Visual Communication Design

Where do design principles come from? Are they abstract rules established by professionals or do they have roots in human experience? And if we encounter these visual phenomena in our everyday lives, how do designers use them to attract our attention, orient our behavior, and create compelling and memorable communication that stands out among the thousands of messages we confront each day? Today's work in visual communication design shifts emphasis from simply designing objects to designing experiences; to crafting form that acknowledges cognitive and cultural influences on interpretation.

In response, Meredith Davis and Jamer Hunt provide a new slant on design basics from the perspective of audiences and users. Chapters break down our interactions with communication as a sequence of meaningful episodes, each with related visual concepts that shape the interpretive experience. Explanatory illustrations and professional design examples support definitions of visual concepts and discussions of context. Work spans print, screen, and environmental applications from around the world.

This introduction to visual communication design demystifies the foundational concepts that underpin professional design decisions and shape our experiences in a complex visual world.

"This is a foundation level textbook for courses in basic design and introductory courses in visual communication design. The chapters in this book follow the user experience cycle: attention, orientation, interpretation and extension and retention of meaning. Each chapter includes an introduction to the interpretive task, definitions of the elements and principles related to the task, illustrations and diagrams plus examples of professional design work that makes use of the element or principle. For example, Chapter 2 on getting attention discusses the various ways that design can capture the viewer's eye such as by using proportion, contract, color, pattern, etc"--