Visual Literacy

Many dis­ci­plines con­tribute to our under­stand­ing of visual lit­er­acy, most of which pre­date our notions of dig­i­tal lit­er­acy, and all which give an eclec­tic tone to this read­ing list. I used this def­i­n­i­tion to give what­ever cohe­sion you might notice:

Visual lit­er­acy can be defined as the “abil­ity to con­struct mean­ing from visual images” (Gior­gis, John­son, Bonomo, Col­bert, & al, 1999, p 146).

If you are new to the is topic, I found Anne Bamford’s and James Anitoo’s papers par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant, brief intro­duc­tions. I should divide this list into smaller cat­e­gories, per­haps in the next revi­sion. As always, sug­ges­tions are most welcome.

Read­ing List

• To read
• Rec­om­mended
• You have bet­ter things to do

• James Aanstoos. Visual Lit­er­acy: An Overview, 2003 [Empha­sizes the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nature of visual lit­er­acy, which of course makes it dif­fi­cult to study, but won­der­ful to con­tem­plate. Briefly cov­ers visual think­ing, visual learn­ing and visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion constructs].
• Rudolf Arn­heim
  • Art and Visual Per­cep­tion: A Psy­chol­ogy of the Cre­ative Eye, rev. 1974 [blurb]
  • Visual Think­ing, 1969 [blurb]
• Anne Bam­ford. The Visual Lit­er­acy White Paper, 1994 [Brief overview with def­i­n­i­tions and a read­ing list. Com­mis­sioned by Adobe]
• Arthur Asa Berger. See­ing is Believ­ing: An Intro­duc­tion to Visual Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, 2nd ed., 1998
• John Berger. Ways of See­ing,1972 [the BBC tele­vi­sion series; excerpt; illus­tra­tions; review 10 years later]
• Ann M. Berry. Visual Intel­li­gence: Per­cep­tion, Image and Manip­u­la­tion in Visual Com­mu­ni­ca­tion,1997
• Deb­o­rah Cur­tiss. Intro­duc­tion to Visual Lit­er­acy,1997
• Donis A. Dondis. Primer of Visual Lit­er­acy, 1973
• James Elkins
  • Visual Prac­tices Across the Uni­ver­sity, 2007
  • Visual Lit­er­acy, 2007
  • Visual Stud­ies: A Skep­ti­cal Intro­duc­tion, 2003
  • What Paint­ing Is, 2000
• Alexis Ger­ard & Bob Gold­stein. Going Visual, 2005 [blurb & blog]
• Ali­son J. Head. Design Wise: A Guide for Eval­u­at­ing the Inter­face Design of Infor­ma­tion Resources, 1999
• Linda L. Lohr. Cre­at­ing Graph­ics for Learn­ing and Per­for­mance: Lessons in Visual Lit­er­acy, 2007
• Richard Mason, San­dra Pros­al­endis & Tony Mor­phet. Read­ing Sci­en­tific Images : The Iconog­ra­phy of Evo­lu­tion, 2007
• Mal­colm Flem­ing & Howard Levie. Instruc­tional Mes­sage Design: Prin­ci­ples for the Behav­ioral and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences, 2nd ed., 1993 [course read­ing for MDE 615 Human Fac­tors in Edu Tech]
• Kathy Mason. Going Beyond Words: The Art and Prac­tice of Visual Think­ing, 1991
• Richard E. Mayer. Mul­ti­me­dia Learn­ing, 2001 [Dry but though­fully brief. Arms you with enough evi­dence to insist that peo­ple learn bet­ter from pic­tures and words together than words alone. Prime source for the Design­ing SOPs for Learn­ers project]
• Bill McGib­bon. The Age of Miss­ing Infor­ma­tion, 1992
• Robert McKim
  • Expe­ri­ences in Visual Think­ing, 2nd ed., 1980.
  • Think­ing Visu­ally: A Strat­egy Man­ual for Prob­lem Solv­ing, 1980
• Paul Mes­saris. Visual Lit­er­acy: Image, Mind, And Real­ity, 1994 [takes on the con­venti­nal view of visual lit­er­acy as a learned process sim­i­lar to lan­guage instead pro­posed that visual lit­er­acy is largely a nat­ural process]
• Clement Mok. Design­ing Busi­ness, 2nd ed., 1994
• David M. Moore and Fran­ceis M. Dwyer. Visual Lit­er­acy: A Spec­trum of Visual Learn­ing 2nd ed., 2000
• Stu­art A. Selber
  • Com­put­ers and Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Ped­a­gogoical and Pro­gram­matic Per­spec­tives, 1997
  • Mul­ti­lit­era­cies for a Dig­i­tal Age, 2004
• Janne Sep­pa­nen, Colin Lanks­hear & Michael Peters. The Power of the Gaze: An Intro­duc­tion to Visual Lit­er­acy, 2008
• Bar­bara Maria Stafford
  • Art­ful Sci­ence: Enlight­en­ment, Enter­tain­ment, and the Eclipse of Visual Edu­ca­tion, 1994 [blurb]
  • Good Look­ing: Essays on the Virtue of Images, 1996 [blurb]
• Mitchell Stephens. The Rise of theIm­age, the Fall of the Word, 1998 [blurb]
• Edward R. Tufte [The mas­ter, but some­times I just want to ask, where is the evidence?]
  • Envi­sion­ing Infor­ma­tion, 1990
  • The Visual Dis­play of Quan­ti­ta­tive Infor­ma­tion, 2nd ed., 2001
  • Visual Expla­na­tions: Images and Quan­ti­ties, Evi­di­ence and Nar­ra­tive, 1997
  • Beau­ti­ful Evi­dence, 2006
• Mar­cia Weaver. Visual Lit­er­acy: Dia­gram­ming Your Ideas to Com­mu­ni­cate Effec­tively, 1999
• Richard Wilde & Judith Wilde. Visual Lit­er­acy: A Con­cep­tual Approach to Graphic Prob­lem Solv­ing, 2000
• Ralph E. Wile­man. Visual Com­mu­ni­cat­ing, 1993