Visual Communication: Models, Color Psychology, and Semiotics
Communication Models
Aristotle: Speaker → Message → Listener
Lasswell: Communication + Message + Medium + Audience = Impact
Shannon & Weaver: Information Source → Transmitter → Channel (Noise) → Receiver → Destination
Schramm’s: Encoder/Interpreter/Decoder → Message → D/I/E → Message…
Berlo’s: Source → (E) Message → Channel → (D) Receiver
Proposed: Sender; /\ Life Experience; Message; Noise; X Life Experience; Receiver, Amplified, Accepted; Rejected
Theoretical Foundation: Psychology, Theory of Meaning, VC/Philosophy, Aesthetics, References, Education…
Field: Cultural Context, Message Production, Message Reception, Practice
Visual Communication
What is Visual Communication? Target group to transfer emotional message; if nonverbal language; content of the image reads minds; transfer of ideas & information through images & typography that can be perceived by the target group.
Context? Human senses; culture; sources; aesthetics; media; technical quality; language; perceptual/emotional/thought process
Color Psychology
- RED: Irritation, passion, emotion, appetite, shoppers, heart rate
- WHITE: Purity, innocence
- YELLOW: Movements
- GREEN: Calmness, inner peace, tranquility, money & nature, new growth, rich people, fertility
- BLUE: Focus, water, peace, serenity, curbs appetite, increase productivity, corporate business
- BLACK: Mystery
- GREY: Reticence, uncertainty
- ORANGE: Excitement, enthusiasm, warns of caution, aggression, call to action, impulsive shop
- PURPLE: Royalty, kings, beauty, creative, imaginative. Atmosphere (hot, cold) mood (quiet…)
Visual Perception
Informing: Cave paintings, petroglyphs, geoglyphs, pictograms (stone/mud, no color), ideograms (color, Egyptians), logograms (arrows/stripes)
How Do We Capture Pictures? External Stimulus, Sensory Data, Sensory Memory, Working Memory, Long-term Memory
How Do We Process? Perception helps us get information into the brain. Memory helps us understand it. Visual Perception combines interaction between both processes: bottom-up & top-down
Visual Effects: Similarity, consequence, connection, meaningfulness
- Peirce: Icons, indexes & symbols have different perception levels (perception, physical connection & mental combining)
- Saussure: The value of signs is derived from similarities & differences & relation to other signs in the system
- Barthes: Denotation shows physical reality, whilst connotation shows the meaning implied by the viewer’s perception
Semiotics
Condensation: Process by which we combine elements of each sign to create a sign
Displacement: Process of transferring the meaning from one sign to another
Elements of Visual Communication
Dot, Lines, Shape:
- Square: Static, boredom, honesty
- Triangle: Activity, conflict, tension
- Circle: Infinity, warmth, safety, calmness; abstract, natural, geometric
Volume, Scale, Spatiality, Balance (symmetric, asymmetric), Direction, Lighting (natural & artificial, flat ↓ difference, light-dark ↑ difference), Perspective, Proportions, Color
Metonymy: Switched, concept related
Metaphor: Transferred, = meaning, + attractive visually
Morphology and Semiology
What is Morphology? Makeup of morph- ‘shape, form’ -ology ‘the study of something’. All the things that you see which transmit a message without specially written text.
Semiology? Science of signs
Denotation: Objective point of view. 1st sense
Connotation: Subjective… Message on the picture, different according to the feeling
Composition
Color (warm, cold), Line (peace, stable; dynamism), Texture, Form, Volume
Gestalt Principles
People will naturally put different elements into an entirety before taking them like individual elements.
- Proximity: Put elements together when they’re close
- Similarity: By color/form
- Closure: Fill the holes when forms are not close
- Symmetry: Objects don’t look complete if they aren’t symmetric
- Continuity: Follow direction
- Perception: See different things according to the way you’re looking
- Familiarity: Translate an image from our experience
- Focal Point: Set in the center will attract all attention
- Simplicity: Easier to understand if pictured in a simple way
Structure
Macrostructure: Position of the picture, text, typography
Microstructure: Analysis of the details in the picture. Harmony, rhythm, balance, dominance, ambiguity, contrast, unit