Visual Communication recent issues

Editorial

Triggs, T. — 2009-08-13

Visualizing English: a social semiotic history of a school subject

Bezemer, J., Kress, G. — 2009-08-13

In this article, the authors provide an empirically based, social semiotic account of changes in textbook design between 1930 and the present day. They look at the multimodal design of textbooks rather than at image or any other mode in isolation. Their review of 23 textbooks for secondary education in English shows that profound changes have taken place not just in the use of image but equally in writing, typography and layout. Design is no longer exclusively organized by the principles of the organization of writing, but also, and increasingly so, by graphic, visual principles. They explore what these semiotic changes mean for the social organization of design and knowledge production, asking: What is `English', a subject that supposedly concerns itself with the modes of writing and speech? What has changed in the environment that is set up by the textbook makers for teachers and students to engage in?

Chaos or homogenization? The role of shop signs in transforming urban fabric in Beyoglu, Istanbul

Ertep, H. — 2009-08-13

Istiklal Street, more commonly known as `Beyoglu', is one of the oldest and most prominent areas of the city of Istanbul. It is an area characterized by richness and profundity in terms of its history and cultural background. If asked, perhaps every resident of Istanbul would express fond memories of Beyoglu in days gone by, particularly the older generation. Beyoglu is also one of the most visited and attractive spots of Istanbul in terms of liveliness and nightlife, and can be compared to Piccadilly Circus in London, Times Square in New York, or Ginza in Tokyo. It has always been the business sector of Istanbul, rather than a residential area. Today, it is probably the most popular and exciting part of Istanbul with its shops, restaurants and bars as well as its museums and bookshops. Despite the visual disorder and chaos that such a centre of attraction tends to attract, one would expect Beyoglu to reflect the area's richness and vibrancy in its outdoor signs and billboards. However, recent changes brought in by the local municipality seem to have dimmed and toned down the intrinsic character of this significant district. All shops and stores have been instructed to change their outdoor signs to wooden backgrounds with brass lettering — an attempt to bring back the old, nostalgic look of Istiklal Street in the 1950s and 1960s. However, with all the fascia-boards and signs now looking very much alike, has this standardization procedure actually served its purpose, or has it merely acted as an instrument of visual homogenization? The visual form of many city centres with their highly distinctive neon lights may seem to be rather disordered and chaotic but, on the other hand, does unification of visual identity act as an agent to subdue the very nature of urban fabric? This study is an attempt to investigate the role of outdoor shop signs and fascia-boards in relation to the visual and cultural identity of urban settings. It uses the Beyoglu district as an example and examines views for and against this particular case.

Beyond the screen: visualizing visits to a website as an experience in physical space

Hohl, M. — 2009-08-13

This article describes an applied investigation into a concept of information visualization where data are not rendered as graphs, charts or diagrams on the screen but as a sensual experience beyond the screen in physical space. It introduces predecessors such as calm technologies and ambient displays among a number of poetic and applied examples from related backgrounds to establish the context and relevance for communication design and graphic design, and presents a current research undertaking in which the social activity of visiting a website is visualized in multiple sensorial modalities in real-time in the form of a kinetic and sensual display.

Remote messaging: exploring graphic manifestations of human relationships to the terrain through site markers and cognitive mapping in Ladakh, India

Norwood, A. D. — 2009-08-13

This article explores the role of design in Ladakh, a remote region in northwestern India that was opened to tourism and trade only 35 years ago. The shift in the prevailing socio-economic structure is manifested within the region's forms of visual communication, spanning a continuum from photographic advertising to hand-painted wayfinding systems. One questions the cumulative effects these graphic artifacts have on local people's perception of the region and their identities integrated with it.

Workshops were conducted in which participants were introduced to the abstract visual language of maps then sketched their home villages. Content analysis of these externalized cognitive maps reveals a consistency of visual representation strategies across all participants. References to natural and man-made features reflect reverence for the land and an understanding of agrarian systems. Currently graphic design in Ladakh is in service to profit outside interests. The author seeks a role for design that values the local constituency as well.

