Lecture 13 Visual Communication

13 Visual Communication 
14th March 2012


'The rhetoric of the image'

Roland Barthes / Semiotics

• Visual communication is the layers of communication and context that shapes out understanding. It applies the properties of linguistics to images.
• Semioticians are people who study signs and unravel the meaning.
• Denotation is the level of meaning that describes something.
• Connotation is with a deeper understanding and further knowledge.
• Ideology is how values and beliefs underpin the way people in a society.

Semioticians

• Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes
• Roland Barthes, 'How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?'
• Rudolf Wittkower, interested in the way that in different times and places we use the same symbols. He believed art communicated experience, one culture picked up and transformed the images of another.
• Pierre Bourdieu, interested in peoples upbringing Due conclusion in culture by levels of communication and how people understand images.

Image Deconstruction

• The Only way is Essex.
• Denotation - group of young people sat on a guilder chair enjoying themselves.
• Connotation - different meaning for the people who know it.
• Reichstag.
• Nazi building, dome = power
• 1880's 90's it was decided to change the connotations and symbolism surrounding the building.
• Reichstag was wrapped in silk to give a new meaning. Signified a break in the past and a new future for Germany.
• According to Wikipedia
• Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon.
• The evaluation of a good visual communication design is mainly based on measuring comprehension by the audience, not on personal aesthetic and/or artistic preference as there are no universally agreed-upon principles of beauty and ugliness. Excluding two dimensional images, there are other ways to express information visually - gestures and body language, animation (digital or analogue), and film. Visual communication by e-mail, a textual medium, is commonly expressed with ASCII art, emoticons.
  
  

  

  The Eye of Horus
  The term 'visual presentation is used to refer to the actual presentation of information through a visible medium such as text or images. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically-oriented usability. Graphic designers also use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.