The Search For a Visual Language



The recent revival of saying things in pictures only, for example, smileys, heart, victory, thumbs up and down symbols, etc., is seen by many as the human civilisation’s urge to communicate in a universal language. People seem to have very little time in reading long form work preferring keywords, summaries, and ‘one-pagers’ or emoticons. Here we may not disturb the existing language paradigm and reinvent the wheel, but we need to upgrade the system.

The industry cannot ignore this phenomenon and are in urgent need to develop a visual communication system that requires very little use of natural languages. The human mind can interpret and process alphabet driven communication systems and a picture driven one equally efficiently if the individual is exposed to both. It is almost akin to being bilingual.

In the world of corporations, where business, etiquette, and language still rule the roost, a company called Zoppo released an employee handbook in comic book form. It released both an interactive and a static version of the comic book that would help the newcomer to the organisation understand the culture quickly and efficiently. It is not very difficult to imagine several start-ups having not only their employee handbooks, but all their communication in the form of comics or the like with a little help from animators, designers, artists or apps like Prisma. This rudimentary structure coupled with some intelligent ideas can help us rebuild long-lost tradition that died with the last of the Altamira painters.

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