1. Visual
communication:
An introduction to some theories
and principles

2. •Hand prints on cave walls
(the pigments are the ink)

3. •Drawings of man and animals
of the time, 50,000 years ago.

5. • Pictographs of activities on
vases and ceremonial items
• Phoenicians, Chinese
symbols/pictures
–Symbolic communication-
symbols for sounds agreed
upon by users.

6. Iconic communication easy to
learn

7. Letter communication not
so easy, because there
has to be an agreed-
upon symbols system
Lion =

9. • People had to learn text,
written (linear)
communication
• Rose to high levels of
knowledge:
•books, literature
•plays
•plans, notes

11. • Picture communication
(picture symbolism) was set
aside as "primitive" or less
accurate

12. More effective?

13. Symbol Systems
• Semiotic theory
• Signifier (black marble) + signfied (in
the culture of fraternities, “I’m kicked
out!”)=sign, to be “black-balled”
– Denotation
– Connotation

20. Gestalt Theory
• From the Bauhaus design movement
• Gestalt is German for “whole”
• “A design’s unity is more than the
simple addition of its parts”
• The relationship of the parts to the
whole

21. • Classic gestalt image: which is the
foreground? Which is the background?