Visual Communication: Elements, Functions, and Language Types

Core Concepts of Visual Communication

Elements of Communication

• Sender: The person, group, or object that emits a message.
• Receiver: The entity that receives the message.
• Message: The content perceived by our senses.
• Code: A structured set of signs used to understand the message.
• Channel: The medium that enables transmission (e.g., photography, television, poster).
• Context/Referent: The aim or subject matter necessary to achieve communication.

Functions of the Image

• Informative: Focuses on transmitting information. For example, red lights indicating danger and prohibiting crossing.
• Expressive: Causes feelings to surface. Its purpose lies not in the visual content itself, but in the emotions it produces in the viewer.
• Aesthetic: Centers its message on communicating beauty and harmony. These feelings arise from the relationships of proportion and effects (magnitude, color, texture, etc.) within the image's composition.
• Representational: Describes the appearance of reality. These are divided into two types: those created by the author's imagination and those that reproduce and interpret reality.

Types of Visual Language

• Sign: A simple image that represents an object or an idea, and that transmits information by which we understand its representation.
• Signal: Pictogram signs that resemble an action and seek to provoke a response in the viewer. These schematic shapes are often enclosed within simple geometric forms that serve as a framework, functioning as universal use codes.
• Symbol: Signs whose meaning is not visually represented but is known and assumed by different societies and cultures. These can also be called ideograms.
• Icon: Represents the object realistically. These visual marks can describe any trait of the object.
• Brands (Marks): Distinctive signs that companies, institutions, or individuals place on their products to communicate origin, quality, authorship, etc. They are symbols used especially for business purposes.

  The brand can be realized in different ways:

  • Logo: The brand consists solely of text that assumes the functions of the image.
  • Imagotype: The brand is a highly simplified drawing or image immediately understood by the receiver. It can also be called a pictogram.
  • Anagram: Most companies use a corporate image formed by graphic elements combined with text that identifies their brand.