Information design and the world that comes before us

McLaughlin, S. — 2009-08-13

Technology or art? The practice of information design occupies an ambiguous position in relation to these very different approaches to making. Heidegger's critique of the metaphysical concepts of being, spatiality and mood provides fertile ground for developing an understanding of the way in which `information design as technology' conceals. The ethical imperative for an alternative conception of information design is explored.

Star City

Nencini, P. — 2009-08-13

ReMark: anecdoted typography of mark

Lavers, K. — 2009-08-13

Letters and cities: reading the urban environment with the help of perception theories

Silva Gouveia, A. P., Lena Farias, P., Souza Gatto, P. — 2009-08-13

When wandering around a city such as São Paulo, we are surrounded by letters, numbers and symbols. These elements form part of an environment full of signs in many shapes and sizes that compete for our attention. Our perception of these elements contributes towards our spatial guidance and sense of place. The idea of `reading' the city, or urban environment, was introduced by Kevin Lynch, for whom reading the urban structure follows on from recognizing or identifying its numerous visual elements, not necessarily verbal ones. Beginning with a brief bibliographic review of perception theories, this article combines concepts from environmental psychology with concerns brought up by the fields of information design and epigraphy studies, setting out the basis of a methodological proposal for the study of typography and lettering in the urban environment.

FishNet: the Great Lakes Craft and Release Project

Ironside, C., Iarocci, A. — 2009-08-18

This visual essay provides an overview of FishNet: The Great Lakes Craft and Release Project, an ecological collaborative art initiative based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which started in 2007 and is currently still active. The project engaged approximately 1,500 elementary school students, teachers, artists, art and government organizations and volunteers in developing an arts-based educational experience and exhibition focusing on the fish of the Great Lakes bio-region.

Exhibition review: BILL VIOLA LOVE/DEATH: The Tristan Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales and St Saviour's Church, Redfern, Sydney, Australia. April 2008

Serisier, G. — 2009-08-13

Book review: TIMOTHY DONALDSON Shapes for Sounds (Cowhouse): Why Alphabets Look Like They Do, What Has Happened to Them Since Printing Was Invented, Why They Won't Ever Change, and How It Might Have Been. New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2008. 176 pp. ISBN 978-0-9799666-2-0

Jones, P. — 2009-08-13

Digital cameras and domestic photography: communication, agency and structure

Cobley, P., Haeffner, N. — 2009-04-22

This article seeks to open up debate on the nature of communication in digital domestic photography. The discussion locates itself between the putative poles of `digital democracy' and `digital literacy', questioning the communicative co-ordinates of the snapshot and identifying the `idiomatic genres' in which it takes place. The authors argue that digital cameras enable domestic photographers to take `good' or professional-looking photographs and make certain capacities of professional cameras available for consumer use. Conversely, however, they argue that the question of critical understanding of the politics of representation in domestic camera use remains, since technical proficiency is not necessarily always accompanied by analysis. One reason suggested for this is that, frequently, the uses of photography are insufficiently analysed. The article therefore criticizes the idea that (domestic) photography can be understood in terms of `language' without paying due attention to the use of photography to capture the nonverbal.

On Drawing a Man Reading a Newspaper

Farthing, S. — 2009-04-22

Visual evaluation in film trailers

Maier, C. D. — 2009-04-22

This article explores how the persuasive purpose of film trailers is attained through specific visual features. The multimodal analysis of 12 comedy film trailers also reveals how these visual features enter into multilayered relationships with verbal and aural ones when creating evaluative meanings. The author proposes an interdisciplinary model of analysis in which several means of interpretation are combined. Based on Labov's understanding of narrative evaluation, this article attempts to show through Kress and Van Leeuwen's multimodal framework how Labov's model of narrative analysis can be extended to a wider analytical context, namely to multimodal promotional texts.

Multiliteracies: how readers interpret political cartoons

El Refaie, E. — 2009-04-22

Using a small-scale pilot study of readers' responses to three British newspaper cartoons as an example, this article explores the ways in which readers make sense of these multimodal texts. The findings of the study, which also included interviews with the three creators of the cartoons, suggest that interpreting cartoons is a complex process that requires people to draw on a whole range of different literacies. These include a broad knowledge of past and current events, a familiarity with the cartoon genre, a vast repertoire of cultural symbols, and experience of thinking analytically about real-world events and circumstances.

