NOTES

BVC1B01 - VISION AND COMMUNICATION

MODULE 1: VISUAL COMMUNICATION
MODULE I: VISUAL COMMUNICATION
1.Introduction to communication studies; 2.visual communication and its fundamental
principles; 3.history and development of visual arts and communication; 4.visual
communication and visual culture. 5.What is visual media? types of visual media – folk
and performing art forms, theatre, drawing, painting, photography, film and television.
6.New media and multimedia products.

1. INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

Communication – sending of a message from one person to another, in simplest terms has been one of the
oldest characteristics of human life. Even when formal languages were not available, people were able to
make each other understand their feelings and gestures to accomplish routine tasks.

There is no trace available as when the languages came into being, the communication among people,
however, got on faster track than before with the availability of formal languages in the form of symbols,
gestures, body expressions and words. Since those times the communication has been shaping into different
forms and is supposed to be the key element in creation of different subjects and passing on experiences of
one generation onto the next.

Starting from sending and receiving information amongst few individuals to high number of people, the
communication is now well classified into different categories. Although main focus here is the mass
communication, it is pertinent to understand some basic elements, fields and concepts of elementary
communication before entering the very complex and widely exploited world of mass communication.

BASIC CONCEPTS OF COMMUNICATION

Well, the world communication has its origin in the Latin word COMMUNIS which stands for common or to
create commonness with the people around you. This is possible when you share your feelings and ideas
with others.

According to commonly used definition, communication is transfer of message from sender to receiver
through a channel. It is understood that speech or utterances in the form of voice, were the initial stages of
communication which gradually developed into a defined form of language when all the people of a
community got to attach specific meanings to the voices and gestures.

It might have taken centuries to mankind to enter the stage of writing its messages on stones etc. But once
writing was developed as one mean of communication there had been attempts to find some material to
write on, which was more sustainable and easy to take along in travel. Using bark of certain trees for this
purpose, the endeavor led to invention of paper, thus revolutionizing the early days’ communication.

Writing on paper by hand must have brought joy to people for sending their messages across to many others,
after that, the invention of printing overwhelmed efforts to give new dimensions to communication.
WHY NEED COMMUNICATION?

Survival

The foremost reason to communicate to others for the human beings in particular is their own survival. There
is hardly any sense in believing that a person can all alone live a life by fulfilling its daily life needs. The fact is
that every next moment a person is dependent on others to survive. Hence it is inevitable for all of us to bank
on communication.

Co-operation

There is a very genuine instinct in all the living creatures to cooperate with each other to keep the cycle of
life running. Humans need this more cautiously as to keep their hard felt sense of superiority.

Relationships

Feeling of keeping a range of relationship from an individual to family and tribe was strong from early days
of human civilization. It would have been extremely difficult to promote a life style without acknowledging
the relationships among people living together for sometime. Communication was essential to identify
relations among people to accomplish different tasks.

Persuasion

Communication proved handy in the course of persuasion and influence others to keep the human civilization
grow. The task is done even today, though, with different techniques and in a rather complex world of
communication.

Power

Better communication helped people and tribes to command power over others. This phenomenon is more
evident in the fields of conflict and to bring the enemy down. To muster support by using better
communication skills has always been the hallmark of human interactivity.

Social needs

Social needs grow with almost the same pace, human culture and civilization nurture. History stands as
testimony to the fact that the circle of human social needs expands as people try to live together in more
organized manner. Communication is the common most thing which knit societies to fulfill their desire to rise
jointly.

Information

In more advance world, as it is today, it is a piece of information – a piece of communication, which brings
relief to human living in a score of ways.

Information about roads, condition, may help you change your traveling plan, for instance. A small bit of
information may have a life long impression on your future business.

Decision making

And not the least, in present day affairs communication goes long way in helping us in decision making. Not
an individual alone, but families and nations, can draw certain conclusions with the help of available
communication on certain matters which is likely to improve the overall living standards and a more secure
life for all of human beings.

Major Fields of Mass Communication

General Information
The main field of mass communication has been to inform people at large about things which are in their
immediate interest. This includes the vast area of news, views and current affairs. Apart of specific nature of
news etc. people are also informed about entertainment which may include sporting events, music or
recreation. To educate masses is also part of mass communication by exploiting all the means at hand to
address a distant and high concentration of individuals.

Public Relations

Although this area of mass communication has assumed new dimensions in the modern world, keeping
relations with various types of public has its traces from ancient history. This area has proved handy to
organized and corporate sectors, which have a defined purpose to achieve by keeping relations with audience
of their choice.

Publicity

Publicity, which is more known as advertising, is definitely an outcome of modern means of communication
for it largely depends on the technology being exploited to address masses for purely commercial purposes.
So enormous has been the impact of advertising through means of mass communication that a huge
advertising industry has come up offering tens of thousands of jobs of different nature to people across the
world.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION AND EARLY COMMUNICATION MODELS

Like all the complex objects, communication is also made up of certain basic things called elements. A building
has its elements in brick, sand, cement, iron, wood, paints and sanitary fittings. A machine has a number of
components which are all elements joined together to enable the machine to give desired results.
Communication is a complex business and involves certain elements which join together to help a message
go across.

In this chapter we will give a long sight to various elements which have been marked by experts and which
provide the very basics of any piece of communication however simple it may be.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION / PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION

Sender

First and foremost is the person who sends a message. Known as sender in the jargons of communication,
he or she is the chief initiator of any communication. In fact a communication may not take place if there is
no sender. The sender may be singular and plural as well. It all depends on the nature of communication. If
a teacher is delivering lecture, it constitute a case of sender as one individual. Sender comprising many is the
case when a group of people shout together, or more than one person sing a song as chorus.

Message

When sender – the source of communication, decides to communicate he/she encodes the crux of the
feeling in words/gestures or any other form commonly understood. This encoded form is called message. It
may be a simple word or a very complex and technical integration of feelings by the source on a given subject.

Channel

No sooner a message is created by a sender, it enters in the channel. The channel is part of the
communication process which helps carry the message to its desired destination. In case of printed words
paper is the channel, in the matter of voice air may serve as a channel. In telephonic conversation the wire
and the sets make the channel. Some times the channel itself becomes part of message and sometime
message is sent in a manner that a part of it serves as a channel.

Receiver
The process of communication may not be complete if the message does not reach a person, or persons, it
is designed for. Receiver in this process is the element which is target of the message and actually receives
it. The dimension of receiver is very wide – it may vary from an individual to an army of people, or a nation
or all nations. Again, it depends what the message is.

