Visual Literacy

The visually literate student designs and creates meaningful images and visual media.

Instructors, this page provides ways to guide your student through developing a visual. If you’d like help with incorporating technology and making into your courses, if you would like to get a sense of the maker resources available to you and your students, or if you are interested in tailoring making activities and processes to your particular project, contact Area 49.

What's your message?

Always figure out your message first, rather than letting your medium dictate what you will say. To start, look at your research and determine what needs to be said. Consider the following:

• Is there a gap in the research that you can cover?
• Do you have a strong opinion that you feel others need to know?
• Is there an important idea that people don't understand well?
• Is there a specific audience that doesn't have this information, but could benefit from it?

Your message can either convey a generalized idea or a very specific part of the idea. Usually, a general idea is much more difficult to convey than a specific one, so it's often a good idea to narrow down the subject. Here are some options:

• Respond directly to a specific piece you have encountered.
• Look at your idea through a new lens. You could look at it as someone from a specific audience would, or you could even consider how the ideas might change if you combine it with something else. For example, your general idea might be about ocean pollution, but combining the idea with a beloved children's movie could cause the message to be more powerful for both adults and children. 

s0s2. (2019-2020). "Shiny Earrings!" "Part of Your World," & "Underwater Balloons." The Little Trashmaid. Webtoon.

Decide how to convey your message

Once you figure out your direction, then you can move on to deciding on a method to convey your ideas. There are many ways to do this, but you may find the following approaches helpful.

1. Context - What is the cultural and ideological context you are responding to? In other words, what is the situation surrounding the idea?
2. Audience - Who will this message be directed to?
   1. Figure out a specific population to hear this message, since directing it to "everyone" will make your message too general. For example, if you want people to vote, a sign that says "Vote" would be applicable to everyone who can vote, but might not be as effective as developing advertisements around the specific causes that your targeted populations care about.
   2. What kinds of resources does this audience engage with? If they get most of their information from blogs, then developing a blog might be appropriate. However, if this audience prefers to develop their own interpretations, then creating a sculpture, painting, or other entirely visual item may influence the audience more. See "Conveying your credibility," below.
   3. How will your audience be called to respond? if this is interactive, give your audience the space to interact easily and in a way they are already familiar with.
3. Purpose - Likely, your message will do more than simply inform. Consider:
   1. What do you hope to accomplish? Is this a call to action? A call for changing a mindset?
   2. Is this a counterargument arising from a point in a source?
   3. How do you want your viewers to feel? How will your work elicit this emotion?

Selecting Your Medium

Consider your time frame

Your time frame is important to consider. Developing something manageable for a quick turnaround time will be more successful than taking on a large feat in a few days.

Play to your strengths

Use a medium or skill that you know will be effective for your audience. If you don't feel proficient in the medium, your message may not come across as intended. If you plan to learn a new skill to complete the project, make sure you have enough time to learn it without adding stress before your due date.

Operating within an assignment

When producing visual materials for a course project, consider the parameters for the project and which options might be more appropriate to complete the assignment. If you have a big idea that's not in line with the assignment, always check with your instructor first to see if your idea will suffice the assignment requirements. In some cases, you may need to develop your creative visuals to enhance your message, rather than to replace a traditional means of conveying the information.

Conveying your credibility

How do I cultivate credibility?

Credibility comes from being able to demonstrate a keen understanding of what is happening within the context, but being recognized as credible looks different in different contexts.

• Example 1: In a written academic piece, your credibility comes from the ability to join the conversation by responding to scholarly sources in the field.
• Example 2: In the fashion world, an outer demonstration of credibility would be to wear fashionable clothing, but you would show a deeper knowledge and understanding by being able to talk about a diverse array of styles, colors, stitches, fashion cultures, and more. You might learn this from experience or from engaging with fashion magazines, blogs, and more. How did Meryl Streep's Devil Wears Prada character convey her fashion credibility in the clip below?

How will your chosen audience see you as credible?

What specific moves can you make that will label you as an insider? Use context, audience, and purpose to determine the ways in which you could convey your credibility. Keep in mind that the types of sources you invoke will have a direct impact upon how your audience will react to your message.

Planning your work

Planning your work and figuring out what you will need to complete your project will keep you from hitting a wall in the middle of your project. Here are some great ways to plan out your project.

• Sketch out your idea. What will this look like? What materials make most sense to use for each part? This will also help you anticipate the skills you may need to complete it.
• List all the items you will need. If you don’t have access to them, check around. You might have access to them though Area 49. You might also be able to develop your own great substitution.
• Make a timeline for creating your project. Build in time that will allow you to revise your strategy if something doesn’t work out as planned. Depending on what you make, you may need to allow time and supplies for multiple iterations.
• Prototype your idea. Develop your visual with lesser materials first. This will give you the opportunity to change your item's construction without using up your final materials, and your final product will work better, since you will have put more thought into prior iterations.

