This document provides an overview of visual communication and its history and development. It discusses: - Visual communication involves graphically representing information through various mediums like infographics, motion graphics, etc. to efficiently create meaning. - The history of visual communication dates back over 40,000 years to cave paintings. It has evolved through ideograms, the alphabet, illuminated manuscripts, the printing press, and modern technology. - Key theories of visual communication include Gestalt theory, which proposes principles of how humans perceive visual grouping and patterns. Semiotics theory examines how signs and symbols convey meaning.

1. VISUAL
COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

2. WHAT ISVISUAL COMMUNICATION
• Visual communication is the practice of graphically representing information to
efficiently, effectively create meaning.There are many types of content in the
realm of visual communication, with examples including infographics, interactive
content, motion graphics, and more.The possibilities are endless.
• But no matter the medium, all incorporate at least some of the following
elements: interactivity, iconography, illustration, supporting text, graphs, data
visualization, and animation.
• Examples of where visual communication can be used include conferences
and trade shows, websites, social media posts, office presentations and meetings,
and so much more.
• That’s why, today, the definition of content marketing success includes visual
communication.

3. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
• The history of visual communication dates back to a time where writing was not
yet invented. It dates back to a time where history was persevered in paintings
found on rocks and in caves dating back more than 40.000 years ago.
• Fast forwarding to usage of ideograms up to the invention of the alphabet. It is
save to say that visual communication has always been a part of our existence.
• The invention of the alphabet was a beautiful time, because books were being
published and beautiful illuminated scriptures were presented as a piece of
art.We can fast forward a bit more in time and we would reach the avant-garde,
modernist and finally the computer era.

4. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
• Visual communication had changed drastically in the era of avant-garde,
modernism and postmodernism.
• In the modernism era, people became more concern with themselves and were
placing humans being above God and it was all about improving and the
reshaping the environment.
• In the Postmodernism era, people lost the sense of morality completely.There
were no more clear division between right or wrong, evil or good, no truth at all.
We life in a era whereTV Idols such a Oprah promotes humans as Gods.

5. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
1. Cave Paintings: 15 000 - 10 000 BC
• Cave paintings (also known as "Parietal Art") were the
first form of visual communication.They originate to
around 40 000 years ago.They were first mainly found
in Asia and Europe.
• To this data, researches have not been able to
determine the exact purpose of the Paleolithic cave
paintings. However, some evidence which has been
found suggests that they were not simply decorations
of living areas since the caves in which they have been
found do not have signs of ongoing human stay.

6. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
2. Pictograms, ideograms and logograms: 5000 BC
• A pictogram is a symbol or an icon that represents
various concepts, objects, places and events, or even
various activities.This is achieved through illustration.
Pictograms typically represent an idea by an image.
• An ideogram is a graphical symbol that represents an
idea, rather than a group of letters or sentences.
• A logogram is a graphene which represents a word or
morpheme.

7. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
3.The Alphabet: 2000 BC
• The first known alphabet started in ancient Egypt.The
alphabet represented the language developed by
Semitic workers.The ancient Egyptian alphabet was
not a direct guide to the basic principles of the
alphabet that had long ago been already developed.
• Most modern alphabets were either descended from
the ancient Egyptian one, or influenced in various
ways by it.

8. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
4.The Art of the Book: Medieval Europe (~AD 400 to
AD 600)
• Medieval Europe brought the introduction of books,
which were named "Illuminated Manuscripts". Simply
put, an Illuminated manuscript is a manuscript where
text is supplemented by the addition of various
decorations and illustrations.

9. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
5.The Printing Press: 1440
• 1440 brought the invention of "The Printing Press" by
Johannes Gutenberg.
• The printing press revolutionised the world of visual
communication by giving humans the ability to
reproduce text and graphics much faster and easier -
instead of having to manually reproduce things.

10. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
6.The Masters ofType: ~During the Renaissance
• Calligraphy becamse a newly developed skill as well as
of page layout and lettering aquired special
importance.
• Leonardo DaVinci's notebooks are of particular
interest to historians, not only due to the beautiful
illustrations and technical drawings but also through
their extraordinary page layouts.
• New writings required creating a new type of fonts
that were more secular, more legible, and more
elegant. Page designs were rapidly becoming lighter,
more and more white white space was making its
apperance.Thus came the first "revival wave," the first
time when font artisans looked into the past in order
to create better typefaces for the present.

11. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
7. Photography and Printing: ~Industrial Revolution
• The Industrial Revolution was the major technological,
socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th
and early 19th century.
• Printing techniques using movable type had restricted
graphic design to an inflexible grid: Anything that was
to be mass printed in great volume needed to adhere
to a system whereby type was set in consecutive rows
of parallel lines.
• Photography involves light patterns being reflected or
emitted from objects that are then recorded onto a
sensitive medium or storage chip through a timed
exposure.The first photograph was an image
produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore
Niépce.

12. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
8.Vanguard - Experimentation: 1914+
• Constructivism was an artistic and architectural
movement in Russia from 1914 onward, and a term
often used in modern art today, which dismissed
"real" art in favour of art used as an instrument for
social purposes.
• Alexander Rodchenko (1891 - 1956), was one of the
most versatile Constructivist artist/designers to
emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a
painter and graphic designer before turning to
photomontage and photography. His photography
was socially engaged, formally innovative, and
opposed to a painterly aesthetic.

13. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
9. Modernism: Late 19th Century to Early 20th
• Modernism is a trend of thought which affirms the
power of human beings to make, improve and reshape
their environment, with the aid of scientific
knowledge, technology and practical
experimentation.
• By 1930, Modernism had entered popular culture.
• Modern ideas in art appeared in commercials and
logos, the famous London Underground logo being an
early example of the need for clear, easily
recognizable and memorable visual symbols.

14. HISTORYAND DEVELOPMENT OF
VISUALS
10.The Computer: Early 21st Century - Present
• The modern day computer has revolutionised the
entire world with the new capabilities it presents.
• Modern day computers have also changed the world
of graphic design. CAD software and graphic design
software has allowed for new design possibilities, as
well as heavily simplifying the design process as well
as the editing/creation/publication process.

15. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
• Our world is full of visuals.Visuals are an essential and expected part of the digital
world too.Visual communication is communication through images and
communication of ideas and information.
• Thus the study of the theories of visual communication is an absolute must us
designers. When designers take, edit pictures or create digital images they cannot
capture the entire view in their frame.They must select a part and compose that
aesthetically to appear in the frame available to them.
• The knowledge and understanding of the theories of visual communication helps
to do this proficiently and artistically.

16. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
There are 2 types of theories in visual communication:
• SensualTheories are raw data from nerves transmitted to brain.
• GestaltTheory
• ConstructivismTheory
• EcologicalTheory
• PerceptualTheories are meanings concluded after the stimuli are received.
• SemioticsTheory
• CognitiveTheory

17. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
• Gestalt is a german word which means "unified whole".

18. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY
• In 1910, psychologist Max Wertheimer had an insight when he observed a series
of lights flashing on and off at a railroad crossing. It was similar to how the lights
encircling a movie theatre marquee flash on and off.Wertheimer’s observation
was that we perceive motion when there is nothing more than a rapid sequence of
individual sensory events such as a series of lights flashing in sequence.
• We visually and psychologically attempt to make order out of chaos, to create
harmony or structure from seemingly disconnected bits of information.
• This observation led to a set of principles about how we visually perceive objects.

19. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY –LAWS OF
GROUPING
Similarity
• Similarity refers to groupings by
number of characteristics can be similar:
colour, shape, size, texture, etc.Thud
when a viewer sees these similar
characteristics, they perceive the
elements to be related due to the
shared characteristics.

20. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY –LAWS OF
GROUPING
Continuation
• Continuance is the principle that once
you start looking in a direction, you’ll
continue to look in that direction until
something significant catches your eye.

21. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY –LAWS OF
GROUPING
Closure
• Closure occurs when an object is
incomplete or a space is not completely
enclosed. If enough of the shape is
indicated, people perceive the whole by

22. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY –LAWS OF
GROUPING
Proximity
• Proximity occurs when elements are
placed close together.They tend to be
perceived as a group.

23. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
GESTALTTHEORY –LAWS OF
GROUPING
Figure and Ground
• The eye differentiates an object form its
surrounding area. a form, silhouette, or
shape is naturally perceived as figure
(object), while the surrounding area is
perceived as ground (background).This
principle shows our perceptual
tendency to separate whole figures
from their backgrounds based on one or
more of a number of possible variables,
such as contrast, color, size, etc.

24. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
CONSTRUCTIVISM THEORY
• Julian Hochberg, a psychology professor at Columbia University found that human
eyes constantly in motion as they scan an image. He came up with the
ConstructivismTheory to explain “eye-fixations” as a way for viewers to make
sense of their own perceptions. In his experiments, Hochberg used eye tracking
machines to monitor what how the participants looked at an image. In the study,
by using graphic images, it was found that viewers found the largest picture on a
page first, and then looked the headline for the story.
• ConstructivismTheory helps to understand exactly how certain visual cues are
noticed and how others are not noticed.

25. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
ECOLOGICAL THEORY
• This theory was founded by James J. Gibson, an American psychologist. Gibson
challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual
perception and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind
directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction
or processing.
• Gibson developed what he called an “ecological approach” to the study of visual
perception, according to which humans perceive their environments directly,
without mediation by cognitive processes or by mental entities such as sense-
data.This idea was radical because it contradicted a centuries-old model of the
origins of human knowledge. As Gibson himself put it, “The old idea that sensory
inputs are converted into perceptions by operations of the mind is rejected.”

26. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
• We interpret what we see through spatial properties in the environment: Surface
layout, composition, lighting, motion, gradation, shape, size, solidity and scale.
• Light is the way it reveals the three dimensionality of objects and scale, the way
objects diminish as they recede from us are the two most important properties
that we use to interpret space.
• Many perceptions about size and depth require no “mental calculation”

27. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
SEMIOTICS THEORY
• It is based on “semiosis,” the relationship between a sign, an object, and a
meaning. Signs is simply anything that stands for something else.There are 3
types of signs with different speeds of comprehension:
• Iconic –some form similarity between signs and object it represents. Easiest to
understand.
• Indexical –harder to interpret than icons, but still a logical connection to the thing
they represent. Examples: footprint, smoke, fingerprints, crumbs

28. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
• Symbolic –most abstract; no logical or representational connection to the thing
they represent. Examples: letters, words, numbers, colors, gestures, flags,
costumes, music etc.They are the most flexible and involve manipulation of
universally understood signs.
• Semiotics emphasize the importance of symbolism in the visual perception and
communication.

29. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
COGNITIVE THEORY
• Cognitive theory suggests that perception is not just the result of visual stimuli,
but involves a series of mental processes in which we compare what we see to our
memories and use those to interpret and analyse.
• In other words, we understand what we’re looking at most easily by comparing it
to what we’re familiar with. We are constantly on the lookout for things with which
we’re familiar.
• So we see, for example, faces in inanimate objects simply because some features
look vaguely like eyes and a mouth, such as the man in the moon.

30. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
COGNITIVETHEORY

31. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
COMPOSITIONAL THEORIES
The Golden Ratio
• The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio that describes the perfectly symmetrical
relationship between two proportions. Approximately equal to a 1:1.61 ratio, the
Golden Ratio can be illustrated using a Golden Rectangle and is used to create
pleasing, natural looking compositions in any design work.
• The Renaissance artists of 15th and 16th Centuries used divine proportion to
create their paintings, architecture or sculptures.

32. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
The Golden Ratio

33. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
COMPOSITIONAL THEORIES
The Rule ofThirds
• The rule of thirds is one of the most useful composition technique to produce
images which are more engaging and better balanced.The rule of thirds is applied
by aligning a subject with the guide lines and their intersection points, placing the
horizon on the top or bottom line or allowing linear features in the image to flow
from section to section.
• The idea is that an off-centre composition is more pleasing to the eye and looks
more natural than one where the subject is placed right in the middle of the frame.
It also encourages to make creative use of negative space, the

34. VISUAL COMMUNIATIONTHEORIES
• The Rule ofThirds

35. Assessment task 1
• List all the theory we learn today
THE END