Interpreter

Receiving message in most case is half the process of communication done. In most cases an interpreter is
required to understand – decode – the message so that the purpose of communication is served. Noise
always occurs at this stage. Noise means part of meaning which is lost from the original message. There is
hardly a message which is decoded, or interpreted cent per cent.

Feedback

Sending and receiving of message is a simultaneous process in which the receiver continuously sends back
its approval or disapproval after having interpreted the message. This helps the sender to modify or discipline
its message. This element in the communication process is referred as feedback. For instance a person is
delivering speech, the voices, gestures and facial expressions – all part of feedback, would help the speaker
to check its loudness, smiles, rhetoric, contents or time to speak. If there is no feedback, the original message
may never shape accordingly which may distort the whole communication exercise.

Context

Every message is delivered and received in a given context. Change in the background factors denoted as
context, may change the meanings altogether. Context itself comprises multiple factors each one of them
becomes essential when it comes to interpretation of the original message.

The Shannon-Weaver’s Model of Communication

The Shannon Weaver’s model is typical of what are often referred to as transmission models of
communication. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were two different entities that jointly produced a
model known after their names.

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver produced a general model of communication.

This model is now known after them as the Shannon!)eaver’s Model. Although they were principally
concerned with communication technology, their model has become one which is frequently introduced to
students of human communication early in their study.

The Shannon Weaver’s Model (1947) proposes that all communication processes must include following six
elements:

• Source

• Encoder

• Message

• Channel

• Decoder

• Receiver

These six elements are shown graphically in the model. As Shannon was researching in the field of
information theory, his model was initially very technology! oriented. The model was produced in 1947. The
emphasis here is very much on the transmission and reception of information. 'Information' is understood
rather differently from the way you and I would normally use the term, as well. This model is often referred
to as an 'information model’ of communication.

Apart from its obvious technological bias, a drawback from our point of view is the model's obvious linearity.
It looks at communication as a one!$ay process. A further drawback with this kind of model is that the
message is seen as relatively unproblematic. It is fine for discussing the transformation of 'information' but
when we try to apply the model to communication, problems arise with the assumption that meanings are
somehow contained within the message.

Detailed analysis of the model

The Source

All human communication has some source (information source in Shannon's terminology), some person or
group of persons with a given purpose, a reason for engaging in communication. You'll also find the terms
transmitter and communicator used.

The Encoder

You, as the source, have to express your purpose in the form of a message. That message has to be
formulated in some kind of code. How do the source's purposes get translated into a code? This requires an
encoder. The communication encoder is responsible for taking the ideas of the source and putting them in
code, expressing the source's purpose in the form of a message.

In person to person communication, the encoding process is performed by the motor skills of the source !
vocal mechanisms (lip and tongue movements, the vocal cords, the lungs, face muscles etc.), muscles in the
hand and so on. Some people's encoding systems are not as efficient as others'. So, for example, a disabled
person might not be able to control movement of their limbs and so find it difficult to encode the intended
non verbal messages or they may communicate unintended messages.

A person who has suffered throat problem may have had their vocal cords removed. They can encode their
messages verbally using an artificial aid, but much of the non!verbal messages most of us send via
pitch,intonation, volume and so on cannot be encoded.

Shannon was not particularly concerned with the communication of meanings. In fact, it is Wilbur Schramm's
model of 1954 which places greater emphasis on the processes of encoding and decoding. We will discuss
threadbare Schramm’s model in next lecture with special emphasis on the provision of interpretation of a
message for a logical understanding of what has been sent by the source originally.

The Message

The message of course is what communication is all about. Whatever is communicated is the message.

Denis McQuail (1975) in his book Communication writes that the simplest way of regarding human
communication is 'to consider it as the sending from one person to another of meaningful messages'. The
Shannon Weaver’s Model, in common with many others separates the message from other components of
the process of communication. In reality, though, you can only reasonably examine the message within the
context of all the other interlinked elements. Whenever we are in contact with other people we and they are
involved in sending and receiving messages. The crucial question for Communication Studies is: to what
extent does the message received correspond to themessage transmitted? That's where all the other factors
in the communication process come into play.

The Shannon Weaver’s model and others like it tends to portray the message as a relatively uncomplicated
matter. Note that this is not a criticism of Shannon since meanings were simply not his concern: Frequently
the messages have meaning that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain
physical or conceptual entities. (These considerations are irrelevant to the engineering problem).
The Channel

The words channel and medium are often used interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately. The choice of the
appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication. It's obvious that you don't use the visual
channel to communicate with the blind or the auditory channel with the deaf, but there are more subtle
considerations to be taken into account as well.

TYPES AND FORMS OF COMMUNICATION

Having understood elements of communication, their functions and placement in various models, it is time
to complete an other chapter on types and forms of communication before resuming our discussions on
various other areas of mass communication for a detailed study.

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

Broadly speaking, whole human communication could be classified into two distinct parts.

• Intra personal communication

• Inter personal communication

Intrapersonal communication

The part of communication in which self of a human being is involved only and the communication is
confined to one human entity. This means that all the elements which come into action in a given piece of
communication are located within the self of an individual. A message originating from source part of the
brain travels through the channel of nerves to reach another location, however close it may be to the point
of origin of message, where it is interpreted and understood as receiver.

All the process of meditation, thinking, monologue and even dreaming while asleep are all but examples of
intra communication.

Inter personal communication

This part of communication belongs to involving two or more individuals for exchange of information. Since
this part is experienced more due to its vastness, it is further classified in many categories.

Inter personal

The simplest form in which more than one individual communicate to each other

Group Communication

More often people are seen exchanging views with almost all the participants enjoying an equal status on
one count or the other. Like all the players of ahockey team, class!fellows, doctors, teachers, bureaucrats,
politicians, economists etc.

Organizational communication

In this part, communication usually takes place on vertical lines. For instance, a company director is passing
on instructions to managers who would be guiding accordingly to field officers and the relevant other field
staff. An army general may not be talking to lowest rank men in khaki but would follow the chain of
organizational command to deliver his message to the last rank people. Be it a corporate sector,

NGO, a political party, an educational institution, the communication process would strictly follow the
essentials of the organizational communication.
Mass Communication

In this category we refer to the communication originating from one source and meant for all possible
audience irrespective of distance, cast, creed, religion, nationality and beyond. The mass communication
involves use of technology for it is not possible to carry message to a very high number of receivers with out
the use of certain devices or techniques. All other types of communication may take place when the source
is coming across receivers without involving technology. That is why more research and investment has gone
into handling the mass communication

FORMS OF COMMUNICATION

In another way we can examine the communication process by dividing it into different forms of exchanging
messages.