Elements of Design

Use the 7 Elements of Design together and in varying ways to create unique visuals with ideas that pop.

"Elements of Design: Quick Reference Sheet." Paper Leaf. Retrieved October 20, 2020. https://visme.co/blog/elements-principles-good-design/

Principles of Design

Use the principles of design to manipulate the elements for unexpected, yet professional-looking visual results.

"Principles of Design: Quick Reference Poster." Paper Leaf. Retrieved October 20, 2020. https://visme.co/blog/elements-principles-good-design/

Quick Tips

• Try using alternative methods of including your visuals. For example, if you are using pictures from a magazine, try tearing them so the edges are frayed. This will add more texture than perfectly cutting out the images.
• Use items that are already available to you. Even if you don't have what you need, you might be able to use something as a substitute for your intended item and develop something even better.
• Look online at zines and visual journals to get ideas for art styles, how to overlap items to generate an idea, and found items to incorporate into your visual.

For a quick view of what Area 49 has to offer, check out the gallery below. You can also take a look at activities, tools, and resources on the Area 49's LibGuide. We're adding more all the time!

Even though you’re probably mentally finished with your work at this point, and would rather not think about it anymore, the finished product sometimes does not match up with your initial intentions, so it is vital that you look at your work at this stage and reflect upon how well you have completed your objectives. Often, another glance will give you the idea you need to pull it all together or polish your work. Consider the following:

• Does the finished product match up to your expectations?
  • Will it capture your audience how you intended?
  • Does it convey your purpose well? Would a viewer have to work hard to understand your idea?
• How does your visual fit within the context of the conversation you are responding to?
• Is this supposed to be a polished work, or a prototype? If it should be polished, what visual minor flaws exist? Can you touch them up before presenting your visual?

For each of the above questions, ask yourself what you could do to make your visual more effective. Is there anything you could add, tweak, or take away to provide a larger impact?

Talking about your work

The ability to reflect and articulate the decisions you made is very important. If you look back on different decisions you could have made, but didn’t, you’ll be better able to defend the decisions you did make.

Be proud of your work, but criticize your own work, too. It will push you to meet more challenges that will give you greater satisfaction in your work, and you’ll also be more excited to show others what you have done.

Instructors, figuring out how to grade creative projects can sometimes be trying, since value is put on a different kind of proficiency demonstration. If you'd like help with grading schemes for creative projects, let us know at atkinsarea49@charlotte.edu. We can help! For now, take a look at the content below, which will help you start thinking about the grading component of the project.

Encourage a Maker Mentality

Value positive failure, discovery attempts, and the articulation of process work. Students often think about the end result, while reflecting on the process can be more helpful to troubleshooting their work.

Designing the Learning Experience

Working from a maker mindset means that you are “creat[ing] the conditions for learning,” rather than “prescrib[ing a] learning experience” (Brahms as qtd. In Schlageter, 2017). This can, in fact, help students of all levels learn at their own paces (Burke, 2015), but comes with a different type of learning. One of the most challenging concepts for most instructors will be the difference in learning rates and concepts. Kurti, Kurti, and Fleming (2014) show that engaging in a maker mindset in the classroom means “recogniz[ing] that some peripheral concepts may not be learned by all students. Yet students faced with a common challenge to design their own unique solutions will naturally come to some common understanding” (par. 5). This type of interaction with concepts will ensure that students will be able to transfer their understanding of their (interactions) to new situations. However, they also assert that  a well-planned design [will] allow students to discover the concepts the teacher intended them to learn all along” (par. 4). These methods also encourage collaboration and give students a chance to learn from other students as they develop team-building skills and consider alternate solutions.

Grading Creative Projects

Your assessment strategies will change when you move from directive-based assessment to a more fluid maker-based practice (Lake, 1994). For some, this may mean offering more specific feedback about different parts of a project. Others may find themselves altogether reconsidering what they are valuing from an assignment. Consider assessing concepts such as critical thinking, problem solving, revision, and other overarching concepts that will be manifest in student work.

References

• Burke, J. (2015). Making sense: Can makerspaces work in academic libraries? Proceedings from the Association of College and Research Libraries. Portland, OR.
• Kurti, R. S., Kurti, D.L., and Fleming, L. (2014). The philosophy of educational makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41(5).
• Lake, K. (2001). Integrated Curriculum. School Improvement Research Series. Retrieved from: http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/IntegratedCurriculum.pdf
• Schlageter, B. (2017). Groundbreaking framework and free online training available for creating makerspaces in museums and libraries. Childrens’ Museum Pittsburgh. Retrieved from: https://pittsburghkids.org/pages/groundbreaking-framework-and-free-online-training-available-for-creating-makerspaces-and-libraries