Tell Me More

The Introduction and Chapter one provided interesting background and theory on visual communication. One thing I noticed was that the authors would make statements that would make strong assertions but then never explain or go in depth about them. I am interested to see if the book continues this or explains those assertions.

So this blog post consists of some the assertions and my thoughts on them.

1. "Not being 'visually literate' will begin to attract social sanctions" (3). -What do they mean by 'social sanctions?'
2. 'Visual literacy' will begin to be a matter of survival, especially in the workplace" (3). - What is this based one? I want to read more about this but this sentence comes at the end of the paragraph.
3. "Within Western visual design, however, we believe that our theory applies to all forms of visual communication" (4). - this seems very generalized and it sounds like they found a culture to fit their theory instead of vice versa.
4. "Perspective is unique to images" (19)-- Why is it unique? I would like a little more explanation.
5. "Language in its spoken form is a natural phenomenon, common to all human groups" (21).- This is a poor word choice. A phenomenon and common? I understand what they are saying but a different word like - occurrence would have conveyed the message better.

Science and Globalization Chapters

I think the authors of the book took the last two chapters to bring in ideas that are not necessarily related to visal communication. It seems as though they are advocating the stance that everything in culture is intertwined and connected. Some parts of the chapters appeared to have nothing to do with visual communication until the authors would tack on a sentence at the end of the paragraph connecting it all. It seems as though they were trying to say that visual and culture go hand-in-hand and that you can't have one with out the other. The end of chapter 9 is says, "Similarly, as we have shown, scientific images have cultural meanings that govern not only how they are produced and for what purpose but also how they are interpreted and gain cultural value" (384). The things we see affect the culture and social constructions that we participate in.

For example-

We see this bumper sticker and associate it with elections, a cultural influence-




This is car symbol is part of the 'going-green' cultural wave-

This American Eagle symbol on a shirt identifies a person as part of the American Eagle culture-

The Wikipedia not only a place to look up culture but creates it as well.





One of my personal favorites-

Not in Your Face

I inserted pictures that give me ideas of what I could do for my digital remix. I think I have decided to create pictures that convey my topic, fear, in a subtle way. I want to take normal scenes and add some element of fear to them.








This last picture is the effect that I will be trying to achieve with my digital remix.

Final Avatar

Visuals and Advertising

On Monday we had an STC meeting. The speaker was Bobby Rettew a MAPC graduate. He had a lot of great things to say but one of the things that resonated with me was his point about technology. He said he hasn’t use Dreamweaver and InDesign in a long time. He has self taught himself on all the software that he currently uses. In Visual Communication we all thought that learning the programs would be the most important part of the class. It has been commented in class that the most crucial thing to learn is the concepts and the theories about visuals. Software and programs come and go, technology advances, and learning a specific program is not what makes a person successful at what they do. Having a MAPC graduate who is successful and in the industry helps to reinforce these ideas.


Of course the other big thing this week was the Superbowl, which goes along great with chapter seven. Chapter seven states that ads make promises, show how life could be, point out inadequacies and promote a certain cultural ideal.

The commercials were great and here are a few of my favorites-

Monster.com - points out an inadequacies




Bridgestone-makes a promise




Doritos -cultural ideals