• Verbal

• Non verbal

Verbal

All the messages said or written in words make part of the verbal communication. This way, all that appears
as text in books, magazines and newspapers is part of verbal communication. One can guess the size of an
industry in the area of mass communication based on verbal communication. Likewise, all the words heard
on radio, television, telephone or any other public address system are also part of verbal communication.
Again, the industry and technology based on verbal communication is enormous in size and value as well.

One amazing part of the verbal communication is the availability of events of significance in history. Little is
understood about the past from the available artifacts but a great deal of human civilization, growth and
conflict is available in the form of verbal communication. The spread of religions and sharing of most scientific
work is also due to the verbal communication over the centuries which recorded facts, sentiments and event
of common human interest. It is on the basis of verbal communication that the world has seen great poets,
writers, playwrights, historian and newsmen. This also proves at what great scale the verbal communication
has created job opportunities. In modern days, people having verbal communication skills are in high
demand, especially with the fast expanding media all across the globe.

Non verbal

Senses

Part of human communication involving other than written or spoken words is referred to as non verbal
communication. It involves human senses – sight, taste, touch, hearing and smelling. As a matter of fact about
90 per cent communication among human beings takes place through their senses and the rest by the use of
words as languages.

Symbols, signs

Emblems, gestures, symbols and signs make more vivid and strong communication as compared to words
which are often difficult to decipher. For instance making a victory sign by politicians, army generals,
sportspersons and leaders in general at the time of defeating enemy is easily understood even by the
illiterate. If the same feeling is expressed in words, many may not come even close to understanding what it
is.

The traffic signals, red!cross mark and the symbol of dove are but few illustrations to make people around
understand what a message stands far.

Combination
For practical purposes, however, the use of verbal and non verbal makes a very strong piece of
communication. One may see a match on TV but an enthusiast commentator may relish the joy if your
favorite team is winning the game. Similarly, feature films, documentaries and dramas on mini screen stand
for more effective pieces of communication than if only one for of communication is brought into use. Even
the newspapers and magazines, which are more to bank on verbal communication, carry so much of non
verbal communication in the form of images, graphics and maps.

2.VISUAL COMMUNICATION AND ITS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

Visual communication

Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the
conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Visual communication solely
relies on vision, and is primarily presented or expressed with two dimensional images, it includes: signs,
typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colour and electronic resources. It also explores the idea
that a visual message accompanying text has a greater power to inform, educate, or persuade a person or
an audience.

The evaluation of a good visual communication is mainly based on measuring comprehension by the
audience, not on personal aesthetic and/or artistic preference as there are no universally agreed upon
principles of beauty and ugliness. Excluding two dimensional images, there are other ways to express
information visually gestures and body language, animation (digital or analogue), and film. Visual
communication by email, a textual medium, is commonly expressed with art, emoticons, and embedded
digital images.

The term 'visual presentation/visualization' is used to refer to the actual presentation of information
through a visible medium such as text or images. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and
graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers also use methods of visual communication in their
professional practice. Visual communication on the World Wide Web is perhaps the most important form of
communication that takes place while users are surfing the Internet. When experiencing the web, one uses
the eyes as the primary sense, and therefore the visual presentation of a website is very important for users
to understand the message or of the communication taking place.

The Eye of Horus is often referred to as the symbol of visual communication. It is said to be a representation
of an eclipse, as the corona around the pupil is like the corona around the sun during a solar eclipse.

Three types of visual messages:

1. Mental – those that you experience form inside your mind such as thoughts, dreams and fantasy

2. Mediated – those that you see through some type of print, movie, TV or computer or any medium

3. Direct – those that you see without media intervention

Aldous Huxley was the innovator, philosopher on the defining how we see and ultimately how we learn.
The main idea of his theories is that seeing clearly is mostly the result of thinking clearly.

The process of seeing may be analysed into three subsidiary processes—a process of sensing, a process of
selecting and a process of perceiving.

That which is SENSED is a set of sensa within a field. (A VISUAL SENSUM is one of the coloured patches which
form, so to say, the raw material of seeing, and the visual field is the totality of such coloured patches which
may be sensed at any given moment.)

Sensing is followed by SELECTING, a process in which a part of the visual field is discriminated, singled out
from the rest. This process has, as its physiological basis, the fact that the eye records its clearest images at
the central point of the retina, the macular region with its minute fovea centralis, the point of sharpest vision.
There is also, of course, a psychological basis for selection; for on any given occasion there is generally
something in the visual field which it is in our interest to discriminate more clearly than any other part of the
field.

The final process is that of PERCEIVING. This process entails the recognition of the sensed and selected
sensum as the appearance of a physical object existing in the external world. It is important to remember
that physical objects are not given as primary data. What is given is only a set of sensa; and a sensum. In
other words, the sensum, as such, is a mere coloured patch having no reference to an external physical
object. The external physical object makes its appearance only when we have discriminatively selected the
sensum and used it to perceive with. It is our minds which interpret the sensum as the appearance of a
physical object out in space.

The stages of clear vision – visual circle

1. To Sense – First stage of vision. The physical process of light entering eye. This means to let enough light
enter your eyes so you can see objects around you.

2. To Select — conscious act of isolating an element within field of vision. This is an intellectual act.

3. To Perceive — make sense of what is selected (compare to existing images) – compare/contrast

4. To Remember — file significant images in long-term memory – a wedding, a birth, a first love or best
friends or first international vacation – you typically want to remember these occasions because they have
significance for you.

5. To Learn — look for patterns, relationships, cause-and-effect – we all learn in our own way, but more often
than not we need a visual.

6. To Know — cognitive understanding and expectation of future images. There is an expectation of what
you’re going to get once you identify the patterns – particularly as we look at brand identity.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

As an art or design student, you are a visual thinker. You apply visual thinking every day as you compose your
own works in art and design, but you may not apply it (consciously anyway) to written and verbal
communication. We live in a visually oriented world, where how content looks can say as much as or more
than the content itself — in fact the two are often inextricable. Understanding and applying basic design
principles in your visual communication can radically impact how your work and ideas are received.

