User:Jchua1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The article that I am evaluating is about Visual Communication

(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

The reason I chose this article was because Visual Communication is a big thing especially in the modern times, where information and ideas are easily conveyed through electronics and advertising. The reason this topic is important is because visual communication is the reason as to why we were able to convey our ideas to others and obtain more knowledge. It is also why people are able to see meanings behind the artwork and designs. My preliminary impression of it was very eye-opening to know more about backstory of Visual Communication in general

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Visual Communication takes an important role in allowing mankind to convey their ideas and information to one another. Unlike verbal communication, visual communication uses visual elements like artwork, typology, advertising, animation, technology, and more. Visual Communication has been a thing since the prehistoric times, an example being like artwork on the stone walls. In modern times, we still use a similar set of characteristics and elements like objects, graphs, models, diagrams. With visual communication, there are seven components usually within their visual elements, being color, shape, tones, textures, figure-ground, balance, hierarchy. Visual communication today is used for social media, culture, politics, economics, and science. There are many instances where visual communication relies on the information, values, and attitude from the visual elements to determine whether the comprehension of the audience is easy to understand what information they are trying to convey.

Important Figures
There are some important figures that helped progressed visual communication forward. Aldous Huxley is a one of the prominent explorers of visual communication that created novels Brave New World and The Art of Seeing. Though he was near-blind in his teens, he created one of his famous quotes, "The more of see, the more you know." He explained how seeing relates to sensing, selecting, and perceiving. Another figure is Max Wertheimer, studies Gestalt psychology, which emphasizes more on simplicity in color or shape, which further progresses the visual communication development.

Image Analysis
With visual communication, requires interpretation, and because most visual communications like art or images are subjective, we tend to try to understand the meaning or meanings. There are many types of perspectives that people tend to use that they analyze, but there are six major perspectives;


 * Personal perspective: The person has their own personal thoughts about the image or artwork being shown to them, which can be affected by their own values. This can create a wide variety of interpretation by many.
 * Historical perspective: This perspective is based around the time the image was created, which can affect one's view when comparing a man-made image compared to a edited photo.
 * Technical perspective: This perspective is based around the technical uses with the image, such as lighting, positions, how its presented. These techniques can create a better quality image.
 * Ethical perspective: From this perspective, the person creating or viewing must be morally and ethnically to the image.
 * Cultural perspective: Images can symbolize something, which tend to in more cultural images. This tend to important figures, meanings, words that relate to the image itself.
 * Critical perspective: A critical point of view on the image, keeping the interest of the society, which make it different from personal opinions on the image.

Each one of the perspective have their respective uses when analyzing an image because it allows people to interpret them in their own way and further understand what the creator was trying to portray or convey to the viewers.

There are many different ways to create visual aid media. In the prehistoric times, there were artworks on the walls in caves or structures that may symbolize something. In modern times, we have a more wide variety to convey our ideas and information to others. These things can be cardboards, posters, handouts, videos, and presentations. Because with have the resources and technology to create more presentable visuals, it keeps the audience interested. With have computer presentations which makes it easier for long presentations to keep the audience engage while staying on track of each section.

Motives
Social media is probably the most used type of media. Because it allows you to communicate with others around the world while learning new information everyday. This connects to visual communication because social media can play videos and images that can personal or societal meanings. It is also a way of self-expressing of identity to feel a sense of belonging. This also takes in the technical perspective as people can edit or adjust their picture to however they seem fit for private or public viewing.

There are also ways to express your culture through visual imagery on the idea of universal understandings. Also known as visual culture, it allows all cultures to feel equal because of the values amongst all cultures. They will be more implicit meanings in some imagery with others being more direct with the meaning behind the image.

In politics, they use television as a way of communicating to the people, causing visual communication to be the primary use in politics, with dialogue and text as secondary. This is because visually, the viewer can convey the ideas being showcased and impressions on the candidates. This is usually how people in the modern world do, by finding the similarity with the political figure, thus creating an identification between the political figures and the audience.

When relating to science, it is easier to visualize the many models that people created to better understand the science behind the problems. You can use models of atoms, parts of the body, etc. They serve as tools since graphs and slides can portray data and concepts.