Visual Literacy

This was a fascinating lecture on the importance imagery and how to interpret things visually. Visual language is based on the idea that images can be read and that it's a language so broad that any culture would understand it. This was all very relevant to animation too, so it was especially interesting. It's just interesting how a single shape, the plus "+" symbol for example, can have multiple meanings if you change the colour or put into a different context. The symbol for Mars and Venus, for example, was made visually frustrating by changing the colours and moving the symbols around. One slide showed the symbol for Male and Female (the silhouettes) then the next showed them switching places and colours added to them (blue for the man and pink for the woman). After that it showed the symbols for Mars (male symbol) and Venus (female symbol) with switched places, only the colours were switched too, Mars being and pink and Venus being blue, that confused so many people that I just found it fascinating. It's like the gender identity of pink for girls and blue for boys has caught on that well that we subconsciously associate those colours with those genders.