AESTHETIC / TONE

The aesthetic look and feel or “tone of voice” of a design is perhaps its most significant quality. Shaped by
the sum of design elements, aesthetic is not just a matter of taste and style; it’s determined by the purpose
and audience for your communication. As you begin your design process, ask yourself: What are my
communication goals? Who am I speaking to? What is the desired outcome from the audience interacting
with the content? As you answer these questions, make a list of simple aesthetic adjectives that complement
your responses — delicate, classic, modern, quiet, or loud, for example. Then let these adjectives guide your
decisions about type and typography, grid, images, colour and other design elements.

TYPE & TYPOGRAPHY

Type is a catch all term used to refer to a collection of letter forms. Type operates on two levels: first, the
words carry the written meaning; second, the type selection, or font, contributes to the feeling or aesthetic
tone of the work. TYPOGRAPHY is the arrangement of letterforms on a surface, such as a page or a screen.
It aids understanding by imparting difference in undifferentiated text. Breaks such as paragraphs and
headlines in running text are typography, as are size, treatment, and spacing of text.

GRID

All graphic design work benefits from the use of an underlying grid, which clarifies content by making its
presentation more systematic. A grid divides a 2D plane into smaller fields which may or may not be the same
size, but which remain consistent across multiple planes in sequential work such as books, websites, and
presentations. Your design elements — typography, photography, illustrations, etc. — are fitted to one or
more fields of the grid divisions. Typically information about your content — such as running chapter or
section heads in books, or navigation, headers, and footers in websites — remains consistently placed on the
grid across multiple pages, while images, diagrams, and columns of text may change according to the needs
of the information.

COLOR

Color contributes to the overall tone of a graphic work. It can be used to differentiate elements from each
other, can impart specific meanings, and is perceptually subjective as well as culturally conditioned. The art
and study of color combinations is long and rigorous. In general, your color selections for graphic elements
such as backgrounds, text, text boxes, headlines, and rules should be appropriate to the content, applied
consistently, and make a meaningful contribution to the overall work. In the context of a book, website, or
presentation, the overall number of colors should generally be limited to just three to six. Every value should
be a conscious choice, not decided by default settings.

IMAGES

Images serve many purposes — they establish mood, illustrate or explain a concept, demonstrate a process,
serve as documentation, and contribute to the tone of voice of a work overall.

Once you’ve collected your images, evaluate their purposes, which will help determine size and placement.
Uniformity in lighting, color, resolution, and point-of-view are as important as consis-tency of size and
placement. Sequence of images is driven by the narrative you are creating and the information you are trying
to deliver. The more you are able to control image qualities — often by creating them yourself — the more
your design will speak in the manner you intend.

INFORMATION DESIGN

Information design presents information in the form of infographics and data visualizations. Occasionally
these two terms are used interchangeably, but there are substantive differences: infographics convey a single
point or story, emphasizing stylization, for example by incorporating illustration. Data visualizations, on the
other hand, typically engage larger data sets and strive for objectivity. These definitions are flexible and the
two models can overlap, but understanding these distinctions can help you decide which mode to choose.
For instance, if you are trying to illustrate a social phenomena with just a few numbers, the tactics of
infographics may serve you best. If you have a large scientific data set, use data visualization models. Whether
presenting quantitative or qualitative, spatial or temporal data, a consistent visual framework creates the
conditions for meaningful understanding and comparison.

3. HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL ARTS AND COMMUNICATION

History of Visual Communication

The history of visual communication can be traced back to a time when the writing was not invented.
During that phase, people were relying on the paintings preserved in the caves and rocks. It dates
back more than 40, 000 years ago. It was a part of the life of the people who were unknown to the
writing and alphabets. In brief, it can be said that visual communication is an integral part of the
human existence. Before the invention of the writing, people were relying on this traditional method
of the communication to communicate with each other.
The invention of the alphabets created a new history in the ear of communication. It really made
easier for the people to communicate with each other in a written way. After that, the books were
being published and then we entered into an area where many technologies are incorporated to
make the communication much easier than ever, this is the era of computer. In this area also,
visualization has also a great role to play.
In the history, you will get many signs of visualization. These were mostly available in the rocks and
caves. When Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe 40, 000 years back, they have bought sculptures, body
ornamentation, engravings, and many more things that reflect the origin of the visual
communication. They had also the paintings of the wild animals and many abstract paintings that
reveal the thought process of the human being of that period.
They were also using the graphical symbols or the Ideograms to express their emotion. They were
using these symbols to express a particular incident and to show any emotion. They were more
comfortable with this medium of the communication as they were not familiar with the alphabet
and languages. They were communicating through the gestures, painting, signs, and symbols.
01. Rocks and Caves When Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago, they brought with them
sculpture, engraving, painting, body ornamentation, music and the painstaking decoration of utilitarian
objects. From that times we have cave painins which most common themes are large wild animals, such as
bison, horses, aurochs, and deer, and tracings of human hands as well as abstract patterns, called Macaroni
by Breuil.
By that time we can also find Petroglyphs, which are images etched in rock, usually by prehistoric, especially
Neolithic, peoples and Geoglyphs, drawings on the ground, or a large motif, (generally greater than 4 metres)
or design produced on the ground, either by arranging clasts (stones, stone fragments, gravel or earth) to
create a positive geoglyph or by removing patinated clasts to expose unpatinated ground.

02. Ideograms that are graphical symbols that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged
according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages. Examples of ideograms
include wayfinding signage, such as in airports and other environments where many people may not be
familiar with the language of the place they are in, as well as Arabic numerals and mathematical notation,
which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages. The term
“ideogram” is commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and
Chinese characters.

03. The Alphabet The history of the alphabet starts in ancient Egypt. The first pure alphabets (properly,
“abjads”, mapping single symbols to single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol)
emerged around 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt, as a representation of language developed by Semitic workers in
Egypt, but by then alphabetic principles had already been inculcated into Egyptian hieroglyphs for a
millennium (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets).

