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Book Review: The Influence Of Visual Literacy

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The Influence of Visual Literacy
Nancy Sounthornchote
CGD 218
Instructor Day
February 16, 2015

The Influence of Visual Literacy

Brian Kennedy, the director of Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art, strongly believes that visual literacy is the understanding to construct meaning from images. Kennedy argues that visual literacy is not a skill, but a structure of critical thinking and a universal language that is imperative in today’s digital age. The textbook defines visual literacy as the competent creation and consumption of visual messages. These activities require not only the physical ability of sight but the cognitive skills of attention, perception, critical thinking, evaluation, and synthesis of other sensory information and experiences. Both of these definitions for visual literacy are quite different in my opinion. The book definition tells us that we are just creating and consuming these images competently. Brian Kennedy’s description primarily gives us an understanding that we are constructing meaning from everything that we see.
Brian Kennedy’s definition of visual literacy is more accurate in today’s world. Having the ability to establish meaning from images is exactly what I envision when I think of visual literacy. If I look at a painting, I immediately start to think what does this picture mean? What is the artist trying to convey in this painting? In the video, he talks about how we understand sign language before printed words.
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