Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is communication in its purest form as all forms including alphabets were spawned from it. This led to phonetics and the ability to communicate through verbiage. Visual literacy is one of the most important steps in primary learning. Consider a child. They do not speak first, the begin by understanding what they say and then begin to communicate through that avenue. Children are more inclined to draw as there is an easier route to communication in it. Visual literacy and communication can be broken down into elements that build on each other starting with the dot, going to the line and so on until you reach dimension and motion. Understanding these elements isn't something you can pick up over night and can take a fair amount of brain capacity to understand....but this is visual literacy on the grander scale of humanistic intuition.

Basic visual literacy comes from an academic approach. Advertising depends on visual literacy from consumers. In order to understand an ad, a person must be able to understand both images AND the copy: this is vis. lit. In order to be in the field, the creative side at least, there must be a high degree of visual literacy within that person. I do want to make it clear there is a connection between understand imagery and verbal communication. In order to read and write, one must be able to visually comprehend letters and words. This ties back into the field because people are forced to expand the comprehension boundaries with irregular types and unorthodox type presentations.

Here is an Web site on visual literacy and its learning.

The site presents curriculum for visual literacy but also explains its important and its place in culture. The activities are interesting. Try them out!