Skip to main content

Teaching Visual Communication & Design

Visual Communication is a bridge between an idea and its intended audience. In the fields of architecture, engineering, graphic, industrial and multimedia design, advertising and marketing, cartography and fashion, for example, visual communicators use text and/or image to communicate information. The visual form that communication takes may be imaginative and original or it may conform to conventions or accepted rules. The production of visual communications involves the application of the design process in which final presentations are developed in response to needs identified in an initial brief. The design process provides a defined, yet flexible approach to the development, evaluation and refinement of visual communication solutions.

The vocabulary and grammar of visual communication is based on understanding and applying drawing and drawing conventions, design elements and design principles. This knowledge assists students in the generation of a range of visual communications. In a study of visual communication information and communications technology and other forms of image generation are used to create examples of visual communication. A study of this subject also provides the opportunity for students to develop an informed, critical and discriminating approach to visual communications encountered in everyday life.

Adapted from the VCAA Visual Communication and Design Study Design 2003

“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,”
 — Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things