Improving your Visual Literacy Skills

You’ve likely heard of the terms visual literacy and visual communication, but do you understand what they are, and how it applies to you and your life?

Visual literacy includes a set of abilities that allows you to be able to find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images. Visual literacy helps you understand how to read the images that are all around you.

Let’s explore by playing a simple game. Below, you’ll see shapes/symbols, and I want you to write down the first color that comes to your mind.

The shapes/ symbols above likely prompted you to write down the following colors: orange or yellow, orange, red, blue or red, and red. We use colors, shapes, lines, symbols and so much more to create a visual language. The activity above demonstrated foundational pieces of a visual language that you and I share.

The more that you learn and practice looking at and reading visuals, the better you become.

Let’s look at colors and you reflect and write down what the colors remind you of. What feelings do you connect the colors with?

Red probably made you think of love or hate, the pink likely pushed you more towards surprise and excitement, while the green and orange are calm, or might have even reminded you of feeling sick. Blue may have made you think of the sky or water, and feelings of quiet and calm.

How each of us responds to and understands visuals is impacted by our context. The more you understand the context of an image and how made it, the better chance you have of reading it correctly. Sound familiar? Reading images is a very similar process to reading text.

If you want to learn more about visual literacy, join my online summer course.