concept of rough. "As a visual strategy to sharpen meaning, contrast not only can excite and attract the attention of the viewer, but it can also dramatize that meaning to make it more important, more dynamic. If, for instance, you want something to look clearly large, put something small next to it. That is contrast, an organization of the visual stimuli toward an intense effect." (Dondis, 1973, p.94).
Tufte (1990) added that the visual activation of negative areas through white space illustrated the endlessly contextual and interactive nature of visual elements. For instance, if two black lines are drawn across an image, a third while line forms between them. Designers need to be aware of this effect to avoid confusion and clutter and to utilize the white space in a balanced way.
Dondis stressed the importance of applying the compositional techniques in a skillful way in the production of images. Techniques such as balance through symmetrical and asymmetrical principles are significant in producing images that convey the message intended. As well, the perception of colour offers a very strong emotional component to the visual process. Colour has a lot of power within the image, often utilized to express and reinforce the visual information. Colour has three dimensions: the chroma or hue, saturation and the brightness of tonal gradations. All of the elements work together to reflect the creator's chosen style for presentation. Style is the visual synthesis of the elements, techniques, syntax, inspiration, expression and basic purpose, a useful tool for description and classification. (Dondis, 1973; Poynor, 1998).
Judgements of what is workable, appropriate, effective in visual communication are often abandoned to whim, taste, or to the subjective, self-reflexive evaluation of the sender or receiver with little attempt to recognize some of the prescribed levels we expect of what we call literacy in the verbal mode. Artists and designers who recognize the elements and how they work together in the visual process will more likely elicit the type of meaning response they intended to cultivate in their viewers (Elkins, 2000). For instance, Dondis points out that "the eye favors the left-hand and lower area of any visual field. This means that there is a primary scanning pattern of the field that responds to the vertical-horizontal referents and a secondary scanning pattern that responds to the left lower perceptual pull." (1973, p.29). This tendency can guide artists to focus art and graphics into certain sectors of the field to take advantage of this natural scanning process.
No matter what the context, visual messages are often composed with purpose: to tell, express, describe, direct, explain, affect, or to inspire. Designers use composition interpretatively to elicit reinterpretation by those who experience their visual work.
Dondis (1973) explained that the end result of visual experience occurs in the interaction of duplex polarities:"first, the forces of content (message and meaning) and form (design, medium and arrangement); and second, the effect on each other of the articulator (designer, artist, craftsman) and the receiver (audience). In either case, one can not be separated from the other. Form is affected by content; content is affected by form." (p.104).
References
Arnheim, R. (1974). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye.
Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Berger, A. A. (1989). Seeing is believing: An introduction to visual communication.
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing.
Dondis, D. A. (1973). A primer of visual literacy. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press.
Elkins, J. (2000). How to use your eyes. New York: Routledge.
Gatto, J. A., Porter, A. W. & Selleck, J. (1987). Exploring visual design. 2nd ed.
Worcester, MA: Davis, Publications, Inc.
Hoffman, D. D. (1998). Visual intelligence: How we create what we see. New York:
W. W. Norton & Co.
Lester, P. N. (1994). Syntactic theory of visual communication, part 1. Retrieved
September 14, 2002 from
http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/viscomtheory.html
Poynor, R. (1998).Design without boundaries: Visual communication in transition.
London, UK: Booth-Clibborn.
Solso, R. L. (1994). Cognition and the visual arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stephens, M. (1998). The rise of the image the fall of the word. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Tufte, E. R. (1997). Visual explanations: Images and quantities, evidence and narrative.
Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
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