04. The Art of the Book This section is divided into the topics Scriptorium, Techniques and Classifications,
where art historians classify illuminated manuscripts according to their historical periods and types, including
(but not limited to): Insular script, Carolingian manuscripts, Ottonian manuscripts, Romanesque manuscripts
and Gothic manuscripts.
05. The Printing Press Starting with incunabula, in the times when printers tended to congregate in urban
centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers, nobles and professionals who formed their major
customer-base. Gutenberg (1398 – 1468) was a German goldsmith and inventor who achieved fame for his invention of
the technology of printing with movable types during 1447. Gutenberg has often been credited as being the most influential
and important person of all times, with his invention occupying similar status. Standard works in Latin inherited from
the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printing, but as books became cheaper, works in the
various vernaculars (or translations of standard works) began to appear. Building on Rosarivo’s work,
contemporary experts in book design such as Jan Tschichold and Richard Hendel, assert as well that the page
proportion of the golden section (21:34), has been used in book design, in manuscripts, and incunabula,
mostly in those produced between 1550 and 1770. Hendel writes that since Gutenberg’s time, books have
been most often printed in an upright position, that comform losely, if not precisely, to the golden ratio, as
we can see in these Pages from Albrecht Duerer famous book on design fundamentals: “De Symmetria”
(Unterweysung der Messung), 1525.

06. The Masters of Type In the 12th cent. a rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature occurred across
Europe that eventually led to the development of the humanist movement in the 14th cent. In addition to
emphasizing Greek and Latin scholarship, humanists believed that each individual had significance within
society. After that, In 1543 Copernicus wrote De revolutionibus, a work that placed the sun at the center of
the universe and the planets in semicorrect orbital order around it; his work was an attempt to revise the
earlier writings of Ptolemy. In such times, focused on technical developments and inventions, it was
inevitable that the upheval described above would also affect our subject matter. One of the major benefits
of this new milieu of learning and enquiry was the spreading of literacy, i.e. the ability of not only to be able
to read but also to write. In the Middle Ages, magnificent illumination was rarely used in the decoration of
secular texts. In the Renaissance, though sacred texts continued to receive the most sumptuous decoration,
secular texts began to rival them for elegance of script, illumination, and binding. In encyclopedias, maps and
scientific researches, scientists illustrated their work and studies with images from early days onwards:
Indeed even some of the Egyptian frescoes seem to point at scientific depictions.
07. Breaking the Grid The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural
change in the late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During
that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the
manufacture of machinery.

Printing techniques using movable type had restricted graphic design to an inflexible grid: Anything that was
to be mass printed in great volume needed to adhere to a system whereby type was set in consecutive rows
of parallel lines. Illustrations, maps and the like were hand drawn and engraved, only allowing for limited,
costly editions due to the wearage of the engraving plates. The mass productive milieu of the industrial
revolution manifested itself in a unique invention called lithography and this technique was to set type free
from the bondage of the compositor.

08. The Avantgarde The term avant-garde in French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People
often use the term in French and English to refer to people or works that are experimental or novel,
particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics. Over time, avant-garde became associated with
movements concerned with art for art’s sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic
experience, rather than with wider social reform. In our context the avantgarde will cover the avantgarde’ist
movements of the early 20th century that specifically focused on visual communication design and/or
implemented it as a modus operandi.

09. The Modernist The term “modernism” covers a variety of political, cultural and artistic movements
rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.
Broadly, modernism describes a series of progressive cultural movements in art and architecture, music,
literature and the applied arts which emerged in the decades before 1914. By 1930, Modernism had entered
popular culture. With the increasing urbanization of populations, it was beginning to be looked to as the
source for ideas to deal with the challenges of the day.
10. The Computer An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things
first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of
value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed
to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine.

In 1950 the British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing published a paper describing what
would come to be called the Turing Test. The paper explored the nature and potential development of human
and computer intelligence and communication, while the first commercially successful electronic computer,
UNIVAC, was also the first general purpose computer – designed to handle both numeric and textual
information was also designed the same year. The implementation of this machine marked the real beginning
of the computer era.

Although mainstream graphic design applications, print or digital, rely heavily on the presence of interfaced,
intuitive, proprietrary software, one of the many exciting manifestations of digital design has been the
merging of programming and design environments, creating new hybrid professions and areas of expertise,
skills and transdisciplinary collaborations.

Motion graphics are graphics that use video and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or
a transforming appearance. These motion graphics are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia
projects.

