When reading about visual literacy I found the most interesting definition to be the one introduced by Fransecky and Debes in 1972. Their definition reads that visual literacy is “the group of vision competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning” (IVLA, 2004). To me, this means that no matter what media people consume, they will almost always derive their own unique meaning from said media, and how it’s normal to derive different meanings compared to others. There are a plethora of ways to do this, including things such as characterizing the types of shapes or colors used in a graphic to invoke a certain emotion. With the new world of technology there are more ways to utilize visual literacy. Oblinger (2003) states various ways on how technology has changed the use of visual literacy. One of the most interesting ways is how “doing is more important than knowing”. While someone may have the knowledge of something, there’s no point in sitting on that knowledge without demonstrating it. By demonstrating knowledge through visual literacy, artists can illustrate their knowledge rather than keeping it to themselves. Jacob Lawrence is a prime example of this. He had knowledge of racism and the depiction of African Americans in America at the time, and used that knowledge to create moving art. He used simplistic shapes and primary colors to depict the root of these issues to illustrate how these issues are at the root of the United States.
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