The Power of Text and Image (FINA30020)

Through a series of lectures and studio projects, this subject explores the visual and communicative power of images and text, as a major part of human to human communication and as a history of human social interchange, examining three phases: oral, text-based, and image-centred communication.  The subject will explore patterns of communication in oral cultures, where learning and tradition were passed on by word of mouth, primarily through storytelling; the invention of writing and printing developing new approaches, preserving information and literary traditions beyond the capacity of memory; and to the present with the ubiquity of information dissemination through digital image and text, still and moving, silent and sonic elements and the communicative challenges and opportunities that this allows. Students will explore ways to utilise these elements to communicate messages in the graphic design context.