Mapping the Visually Literate Landscape

Visual literacy is the gateway to being able to read the signs and symbols of urban life. The city is ultimately an open book able to be read through the various pages it exists upon and access is granted based on levels of visual literacy.

It's just like, well, any other kind of literacy. It indicates who belongs and who does not. One marker for an increasingly developed nation is the literacy rate - the more people who can read, the more people who have access to the resources and materials designated for success. Employment, education and political access are all dependent on being able to understand and interpret the environment that surrounds us. Indeed, the dichotomy of who is in and who is out delineates a sense of identity and belonging in the urban context. Being able to read the city with a sense of accuracy and identification is vital to being a contributing member.

This idea of literacy and access manifests itself along several different lines throughout the culture wars. Especially in debates like the one over evolution and creationism, the mere act of understanding the other side and being able to 'read' it correctly is crucial to forming a coherent and effective discourse. That necessity also surfaces in the debate over global warming as well. Belonging and identity are founded in visual literacy and the battles for dominance with both will continue to be fought along a similar trajectory.

I am really fascinated by the ability to read signs and symbols in the context of in-groups, as if the symbols are able to read the viewer much in the same way. Advertisements, a huge source of text in the scope of visual literacy, are so often targeted towards specific groups and demographics. Messages are tailored to exactly what those groups want to see and hear and what has been proven to be appealing. The same thing goes for public art - a huge amount of research goes into framing the visual display so that it can be accurately 'read' by the right, presumably literate, audience. Often advertisements, murals, tags or other public visual displays are rejected by the diverse audiences that they serve for simply coming of as confusing. They are ultimately misread.

Diet Coke recently put out a campaign that has surfaced on billboards and busses around the urban center. On a plain black background, simple text says only, "Good Morning." Below is an image of a Diet Coke can wrapped in a paper coffee sleeve. Those with a certain literacy in urban symbols can interpret it as Diet Coke as the new cup of morning coffee, given a high caffeine content. This clearly targets current coffee drinkers who will relate to the imagery and perhaps find it cute or quirky. These are potentially people who take their coffee to go, the upwardly mobile without a lot of time in the morning. That group is in stark contrast to the rest of the urban dwellers exposed to the ad whose visual literacy rate is different when exposed to images like that. Indeed, the ability to read an advertisement like Diet Coke's indicates who has access to this idea or information and who does not.