Differential discourses: the contribution of visual analysis to defining scientific literacy in the early years classroom

Britsch, S. — 2009-04-22

This article presents a kindergarten science inquiry as an exemplar for the purpose of suggesting an analytic graphic that is visually inclusive of the multimodal resources brought to bear by children and teachers engaged in classroom interaction. The central aim is the visual representation of the analysis so that the analysis itself becomes visual communication, a means of generating knowledge about multimodal discourse. This makes the discourse structure much more accessible to viewers than a verbal transcript. Findings demonstrate that the children and teacher carried out activity that reflected generally mismatched classroom discourses. The children engaged in the science processes of observation, interpretation, and design of the investigation while the teacher focused on the social process of classroom management. Visual communication is central in helping researchers and teachers to visually associate the elements and structure of interactions so that teaching response can be designed.

Book review: Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture, published on the occasion of the exhibition Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture, The Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 28 May to 28 August 2008. Catalogue published by Hayward Publishing, London, 2008

Stead, N. — 2009-04-22

Exhibition Review: Drawn Encounters exhibition, Wimbledon College of Art, UK, 5 September to 17 October 2008

Walker, J. F. — 2009-04-22

The promise of `makeability': digital editing software and the structuring of everyday cinematic life

Furstenau, M., Mackenzie, A. — 2009-01-28

This article analyses amateur video editing software and considers its use within a broadly defined context of cultural practices, or `everyday cinematic life'. The authors argue that such software must be understood in relation to specific cinematic discourses and in the context of longstanding promises of popular participation in `movie-making'. They situate the historically sedimented nature of audiovisual experience in terms of a geneaology of non-commercial film editing and filmmaking, and analyse the phenomenological mixture of constraints and potentials embodied by individual amateur filmmakers and implemented in popular consumer-level editing software. The figure of the video editor (the software and the individual), the authors argue, incorporates a compromise inherent to cinematic life between the propensity to `make' by appropriating forms and materials from the cinema, and the material, economic and legal constraints on making that preserve the organization of entertainment industries.

Beyond the static: a actitioner's notes on culture and language

Townsend, S. — 2009-01-28

Space odyssey: towards a social semiotic model of three-dimensional space

Stenglin, M. K. — 2009-01-28

The aim of this article is to articulate a set of principles that can be applied to both the analysis and design of three-dimensional spaces. To achieve this aim, the article discusses the way three-dimensional spaces can be organized as a semiotic resource — a mode, which, like other modes, is multifunctional. The discussion begins by introducing a powerful social semiotic tool, Halliday's metafunctional theory (1978), which has previously been used to theorize numerous semiotic resources in western cultures: language, visual images, speech, music, sound and movement. It then `opens up' a grammar of three-dimensional space using Halliday's notion of three communicative functions. The research presented in this article is illustrated with a museum example, the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Sydney. However, it is equally relevant to natural spaces as well as built spaces across a broad range of other fields: homes, schools, workplaces, retail sites, hospitals and virtual spaces.

Visual repairables: analysing the work of repair in human-computer interaction

Greiffenhagen, C., Watson, R. — 2009-01-28

This article reports some (video-recorded) instances of `visual culture' in action, namely the use of a new software tool designed for the visualization of scenes from Shakespeare's Macbeth in a classroom context. By considering whether or how far conversation analysis (CA) can be extended from natural conversation to cases of collaborative work in front of a computer, the article addresses the methodological question of how to study instances of visual communication. We take as an exemplar the phenomenon of remedial action and discuss how Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks's (1977) canonical study of repair in ordinary conversation can be used to highlight aspects of `visual repair' (the identification and remedying of items on the screen). Our attempts to apply the original CA model of repair of ordinary conversation highlight the differences of this setting, which constitutes an example of collaborative work.

