Visual rhetoric is used in our everyday lives. Whether it’s in live print or on a digital screen visuals are needed and used. Visuals are used as representations. People use different shapes and colors to help carry a point across. Images can mean one thing to one person and then something else to another.
Sonja Foss believes that In the first sense, visual rhetoric is a product individuals create as they use visual symbols for the purpose of communicating. In the second, it is a perspective scholars apply that focuses on the symbolic processes by which visual artifacts perform communication
Use A Visual to Communicate
Through simple communication like texting, people use all sorts of visuals like emojis, memes, and gifs. Within a conversation a picture speaks volumes. One image can convey a series of meanings depending on the situation.
For example I was having two different conversations with two people and sent the same meme picture in both chats. The one where Philip J. Fry from the show Futurama is just squinting and staring. My one friend understood that I was using the image to represent that I thought she was acting really suspicious about how she was acting. The other friend understood the confusion about what was happening after sending the meme.
The use of images can help convey something without using words. Take for example how Twitter changed its name to X(formerly known as Twitter.) People were used to seeing a blue and bird icon and then they changed it to a white and black X. Changing the image to reflect the name change allows for people to know that there has been a rebrand. Many people will go looking to see what has changed if anything has changed.
Without the use of imagery we would only have our words to describe things. Using pictures as reference becomes important when explaining things to people who don’t know what you’re talking about. Also the use of pictures make it easier to explain.
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