Visual+Literacy

Visual Literacy is all about how you can use certain prinicpal to better communicate information in a visual form. Graphic can enhance your lesson greatly when used correctly. We reviewed the theory of PAT, Perception, Action and Tools, to see how a graphic could be designed to better communicate its information to the reader.

The visual diagram, from my point of view, is trying to tell the view that Americans eat too much protein. The visual is trying to prove this fact by using facts arranged in an easy to read table and captures the viewer’s interest with symbols, color, different styles and sizes of text, and graphics. When looking at the PAT system of visual learning, we can see that the visual uses “P”, perception, properties with gestalt and similarity. The similarity between the size, text and lines around the fact boxes allow the viewer to understand these are related facts. But I believe they creator of this visual could have used a few more principals of the perception portion, such as hierarchy. I think aligning the factoids in ascending order would have made a bigger impact; I would have ordered the facts with the green box first, blue second, then purple and lastly the orange. I like the graphic‘s “A”, action, aspects. The diagram has nice contrast, repetition and proximity. I have some small issues with the it’s alignment, because the information outside the main part- the heading and numbers on the left side, are slightly distracting and seem unrelated when you look at the whole image. The tools were used well in the design. There is nice color, the text is clear and easy to read, the images of the hot dog and other food items are related and create interest.Overall, I believe that the diagram uses the PAT system well, and successfully conveys the information in the graphic. I think there could be some changes to the heading of the diagram and potential elimination of the text to the left, because the graph is well design enough it may not need that extra information.