Layout as punctuation of semiosis: some examples from Israeli schoolbooks

Peled-Elhanan, N. — 2009-01-28

This article examines the function of layout in the representation of the Palestinian—Israeli conflict in three history textbooks used in Israeli schools. The analysis elaborates on two concepts of Kress and Van Leeuwen — `ideological layout' and `punctuation of semiosis'. The author argues that layout may `punctuate' semiosis in two different senses: first, in the sense of `bringing (conventional—official) semiosis to a temporary standstill in textual form'; and, second, in the sense of `piercing a hole' in the conventional or official semiosis it presents, and thereby criticizing it. In both cases, layout creates new complex signs that either support or contradict the verbal and visual texts it presents.

This study suggests that layout analysis may help answer larger questions concerning `the transformation of social practices into discourses about social practices in specific institutional contexts' (Van Leeuwen, 1996). The discussion of the means by which these punctuations are achieved and the messages they convey is followed by reflections upon the difficulties students and teachers may have in reading such multimodal texts.

Exhibition review

Clerke, T. — 2009-01-28

Book review: LILIE CHOULIARAKI, The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage, 2006. ISBN 0--7619--7040--1

van Leeuwen, T. — 2009-01-28

Book review: SONJA NEEF, Abdruck und Spur. Handschrift im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Imprint and Trace. Handwriting in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility). Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2008 (= Kaleidogramme 25). 360 pp. ISBN 3--86599--037--1

Spitzmuller, J. — 2009-01-28

`Not just a colour': pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication

Koller, V. — 2008-10-30

This article investigates the functions of the colour pink as a marker of gender and sexuality in cultural models and the multimodal texts they inform. To this end, tendencies suggested by a pilot survey on colour associations are traced in a number of visual texts such as leaflets, advertisements, websites and magazines, where pink functions to gender textual referents, attract female readers' attention and index both sexuality and sexual identity. Both informants' associations and the multimodal text analysis show evidence of an emergent schema that relates pink to post-feminist femininity. This is seen as complementing and extending conventional and counter-cultural associations of pink with stereotypically feminine characteristics or gayness, respectively. Ultimately, the author argues for an approach to colour that combines social semiotics with cognitive semantics.

The C30 Project

Andrew, D., Neustetter, M. — 2008-10-30

Systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA): constructing ideational meaning using language and visual imagery

O'Halloran, K. L . — 2008-10-30

The systemic functional (SF) approach to multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) is concerned with the theory and practice of analysing meaning arising from the use of multiple semiotic resources in discourses which range from written, printed and electronic texts to material lived-in reality. The SF-MDA approach developed in this article explores the meaning arising through the use of language and visual imagery in printed texts. This involves investigation of linguistic and visual forms of semiosis, and formulation of cross-functional systems such as colour. An integrative platform based on the SF metafunctional principle is proposed, and intersemiotic mechanisms and systems (content and expression strata) are developed to capture the expansion of meaning which occurs when linguistic and visual forms combine. The SF-MDA approach is demonstrated through the analysis of ideational meaning in a print advertisement. The practical approach involves the use of digital technology in the form of image-editing software which gives rise to a more detailed semantic and ideological interpretation. The analysis reveals how metaphorical constructions of meaning (i.e. semiotic metaphors) take place across linguistic and visual elements.

A lesson to be learned or `Take a walk on the wild side'

Wagner, K. — 2008-10-30

This article analyses an advertisement postcard issued by a mountain bike company to promote a safe riding style. Instead of conveying a straightforward didactic message about safety, the card is shown to be quite ambiguous. The discourse concerning extreme sports and mountain biking in particular is explored through internet sources such as discussion forums. This discourse revolves around the capacity to face danger and endure pain, which is an important factor in the progression from boyhood to manhood. The theoretical background of the article is gender theory and masculinity studies and the roots of the structure of the postcard are traced back to 19th-century children's literature. In conclusion, some suggestions are made about how the message of the postcard could have been made less ambiguous.

Exhibition Review: Design and the Elastic Mind, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 24 February to 12 May 2008

Bittiner, J. — 2008-10-30

Book review: NEZAR ALSAYYAD, Cinematic Urbanism -- A History of the Modern from Reel to Real. New York: Routledge, 2006. 240 pp. ISBN 978--0415700498

Bowman, C. — 2008-10-30