Visual Communication Studies

The term visual communication studies refers to an interdisciplinary academic field of scholarship [Page 1860]that analyzes the composition, effectiveness, and effect of messages that are expressed primarily or in significant ways through image or graphical depiction. While text, often called verbal or linguistic communication, may accompany those messages, in order to be considered visual communication, the objects, artifacts, or symbols that comprise the message must be designed or delivered in ways substantially dependent on the visual attention or vision of audiences.

Establishing a specific date for the emergence of visual communication studies as an area of study is challenging because many of its associated disciplines (e.g., aesthetics, art history, communication studies, graphic design, mass communication, media studies, multimedia and computer animation studies, philosophy of art, popular culture studies, television and cinema studies) exist as independent areas of scholarship and in ways only partially dedicated to concerns addressed by visual communication studies. Beginning roughly in the 1930s and accelerating on par with the growth of mass communication technologies in the 20th century, visual communication studies developed in response to a number of changing political, social, cultural, and economic factors. These include a steady displacement of linguistic messaging (e.g., by advertisers, politicians, social activists) in favor of image-heavy artifacts, an exponential growth in media consumption, the rise in attention paid to celebrities, the diversification of media platforms and alternatives for message senders, technological innovation (in particular the widespread adoption of television and subsequently the Internet as platforms for accessing news, political discourse, and popular culture), and the rise of identity politics and the “culture wars” (in which the nature and modes of representation increasingly served as the terrain for social, cultural, and political negotiations over relative levels of equality and opportunity experienced by members of an increasingly diverse society).

While visual communication studies is a relatively new field, conveying messages in visual form has been a common and widespread practice since the first cave paintings some 40,000 years ago. Whether through the literal use of symbols or images to express ideas or in more abstract invitations to audiences to visualize various futures, the reliance on visuality to convey messages is as ancient as human communication itself. Insofar as it relies upon a physical representation of concepts and letters, writing itself, for example, is a form of visual communication that ranges from simple line drawings on a convenient medium (e.g., dirt, rock, papyrus) to complicated hieroglyphics or intricate calligraphy. Visual communication studies, therefore, examines the abundance of messages and visual sensory experiences that subjects encounter in both their daily lives and in exceptional political moments in order to determine how visuality affects the subjects and their understanding of the world. The scope of the field spans a wide spectrum from examining symbolic and cultural conventions (e.g., national symbols, advertising, high art) to the pragmatic (e.g., street signs, maps, currency, clothing) to the most intricate and elaborate performances (e.g., those that express identity of some kind, or intercultural dynamics).

Although they share common interest in the form and function of image-based artifacts as well as draw on similar theoretical and methodological resources, the academic study of visual communication has generally been divided into two broad fields of analysis: visual communication and visual rhetoric. Scholars who study visual communication primarily inquire into the artistry and effectiveness of visual artifacts by employing principles of design, cognition, and aesthetics theory, whereas those scholars who examine visual rhetoric tend to ask questions about the societal effect of an image or visual artifact.

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