HUM 232 – Visual Communication
Course Content:
This course serves as an introduction to visual storytelling and provides a general idea of how visual materials are created and represented within visual culture (such as illustrated magazines, digital media, advertising materials, photography, or film). After the introduction of basic visual elements and terminology, this course ensures that visual representations are addressed within symbolic and mediated reality relations in light of visual communication theories.
Topics Covered:
Week 1: Introduction and discussion of course objectives
Week 2: Visual components, contrast and similarity
Week 3: Main sub-components, types of space: Deep, perspectival, flat, limited, and ambiguous space
Week 4: Frame, aspect ratio, surface divisions, uses of closed and open space
Week 5: Concepts of line and shape, edge, contour, plane intersection, axis, and linear motif
Week 6: Tone, controlling the grayscale, coincidence and non-coincidence of tone
Week 7: Introduction to color and light systems
Week 8: Introduction to movement, actual, apparent, relative, simple, and complex movement types
Week 9: Rhythm, ways of creating and controlling visual rhythm
Week 10: Midterm Project
Week 11: Introduction to visual communication theories
Week 12: Image and power, representation, the myth of photographic reality, ideology, and images
Week 13: Meaning-producing audience, encoding and decoding, reception and audience, cultural production
Week 14: Case study, visual material analysis through film
Instructor
