Visual Communication in Business - Essay Example

Running head: VISUAL LITERACY IN BUSINESS Visual literacy in business In APA style By ---------------------- ---------------- University Abstract Visual communication is an every day business. But when it comes to visual communication in business, it turns out to be an intentionally intelligent process. As all intelligent processes demand literacy, visual communication in business demands precise knowledge of the tools of communication to be used. One must also be clear about what one is to communicate and to whom one is to communicate with. This paper deals only with three approaches or tools of visual communication. ---1) Images and color 2) signs and meanings 3) graphics as information and representation. The impact of the communication process on the audience/ consumer/client depends on how interestingly the ideas are communicated as visual experience.That poses the challenge to the communicator. Visual communication is an ordinary business, as Arthur Berger points out (Seeing is believing: An Introduction to Visual Communication --- Arthur Asa Berger, page 30). All living things communicate; they communicate visually too, without being aware of what they are doing. Thus a dog waging its tail is communicating. So also is a plant slanting to the sun light. A new born baby crying is trying to communicate, telling us either that it is hungry or that it is unwell. A smile, a wink, the hair style or the style of the dress are all means of communication. Even silence or lack of response is a mean of communication, “aggressive passivity" as it is called. But when it comes to visual communication in business, the process becomes more intentionally intelligent. Any intelligent process demands literacy. Thus the knowledge about one’s tools becomes essential for visual literacy in business. WHAT TO COMMUNICATE: The communicator should have a clear idea about what is it that he wants to communicate. One is not there to sell a product. That is the salesman’s job. One is there to sell an idea, as an experience. One is doing it, may be for some company. Then one must be able to identify the brand identity of the company and then convert it into an idea and finally into an experience.Begining with the design of the logo to the literature programme, web site and advertising are all a continuous process of laying a strong visual foundation for the identity of the company. At every stage of this process, one has to be ultra careful not to give out cross messages and confusing signals to the clients. For that one must be clear about what idea one is toying with. This clarity is achieved only through thorough research and interaction with the company executives. WHO TO COMMUNICATE WITH: The second stage of preparation or pre production is to understand the nature of the clients or the consumers with whom one has to communicate. The messages we send may not get “read”, the way we want them to be read. The consumer or the clients read these messages in a social context. There are studies that point out the differences in different cultures, in perceiving the visual realities. In the Western culture, for example, people tend to focus attention on the objects seen and care less for the the spaces in between these objects. But in Japanese culture, the spaces in between are equally important. These spaces are perceived, named and even revered as “intervening intervals”. Thus the social context and the way reality is perceived are different in different cultures. Unless one is sure of the social context of the consumers / clients, one is at the risk of getting misread, and misunderstood. Herbert Gans, a sociologist working on popular culture, points out that there are so many “taste cultures”, as he calls them, in the society. The “taste cultures” depend on people’s income, occupation, and education. According to Gans, there are five “taste cultures” in America. “I suggest that America is actually made up of a number of taste cultures, each with its own art, literature, music, and so forth, which differ mainly in that they express different aesthetic standards” (Herbert Gans --- Popular Culture and High Culture: An Evaluation of Taste --1974: x—quoted by Arthur Berger in “Seeing is Believing” ). Gans classifies these cultures thus: high culture, upper middle class culture, lower-middle class culture, low culture and quasi-folk culture. According to Gans, dominant taste culture in America is the lower middle class one. The fact that such taste groups can be found in other societies makes the social context of the consumer/client very complex. So knowing your reader or viewer is very important, before you start communicating with him/her, because the style of your communication depends on, or is rather dictated by his/her taste culture. TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION: Knowing the tools of communication is the third stage of awareness that helps to make the communication skills sharper and the communication effective. Before going into the real tools, one must be aware of the biological process by which we see and understand the world outside. When we look at something, there happen two tiny upside-down distorted images inside our eye balls. But what we finally see is a vivid three dimensional view of the things we are looking at. The process that happens in between the first upside-down image in the retina to the three dimensional world we finally see, is very complex. The exciting photo receptors of the retina transmit the “photo information" to the brain, through the optic nerves. In our bicameral brain, the informations are processed. According to V.S Ramachandran, the eminent neuro-scientist, “we primates are highly visual creatures. We have not just one visual area, the visual cortex, but thirty areas in the back of our brains which enable us to see the world” (Believing is seeing --- The Emerging Mind --- V .S. Ramachandran, page 28) .Thus in the brain, different areas are specialized in different functions. If one area is specialized in processing the color information or seeing the color, another area is specialized in seeing the motion. It is this entire complex processing that gives us the experience of seeing the three dimensional world in front of us. Thus, though we see through our eyes, we understand what we see through the brain. The meaning of what we see is generated in the brain. There are different approaches or tools for visual communication. But this paper will deal with only three approaches or tools 1) Images and color 2) Signs and meanings 3) graphics as information and representation. IMAGES: Image is the most preliminary element that makes sense in visual communication. It is not one image, but a bunch of images that create the so called visual experience in the viewer. Every single image is a representation of that total experience. For example, take the close up of the hands on the dial of a clock. This close up evokes lots of associations. If the hands on the dial show 5 P M, lot many pictures of the mood of that time come to our mind. Tea time for some , end of the day’s work for others , the rush hour in the subway ,the crowd in the street, closing time for some shops perhaps, and even the peculiar late evening light. So it is not one image, but a lot of associated images and colors that evoke a particular experience. A work of art, understood dynamically, is just this process of arranging images in the feelings and mind of the spectator. The color tone of the images helps to create the mood of the experience. Color tones are emotional tones. The mood created and the message send by dark and dull colors are different from that created and send by bright primary colors. To achieve correct emotional tone in the visual experience, one must be able to choose the correct color tone too. SIGNS AND MEANINGS: Every image carries a lot of signs. It is these signs that generate meanings to the images. The science of signs, called semiotics, categorizes these signs primarily into three, namely iconic, indexical and symbolic. Man discovered the mirror to look at his own image. Every human being carries an image of oneself for the outer world, a “being for others”. He decorates himself with lots of signs to create this image of himself for the consumption of the world outside. Thus ones hairstyle to the dress, body language to the tone of speech, all become signs that convey the meaning of the image of the self. In a work of art too, donning the images with meaningful signs is important, to convey the message one wants to convey. The signs to the image are what the packaging is to a product in the supermarket. Meaningful signs sell the image better. GRAPHICS: Graphic elements are primarily meant to provide information (“info graphics”). But in visual communication the graphics can be treated as visual representations as well. Every syllable or a letter, when written, is an image. And reading is the process of decoding these images into meanings. One is not able to read an unknown foreign language because, one is unable to decode the written letters and syllables. This image like quality of the syllables and letters can be exploited excitingly, with the aid of modern computer graphic technologies like animation, posterization Ect. Thus the graphics, in addition to providing information, can also make the work of art visually vibrant. Graphics used imaginatively, would give extra energy to the work of art. IMPACT: “Infotainment” is the key word when it comes to visual communication in business. The communicator or the artist may have to deal with dry facts or dull ideas. Converting these dry facts/dull ideas into an interesting, entertaining experience is the challenge. Remember: none listens to an uninteresting story nor pays attention to an idea that is presented in a non-entertaining and non-engaging style. And here lies the challenge. ============== SOURCES: 1) Berger Asa Arthur --- Seeing is Believing ( Paper back publisher: McGraw Humanities/ Social Sciences / languages , 2007 ) 2) Ramachandran V. S. ----The Emerging mind ---The Reith Lectures 2003 , for BBC (Published by The BBC in association with Profile Books Ltd.London, 2007) ================================================ Read More