What is the Significance of Visual Communication​?

Visual Communication, alongside Brand Identity, is a key component of a brand’s market value. It highlights what the brand stands for, what are their long-term goals, and where their specialty lies. The significance of Visual Communication concerning a brand or a company is the indelible image it creates in consumers’ minds.

Take the arched M logo of McDonald’s alongside its mascot Ronald McDonald, or KFC’s Colonel Sanders sketched on its logo, or the iconic Apple logo with a bite taken out of the fruit. All these logos instantly speak to the consumers’ minds about the quality, the service, and what these brands have to offer with their products.

It (visual communication), of course, works negatively as well, wherein a brand’s image gets associated with that aspect of its service. This is why it is also important to back up a good visually communicative aspect of a brand with good quality product service. Visual Communication plays a vital role in spearheading the marketing aspect of any brand.

What is Visual Communication?

Visual Communication is how a company or a brand uses visual elements such as design, color, shape, and size, to convey information, ideas, and emotions that the brand wants to put out into the world. It could be what they stand for, what their products bring to the table, or what they are all about. In other words, it is about conveying their brand to the world without any use of descriptive words.

As the adage goes, “Images speak louder than words,” visual communication definition is all about communicating it to the audience with much clarity and less confusion. Brands across the world have pounced on this opportunity to boost their brand image and drive their marketing measures.

A visual, when designed with just the appropriate shape, size, colors, and fonts, speaks to the consumer base in a very strong manner. It becomes a much more memorable thing than a group of words strung together to convey the same information.

Wide Range of Roles and Career Opportunities

Visual Communication includes a variety of means such as images, typography, drawings, graphic design, illustrations, etc. The significance of visual communications can be seen and felt across social media, content marketing, workplace collaboration, support processes, etc.

An individual pursuing a Visual Communication course should be able to find a job working in the design department of any company. Since it’s an imperative measure for any brand to communicate with its consumers, visual communication as a job prospect will never fall out of favor.

Here are some of the career options that open up for a Visual Communications designer:

• Graphic Designer
• Multimedia Designer
• Animator
• Illustrator
• UI/UX Designer
• Art Director
• Web Design
• Digital Storytelling
• Information Design

How Visual Communications Transforms Various Industries?

One of the biggest ways Visual Communications transforms various industries is due to its nature of simplifying complex sets of information. Companies when launch a new product or offer a novel service, it becomes a daunting task to convey that information successfully to a wide range of consumers. Visual Communications designers completely simplify that information and make it consumer-friendly.

This immediately drives the sales of the product and builds trust in the consumers about the brand. Things like typography, infographics, and drawings, help in this purpose.

According to a Techsmith survey, 98% of employees believe a message’s effectiveness improves with the use of visual tools. Appealing and informative images are also generally likely to get more views online, in today’s age of social media. A video or visual is likely to garner millions of views, as compared to a post without it. This way, Visual Communications has taken over every industry, since every company wants to win the social media game when it comes to attention, promotion, and brand identity.

Moreover, the storytelling gets enhanced, reaching more people and thereby building a bigger brand. Visual Communications can also make the simple optic experience of a customer much more immersive and engaging. With the use of AR/VR, technologies can create a bigger impact with visual communications. Experiences told in the form of a visual or video that makes it more engaging for a customer will also be more memorable.

This is how the field of Visual Communications, with the aid of technology and AI, further pushes the envelope of transforming industries.

How to Develop Visual Communication Skills?

Pursuing a Visual Communication design course, either by opting BDes or MDes degree will be the right way for a candidate to develop their skills. There are several other important measures to keep in mind that may help in this endeavor.

Here are a few measures of how someone can develop their skills while completing Visual Communication course:

1. Choosing images carefully

Learning about what every image conveys, and what emotions it invokes, is a skill that every Visual Communications designer must imbibe. It goes a long way in using the right images in crafting a narrative.

2. Close Attention to Font and Colors

Understanding the role text fonts and their sizes have to play in conveying a story is a skill a Visual Communications designer should develop. Large fonts generally convey a sense of power or strength. Similarly, colors also convey different messages. Warm colors and dark ones, for example, convey polar opposite meanings to a viewer.

3. Familiar Visual Elements

Besides font and colors, a visual communications designer should only use elements such as symbols and icons that are popular with more people. Learning to choose symbols in popular consciousness helps people familiarize themselves with the brand better.

4. Visual Hierarchy

Visual Hierarchy is about organizing the content in a way that communicates the message to the user in the right order. Designing and re-arranging a visual with a lot of information is a skill that makes a large impact on viewers. Take the Vogue magazine cover for example, with its many elements placed in varying font sizes.

5. Learning about Diversified Content

A Visual Communications designer must be privy to the many channels of information that modern-day people use to consume content. Learning what form of visual content is more prevalent in such platforms, and creating your story as per that requirement is something designers must do. This will help them reach a wider demographic of users and convey a story to them in the simplest fashion they understand.

6. Responsive Design

In today’s day and life, a design element should be such that it operates on almost all modern gadgets. A Visual Communications designer should keep his/her visual simple and responsive on all technological platforms.

Visual Communication Careers: Your Path to Success

Pursuing a Visual Communications course in BDes (Bachelor of Design) and MDes (Master of Design) should open up a lot of career options for an individual. Here are some of the career options that one can try out:

• Graphic Designer
• Multimedia Designer
• Animator
• Illustrator
• UI/UX Designer
• Art Director
• Web Design
• Digital Storytelling
• Information Design

What is the Future of Visual Communication in Business?

With the emergence of new technologies, the growth of AI, and the demand for more customized and personalized content from users, the future of Visual Communications looks bright and brimming. As modern trends keep reshaping how users consume content, visual communications’ find a surge in demand to cater to those consumption patterns and create visually attractive and engaging storylines for businesses.

With the aid of AR/VR, Machine Learning, and other AI tools, Visual Communications is expected to even create 3D models and virtual tours. This takes a huge leap from the simple typeface design in videos and visuals. It pushes Visual Communications into a more dynamic market, where more demand will be created, and subsequently more jobs.

As customers get the hang and delight of a personalized experience, there will be a higher want for it. This will spike the price of the service, which in turn, could higher the salary rates of visual communications designers.

Lastly, visual strategies might change the way businesses deal with today, wanting quick solutions to problems. PowerPoint, Google Slides, Visme, Canva, Piktochart, Venngage, Excel, Crello, Adobe Illustrator, and Animaker are some of the tools that will be utilized for this purpose.