What I Learned in this Class

This class has been the most challenging graduate level course I have taken. Most courses in this program are devoted to reading and writing, and they came fairly easily to me, since I am a verbal person. In visual communication, I felt out of my element. I was especially challenged when I needed to visually communicate using technology. The learning curve was steep, but it makes me prouder of the work that I produced, since I had to put in a lot of extra effort.

While I wouldn't say that I personally feel that a picture is worth a thousand words, I have a greater understanding of the importance of visual communication. I have to come back to the key principle of this program: the audience is key. Some people, like me, are verbal learners and need words (whether written or oral) to understand information. But others are visual learners, and for them pictures may be even more important than words. Since we may not know whether our audience members are visual or verbal learners, it's important to integrate words and images into our communications. This class has helped me develop the tools to create visuals to enhance my written communications. (I admit that I still feel visuals are there primarily to enhance words, although I know some people would argue that they can be forms of communication unto themselves or that words may serve to enhance images.)

Kress and Van Leeuwen, while they introduced a lot of terms that were sometimes hard to keep straight, really helped me with my understanding of images by relating them to language. My college career has mainly been focused on languages (I have a B.A. in French and this program is in the English department), so when this explanation of a "grammar of visual design" made me feel like I was in familiar territory. I would highly recommend this book to others who come to visual communication from a linguistic background.

Overall, this course has been challenging, but I feel that the knowledge I gained was well worth the effort. I am now much more conscious of visuals, and I have no doubt that the skills I learned will be valuable in my future career(s).