Graphic Design Principles: Visuals as Symbols in Graphic Design

Visual symbols are very close in our daily lives. Especially in big cities, we can see so many visual symbols are placed in various places such as shopping areas, public transport, on billboards and posters, print ads, even on your t-shirt. Visual symbols have different meanings, both in the social interaction, economic, personal to the spiritual. As you might know that there are already many existing visual symbols throughout the world.

Why we use visuals as symbols

It's basically humans tend to use visual symbols to convey their message, that have occurred since prehistoric times. As you may already know on the walls of ancient caves have been found many visual symbols, like images of humans and animals that form simple scratches with the colors of nature, such as soil color and the red color of blood, or white tree sap. That is one indication that humans have been using visual symbols to convey a message.



With the growing sector of culture and technology, visual symbols co-evolve. Every nation has a corresponding visual symbol of the distinctive character of its culture. Nevertheless, universal visual symbols where the symbols have the same meaning in each nation also evolve as the development of world culture and technology. In the past when digital technology and communication has not as sophisticated as it is now, symbols such as mobile phones, iphone or the Internet would not exist, that's progress.

Oh by the way, do you know why a visual form more widely used as a symbol? That's because visual perception can have the same on every person who saw it, so it's easier to communicate, other than that the visual can have a broader meaning and deep. For example: the visual form of the word "Love" has the same form on every person in the world (you are currently thinking about a heart shape, right?)

In Graphic Design

In graphic design, visual symbols could be developed with various techniques and styles in accordance with the character that you want to communicate. The same visual symbols such as "Love" can be described in various models, such as the classical model that is different from the modern model. Visual form of "love" is a classic of course will tend to have a style of ornamental when compared with the visual form of "Love" is a more modern minimalist.



Visual symbol also has a strong influence on a person's lifestyle and character. Certain visual symbols can be considered able to raise the prestige and social status, or the personality of its users. For example when someone wearing a t-shirt with a "tiger" as visual will have a different feeling than the person which are wearing a t-shirt with a "rabbit" as visual. Since both the visual and character has a different meaning. Imagine when you see two mighty men, both men are wearing different t-shirts. The first man is wearing a shirt with the "Harley Davidson" logo, while others wearing a shirt with the "Playboy" logo. Obviously your perception of these two man would be different, right?