4.VISUAL COMMUNICATION AND VISUAL CULTURE

Visual Culture
Visual Culture as an academic subject is a field of study that generally includes some combination
of cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology, by focusing on aspects
of culture that rely on visual images. Among theorists working within contemporary culture, this
often overlaps with film studies, psychoanalytic theory, gender studies, queer theory, and the study
of television; it can also include video game studies, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising,
the Internet, and any other medium that has a crucial visual component. Because of the changing
technological aspects of visual culture as well as a scientific method! derived desire to create
taxonomies or articulate what the "visual" is, many aspects of Visual Culture overlap with the study
of science and technology, including hybrid electronic media, cognitive science, neurology, and
image and brain theory. It also may overlap with another emerging field, that of "Performance
Studies." "Visual Culture" goes by a variety of names at different institutions, including Visual and
Critical Studies, Visual and Cultural Studies, and Visual Studies.
What is visual culture?
Modern life takes place on screen. Life in industrialized countries is increasingly lived under constant
video surveillance from cameras in buses and shopping malls, on highways and bridges, and next to
ATM cash machines. More and more people look back, using devices ranging from traditional
cameras to camcorders and Webcams. At the same time, work and leisure are increasingly centred
on visual media, from computers to Digital Video Disks. Human experience is now more visual and
visualized than ever before from the satellite picture to medical images of the interior of the human
body. In the era of the visual screen, your viewpoint is crucial. For most people in the United States,
life is mediated through television and, to a lesser extent, film. The average American 18 year old
sees only eight movies a year but watches four hours of television a day. These forms of visualization
are now being challenged by interactive visual media like the Internet and virtual reality
applications. Twenty-three million Americans were online in 1998, with many more joining in daily.
In this swirl of imagery, seeing is much more than believing. It is not just a part of everyday life, it is
everyday life.
Let's take a few examples from the constant swirl of the global village. The abduction of the toddler
Jamie Bulger from a Liverpool shopping mall was impersonally captured by a video surveillance
camera, providing chilling evidence of the ease with which the crime was both committed and
detected. At the same time, despite the theory that constant surveillance provides increased
security, it in fact did nothing to help prevent the child's abduction and eventual murder.
The gap between the wealth of visual experience in postmodern culture and the ability to analyze
that observation marks both the opportunity and the need for visual culture as a field of study.
While the different visual media have usually been studied independently, there is now a need to
interpret the postmodern globalization of the visual as everyday life. Critics in disciplines ranging as
widely as art history, film, media studies and sociology have begun to describe this emerging field
as visual culture. Visual culture is concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or
pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology. By visual technology, I
mean any form of apparatus designed either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision, from oil
painting to television and the Internet. Postmodernism has often been defined as the crisis of
modernism. In this context, this implies that the postmodern is the crisis caused by modernism and
modern culture confronting the failure of its own strategy of visualizing. In other words, it is the
visual crisis of culture that creates postmodernity, not its textuality.
Visualizing
One of the most striking features of the new visual culture is the growing tendency to visualize things
that are not in themselves visual. Allied to this intellectual move is the growing technological
capacity to make visible things that our eyes could not see unaided, ranging from Roentgen's
accidental discovery of the X-ray in 1895 to the Hubble telescope's "pictures" of distant galaxies that
are in fact transpositions of frequencies our eyes cannot detect. One of the first to call attention to
these developments was the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who called it the rise of the
world picture. He argued that "a world picture…does not mean a picture of the world but the world
conceived and grasped as a picture…. The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval
one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes
the essence of the modern age" (Heidegger 1977:130). Consider a driver on a typical North American
highway. The progress of the vehicle is dependent on a series of visual judgements made by the
driver concerning the relative speed of other vehicles, and any maneuvers necessary to complete
the journey. At the same time, he or she is bombarded with other information: traffic lights, road
signs, turn signals, advertising hoardings, petrol prices, shop signs, local time and temperature and
so on. Yet most people consider the process so routine that they play music to keep from getting
bored. Even music videos, which saturate the visual field with distractions and come with a
soundtrack, now have to be embellished by textual pop-ups. This remarkable ability to absorb and
interpret visual information is the basis of industrial society and is becoming even more important
in the information age. It is not a natural human attribute but a relatively new learned skill. For the
medieval philosopher, St Thomas Aquinas, sight was not to be trusted to make perceptual
judgements by itself: "Thus sight would prove fallible were one to attempt to judge by sight what a
colored thing was or where it was" (Aquinas 1951:275). According to one recent estimate, the retina
contains 100 million nerve cells capable of about 10 billion processing operations per second. The
hyper-stimulus of modern visual culture from the nineteenth century to the present day has been
dedicated to trying to saturate the visual field, a process that continually fails as we learn to see and
connect ever faster.
in other words, visual culture does not depend on pictures themselves but the modern tendency to
picture or visualize existence. This visualizing makes the modern period radically different from the
ancient and medieval worlds. While such visualizing has been common throughout the modern
period, it has now become all but compulsory. This history might be said to begin with the visualizing
of the economy in the eighteenth century by François Quesnay, who said of his "economic picture"
of society that it "brings before your eyes certain closely interwoven ideas which the intellect alone
would have a great deal of difficulty in grasping, unravelling and reconciling by the method of
discourse" (Buck-Morss 1989:116). Quesnay in effect expresses the principle of visualizing in
general-it does not replace discourse but makes it more comprehensible, quicker and more
effective. Visualizing has had its most dramatic effects in medicine, where everything from the
activity of the brain to the heartbeat is now transformed into a visual pattern by complex
technology.
Visual culture is new precisely because of its focus on the visual as a place where meanings are
created and contested. Western culture has consistently privileged the spoken word as the highest
form of intellectual practice and seen visual representations as second-rate illustrations of ideas.
The emergence of visual culture develops what W.J.T. Mitchell has called "picture theory," the sense
that some aspects of Western philosophy and science have come to adopt a pictorial, rather than
textual, view of the world. If this is so, it marks a significant challenge to the notion of the world as
a written text that dominated so much intellectual discussion in the wake of linguistics- based
movements such as structuralism and poststructuralism. In Mitchell's view, picture theory stems
from "the realization that spectatorship (the look, the gaze, the glance, the practices of observation,
surveillance, and visual pleasure) may be as deep a problem as various forms of reading
(decipherment, decoding, interpretation, etc) and that 'visual experience' or 'visual literacy' might
not be fully explicable in the model of textuality" (Mitchell 1994:16). While those already working
on visual media might find such remarks rather patronizing, they are a measure of the extent to
which even literary studies have been forced to conclude that the world-as-a-text has been replaced
by the world-as-a-picture. Such world-pictures cannot be purely visual, but by the same token, the
visual disrupts and challenges any attempt to define culture in purely linguistic terms.
5.WHAT IS VISUAL MEDIA? TYPES OF VISUAL MEDIA – FOLK AND
PERFORMING ART FORMS, THEATRE, DRAWING, PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY,
FILM AND TELEVISION
Introduction

‘Media’ means plural form of medium and medium means communication, and it means mode of expression.
The word ‘media’ derives its meaning from the Latin medium, ‘which means in the middle’. In media
entrepreneurship the media, refers to traditional mass communication system and content generators as
well as other technologies for mediated human speech. This would include traditional publishing
(newspapers, periodicals, or books), traditional electronic media (broadcasting, broadband, cable, or
satellite), motion pictures, video gaming, recorded music, advertising, and adaptations of the Internet for
any of these media.

‘Media’ (plural of medium) means ‘that by which something is done, Thus media refers to various means of
communication. Media aims to reach a very large population, such as the entire population of a country. The
notion of “mass media” was generally restricted to print media up until the Second World War, when radio,
television and video were introduced.

Media passes certain characteristics which Compromises both technical and institutional methods of
production and distribution. It also involves the commodification of symbolic form as well as separate
contexts the production and reception of information. Its “reach to those for removed, information
distribution, a one to many form of communication, whereby products on mass production are disseminated
to a great quantity of audiences, however different media having its particular characteristics on the basis of
accessibility, reach , and audience.

Media effects on society to much byplaying a role and acting as informer of facts to the society. Media play
important role in democracy as watch dog helping in the establishment of democracy and safeguard the
existing values in the democracy and it entertain the public by way of music, drama, films, dance, etc. Not
only Media useful society but also for business marketing in which their product introduced to society
through media and ultimately it result in economical growth of nation, and media educate people.

Generally media can be classified in three categories, first Print Media which includes Newspapers,
Magazines, Booklets and Brochures, House Magazines, Periodicals or Newsletters, Direct Mailers, Handbills
or Flyers, Billboards, Press Releases, Books. Second type is Electronic Media which includes Television, Radio,
and Films. Third types of media are New Age Media includes Mobile Phones, Computers, and Internet.

