What is visual communication?

- The phrase visual communication, has been used in various forms for centuries. It's been used as a catch all term to define all types of graphic and print design. Has been used as an alternative to the term propaganda, has been used to define the billboard industry, the list goes on. To ensure you get the most out of this course, it's important that we first align on what visual communication actually means. For the purposes of this course, we will consider the most popular and common definition of this phrase today. Visual communication graphically represents information to efficiently and effectively create meaning. When necessary, limited text is used to explicate that meaning. The sentiment here is simple, a given piece of visual content is truly visual communication, when the audience doesn't have to read any associated text to understand the core topic and message being conveyed. The final sentence in this definition is the most important. When necessary limited text is used to explicate the meaning. There are many elements of design that drive meaning and therefore act as forms of visual communication including icons, colors, arrows, charts, graphs, and shapes, just to name a few. Societies all over rely heavily on visual communication to drive universal understanding and action across seemingly disparate groups of people. From visual communication comes two forms of popular approaches, visual storytelling and information visualization. Visual storytelling is the most popular approach to consider. This approach uses visual communication to craft a narrative. It can be used across all visual media including infographics, motion graphics and interactive content. This approach aims to persuade the viewer to reach a specific conclusion. Information visualization aims to convey meaning from information as quickly as possible. The primary focus is to educate the viewer, not persuade him or her to form an opinion. Oftentimes data is fits perfectly into information visualization because it tends to be agnostic. Allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions when viewing it. Let's take this a step further. Consider how many times you've seen an infographic that looks like this. Well, this is a form of visual storytelling. This is not visual storytelling grounded in visual communication. This is because you have to read multiple long form text segments in the infographic to truly understand the main message and draw conclusions. You can't simply view the images and come to a basic understanding of the key points in this example. The reason it's important to understand this, is because too often brands release content that is technically visual storytelling, but rarely is it visual communication. When their content fails, they blame the content type rather than realizing that the execution of the content is the primary issue. Because it doesn't properly lead with visual communication. Today's audiences crave visual content but they want that content to speak visually. They don't want to have to read multiple lines of texts just to gain a semblance of the core topic or key takeaways. Simply put successful visual content doesn't rely on text to hook the audience. And will help them understand the core topic. Successful visual content relies on visual communication to quickly connect with a target audience and simplify complex information. So as you go through this course, remember that these examples are not proper executions of visual communication. Instead, examples like these, are far better examples of speaking visually to win your audience's attention. Now that you know this definition in more detail it's time to explain why it's so important. Understanding why, will help give you a critical eye for this type of content. Allowing you to quickly discern what successful visual communication looks like versus what might lead to a failed execution.