VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Visual Communication

Visual Communication

Introduction

Visual literacy is the reading, understanding and writing of the visual related texts. A text is anything with which we make meaning. Books, websites, videos, even smiles and gestures can be considered of as texts (Monroe, 2004).

A visual text makes its meanings with images, or with meaningful patterns and sequences.

For demonstration, a diagram values images, while a flow chart plans data in significant sequences. Visual texts variety from design drawings to documentaries. They can be published (such as an atlas) or electronic (such as a DVD). They can be fiction (such as a movie) or nonfiction (such as a street map). Visual messages are everywhere: on road indications, in publications, on TV report and packaging. Even the structures we live and the apparel we wear express visual messages (Prensky, 2001).

Visual communication involves the transmission of information through the visual sensory system, or the eyes and sense of sight. In surveys, visual communication relies heavily on verbal communication (i.e. written text) but can also include nonverbal communication (i.e. through images conveying body language, gestures, or facial expressions) and paralinguistic communication (i.e. through graphical language). Visual communication can be used to transmit information independently or in combination with aural communication. When conducting surveys, the mode of data collection determines whether information can be transmitted visually, aurally, or both. Whether survey information is transmitted visually or aurally influences how respondents first perceive and then cognitively process information to provide their responses.

Visual communication can consist of not only verbal communication but also nonverbal and paralinguistic forms of communication, which convey additional information that reinforces or modifies the meaning of written text. Nonverbal communication (i.e. information transferred through body language, gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions) is most common in face-to-face surveys but can also be conveyed with graphic images in paper and Web surveys. Paralinguistic communication is traditionally thought of as information transmitted aurally through the speaker's voice (e.g., quality, tone, pitch, inflection). However, recent literature suggests that graphical features, such as layout, spacing, font size, typeface, color, and symbols, that accompany written verbal communication can serve the same functions as aural paralinguistic communication. That is, these graphical features and images, if perceived and cognitively processed, can enhance or modify the meaning of written text in paper and Web surveys.

The process of perceiving visual information can be divided into two broad and overlapping stages: pre-attentive and attentive processing. ...