The phrase Media began to be use in the 1920, the notion of mass media was generally restricted to print
media up until the post Second World War, when radio, television and video were introduced. Due to
development inscience and technology, different types of media originated accordingly in different stages of
history of the world as; Print media including books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc. originated from
the late 15th century. Recordings including gramophone records, magnetic tapes, cassettes, cartridges, CDs,
DVDs etc. originated from the late 19th century and Cinema about 1900. Radio came into existence from
about 1910 and Television find its place from about 1950,Internet from about 1990, and Mobile phones from
about 2000.

Media also broadly classified in two types visual and non-visual on the basis of its nature, scope, and
effectiveness on the society.

As for concern to Indian media, it start journey by establishing first printing press in 1674 in Bombay. Other
types of media took its place in India in various stages like radio broadcasting began in 1923 andTelevisionin
India started with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi in 1959, The first Indian film released in India
was Shree Pundalik in 1912. Internet came in India with the launch of the Educational Research Network
(ERNET) in 1986, Jyoti Basu Chief Minister of West Bengal, made the first mobile phone call in India to the
then Union Telecom Minister Sukhram in August 1995.

Characteristics of Media

John Thompson of Cambridge University has identified the following characteristics of media:

i. Compromises both technical and institutional methods of production and distribution. This is evident
throughout the history of the media from print to the internet, each suitable for commercial utility.

ii. Involves the commodification of symbolic forms, as the production of material relies on its ability to
manufacture and sell large quantities of the work. Just as radio station rely on its time sold to advertisements;
newspapers rely for the same reasons on its space.

iii. Separate contexts between the production and reception of information.

iv. Its “reach to those ‘for removed’ in time and space, in comparison to the production”.

v. Information distribution, a “One to many” form of communication, whereby products on mass

production are disseminated to a great quantity of audiences.

Origin and Development of Media

Media helps the people to connect to each other, due to the development in media “brings the globe into
our glance”. To find out what are the factors involved for the origin and development of media, which is also
known as public media.

In the previous days, drama was performed to attract the gathering of the people in the ancient culture.
Drama was form of media communicate larger gathering of the people. It was used to creating social
awareness and has also provided people with an easy way of living life.

Media started to develop as early as 3300 BC; when the Egyptians perfected the hieroglyphics. The writing
system was based on symbols. Later, in 1500BC the Semites devised the alphabets with consonants. It was
around 800 BC that the vowels were introduced into the alphabet by the Greeks. Manifestation of thoughts.
Though the written script initiated the concept of communication through literature. The rulers of ancient
and medieval ages communicated their policies and other acts of velour and their generous grants to the
public through the inscriptions install in various parts of their empire. The famous Ashokan Inscriptions of
third century BC is branded example for this type of communication through media. Invention of printing
press and the paper revolutionized the system of communication.

Later media come in the form of the printed books after the invention of the printing press. In china fist dated
printed book called as ‘Diamond Sutra’ printed in the year 868 AD but speed of the printing was very slow
reason was the slow spread of literacy

Print media started in the Europe in the middle age. John Gutenberg’s invention in the printing press resulted
mass production of the book, he printed the first book in 15th century.It gives rise to the form of the mass
communication which help to publication of books and newspapers on a large quantity than previously
possible to the public.

The first book that ever printed was ‘Gutenberg Bible’. In 1468 A.D. William Caxton produced a book with
the first printed advertisement in England. By the year 1500 A.D. two million copies of books were printed in
these countries. In the next hundred years, the printing rose to two hundred million copies.5

Though the newspapers originated in the year 1612,but it took until the 19th Century to reach a mass
audience directly.Due to the invention of stem printing, it was possible large scale printing of newspapers
and distribution over wide geographical area.
Samuel Morse was set the first telegraph line in 1844. First transatlantic cable was established in the year
1858 and become easy to the people to communicate to each other. Communication revolution brought by
the invention of telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in the year 1876, by using telephone peoples were chat
easily with friends and relative across the globe.

George Eastman invented the photographic film in the year 1885, the film developed by Eastman helped
Gilbert Grosvenor to introduce photograph in ‘National Geographic’ in the year 1899.

Guglielmo Marconi invented radio in the year 1894 and it worked on the transmission of electronic waves.
In coming days radio was main source of information and entertainment for the public.

John Logie Baird was invented television in the year 1925. It was first transmission in the year 1927 by the
Phil Farnsworth, in the year 1932 Walt Disney produced the World’s first full color film named as “flower and
trees”. In result of this invention and popularity gain by the television during 1950 it become part of the
American Household.

In 20th century internet introduced, and email technology developed during the 1979. In the 1990, Tim
Berners Lee brought idea of WWW(World Wide Web) The world is now at the fingertips. With the click of
button one can search for anything he wants.

Actually the term media started to use from the 1920, initially term media was restricted to the only print
media until post Second World War, after the World War only radio, television and video were introduced.

Development in the technology during the 20th century, growth of media occurred particularly it allowed
printing large scale copies within a short time; hence books and newspapers at low coast available to the
large public become possible.

Radio and television helps to the electronic duplication of information for the first time. Electronic media like
radio and television become very popular among the public because they provided both information and
entertainment, these electronic media its color and sound engages the viewer and listener, it was easier for
the general public to passive watch TV or listen to radio than to actively read.

TYPES OF VISUAL MEDIA

1. Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type (selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading,
adjusting spaces in between letters), type design, and modifying type glyphs (illustration techniques)

2. GRAPHIC DESIGN

Print or electronic forms of visual information, as for an advertisement, publication, or website.

3. INFORMATIONAL GRAPHICS

Visual representation of information which conveys an otherwise intricate source of data. These include
graphs, charts, maps, and other informative forms

4. CARTOONS

Sketch or drawing, usually humorous, as in a newspaper or periodical, symbolizing, satirizing, or caricaturing

some action, subject, or person of popular interest.

5. PHOTOGRAPHY

The process or ART of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemical action of light or
of other forms of radiant energy, as x-rays, gamma rays, or cosmic rays
6 IMAGE FROM MOTION PICTURES ( FILM)

A sequence of consecutive pictures of objects photographed in motion by a specially designed camera

(motion-picture camera) and thrown on a screen by a projector (motion-picture projector) in such rapid
succession as to give the illusion of natural movement

7 IMAGE FROM TELEVISION AND VIDEO

The broadcasting of a still or moving image, image via radiowaves to receivers that project a view of the
image on a picture tube. A program, movie, or the like, that is available commercially on videocassette.
Digitally, it can also be available on compact discs, or stored as files in the computer or internet.

