8. Visual Layering and Diverse Audiences
After reading Diana George’s “From Analysis to Design,” I find myself thinking about a point I’d like to make in my essay about visual/graphic thinking that images reach a more diverse audience than words. By the simple fact that images are not restricted to language, this is true, but I also find truth in two notions put forth in this essay.
First, George quotes Gerdiner, Kittredge, and Arnold: “what can a picture tell you about wind or heat, about sound or smell, about motion, about the feeling of roughness of moisture? Nothing directly; it can only suggest” (21). George implies that this statement privileges the verbal which contradicts the authors’ broader argument for the “primacy of the visual.” However, this idea that images merely suggest, I feel, demonstrates their strength at communicating to various audiences. Of course, we expect an artwork to suggest multiple meanings, and a set of instructions to provide clear directions, but how different are these modes of communication, really? No matter what the forum (as we are taught by presidential debates), multiple people will derive multiple meanings from both words and images. So, is there a benefit to images’ ability to suggest multiple meanings? Don’t words function in similar ways? At least, images, instructions, artworks, etc. can indeed reach across language boundaries, and because images are more open to interpretation than direct statements (though I wonder how true that really is), aren’t they able to reach more people because they are merely suggesting instead of telling? I’m still not sure.
George also paraphrases Blair: “the visual is open to interpretation in a way words are not” and then comments, “Such an assertion can only be made if one believes that the verbal and visual both involve communication of meaning” (29). Is George simply saying that visuals can communicate meaning as well? I have trouble reading her analysis of Blair, but I see what Blair is saying quite clearly, though I’m still deciding if I agree with it.
Finally, George offers a helpful structure for analysis of visual designs: “comparison, juxtaposition, and, intertextuality” (29). In the midst of the Text Analysis assignment, I find these terms very useful. A music video, a political cartoon, a website, etc. exist within a context of other texts like it (comparison); they juxtapose words with drawing or shot with music or photos with hypertext; and they also exist within the history all literature that has come before, and how does one text manifest that cultural, political, social history? These terms help me form what visual argument is and also helps me reflect on my audience concerns above. Visuals are texts just like any other and they can be read with the same criteria. They actually have the ability to layer more information, and that’s what makes them reach more diverse audiences, not necessarily their suggestive quality (language can suggest just as well). Yes, what separates design is its efficient, layered, navigable, and succinct organization of information. Even if I can’t read Spanish, a picture can help me understand directions.