8 IMAGE FROM COMPUTER

images derived from an electronic device designed to accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and
logical operations at high speed, and display the results of these operations

9 IMAGE FROM NETWORKED INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA

Images derived from the combined use of several media, as sound and full-motion video in computer
applications with internet connection

Electronic media is kind of media which requires the user to utilize an electric connection to access it. It is
also known as ‘Broadcast Media’. It includes television, radio, and new-age-media like internet, computers,
telephones, etc.

TELEVISION

Unlike other form of mass media, television has now become one of the most powerful media of mass
communication. With a modest beginning in the 1930s, it has grown into a massive network of mass
information and mass entertainment in the world today. The attraction of visualness of the medium, the
capacity to beam images of actual events, peoples and places is so great that people remain glued to the TV
set for hours.

There is new development in networking technology of satellite and cable television. Millions watch the live
coverage of important happenings in recent times through many satellites in space which are linked via cable
to the TV at home. Audience now has multiple choices ranging from news and information to entertainment
of a wide variety.

Television appeals both the auditory and visual senses, and hence it is an important communication device
as it beholds the attention of the audience. For many people, it is impossible to imagine a life without their
television sets, be it the daily news, or even the soap operas. Television has become an advertising hub where
advertisers are ready to spend huge amounts for an ad of few seconds, especially for programs with high
viewership. An example would be, super bowl season. It offers various programs to appeal the masses of
different age groups. It is a popular means of communication which provided both information and
entertainment. This category also includes electronic media like movies, CDs and DVDs as well as the
electronic gadgets.

Films

Films are considered a major mass medium because of their mass appeal and influence on society. ‘Film’ is a
term that encompasses motion pictures or individual projects, as well as the field in general. The origin of
term ‘films’ came from ‘photographic film’ (also called film stock).It was historically the primary medium for
recording and displaying motion picture.

Films are produced by recording the movements of people and objects with ‘camera’ or creating them using
‘animation’ technique and ‘special effects’. They comprise a series of individual frames. When these images
are shown rapidly in succession, the illusion of motion is given to viewer. Flickering between frames is not
seen due to an effect known as ‘persistence of vision’ whereby the eyes retain a visual image for a fraction
of second after the sources has been removed.

Films are considered by many to be an important art form. Films entertain educate, enlighten an inspire
audience. A film is artifact created by specific culture, which reflect that culture, and in turn, affect them. Any
film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the additional of dubbing of subtitles that translate
the film’s message.

Radio

Broadcasting is the distribution of sound to a number of recipients, ‘listeners’ that belong to large group.
This group may be the public in general or relatively large audience within the public. Radio broadcasting
forms a very large segment of the mass media. The term ‘broadcast’ was coined by early radio engineers
from the mid Western United States. Radio programs are distributed through radio broadcasting over
frequency bands that are highly regulated by the All India Radio. Such regulations include determination of
the width of the band, range license, types of receiver and transmitters used and acceptable content. Digital
radio may transmit multiplexed programing, with several channels compressed into one ensemble.

Notions of Radio Network have been incepted in the 1920s in India. The Network has expanded a great deal
and it offers a daily service for many hours transmitting News, Comments, Songs Music, Comedies, Thriller,
and Sports besides special programs for children, women, youth and farmers. One of the best advantages
that radio has over other media is that it can serve and entertain the audience who are otherwise occupied.
For instance, people can listen to it while working at home, in the fields and factories, and also while
travelling. Radio has a significant reach. A considerable number of Americans tune into radio every week
while on their way to work. Advertising on the radio with catchy jingles and phrases is tried and tested means
of communication. Radio lost its popularity with the boom of television. But till day, radio remains one of the
favorite means of electronic communication. Moreover, it is an interactive means of communication with all
dial-programs.

6.NEW MEDIA AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTS

New Age Media

With the advent of internet, we are now enjoying the benefit of high technology mass media, which is not
only faster than the old school mass media, but also has a widespread range. Mobile phones, computers, and
internet are often referred to as the new-age media. Internet has opened up several new opportunities for
mass communication which includes email, websites, e-forums, e-books, blogging, internet TV and many
others which are booming today. Internet has also started social networking sites which have redefined mass
communication all together. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had made communication to the
masses all the more entertaining, interesting and easier.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phone were introduced in Japan in 1979 but became a mass media only in 1998 when the first
downloadable ringing tones were introduced in Finland. Soon most form of media content were introduced
one mobile phone, and today total values of media consumed on mobile towers over that of internet content.
The mobile media content includes mobile music which includeringing tone, ring back tones, true tones,
MP3files, Karaoke, music video, music streaming services, etc. mobile gaming and various news,
entertainment and advertising services. In Japan mobile phone are very popular.

Similar to the internet, mobiles are also interactive media, like email on the internet. The top application on
mobile is also personal massaging service, but text massaging is used by many people. Practically all internet
services and applications exists have similar cousins on mobile, from search to multiplayer games to virtual
worlds to blogs. Mobile has several unique benefits which many mobile media pundits claim that mobile is a
more powerful carried and always connected communication device. Mobile has the best audience accuracy
and is the only mass media with a build in payment channel available to every user without any credit cards
or payable account or even an age limit.

Mobile phone has become a boom to mankind. It has made communication possible at any time, and from
anywhere. Now a day, a smart device like mobile phone is not only used for interaction, but also for other
technical utilities like operating pumps from remote location etc. You can also get alert of your monetary
transactions on a mobile phone. To have a interneton mobile was a myth, a decade ago. Today, one can’t
stay in touch with the whole world via internet on mobile phones.

Computer

With the invention of computer the impossible has become possible. We virtually get information about
everything from pin to piano with the help of computer. It has added speed and multimedia to the
information which was earlier available only in the print format. Anyone can voice their opinions through
computers. Computers have added a new breakthrough in the mass media by cutting edge technology.

Internet

This is most important devoice of the new age media. The discovery of internet can be called the biggest
invention in mass media. In earlier days, news used to reach people only with the morning newspaper, but
today, live updates reach us simultaneously as the events unfold. For example, the royal wedding of Kate
Middleton and Prince William was watched live on the internet by millions of people around the world.
Internet has inspired interaction and connectivity through its social networking medium. It has become one
of the core means of mass communication. One cannot think of leading the life without it.