Visual Glossary

1. Looking

 

Looking has many definitions, depending on how you “look” at the word it could be mean simply your eyes glancing at a object nearby, “1: to make sure or take care (that something is done)2: to ascertain by the use of one's eyes <look what I brought you>”. In terms of authority can looking be like the photo shows a government watching over you with mechanical eyes? Usual when using the work “looking” it is to direct someone’s attention to something. The word “looking” can also take on a more complex meaning such as in art to what the photograph directs your eye too. The pattern your eyes follow in a painting. Sometimes looking can be directed to a specific direction with arrows and even driving, companies and traffic authorities have different methods for directing our attention to specific advertising or traffic signals. Even websites are designed with looking in mind.

2. Visual culture

            Visual culture, from my understanding of it, is defined as the way a visual piece looks like at specific time period that reflects the culture of the civilization that created it. “examination of imagery produced by a culture in terms of its use and construction or reinforcement of that culture in a visual form.” This apple logo I believe came out in the 1980’s which is a retro time period the logo (which actually resembles a gay pride flag) is a reflection of the1980s when the logo would have been in style. Currently the apple logo is very modern and clean cut just like the style of our time.

3) Photographic truth

Photographic truth may actually be a very simple concept that simply states how real photography is. This photo which was actually a very controversial advertisement that “Dove” released on how distorted the image of beauty is. The model for the add was actually a unattractive women then after some makeup and \hair done the model is transformed finally the Photoshop is done which actually maybe the deadliest culprit to photographic truth.  The idea is what can we believe? Even photos can be altered.

 

4) Icon

An icon is something that represents something else, the fish which suppose to represent Jesus and Christianity when it was thought to be a pagan religion. Now the fish is a wide spread symbol or icon. The word icon can also mean something the represents a whole bunch of things  such a person being a “sex icon” the word icon can also have prestige factor to it like a company’s logo or its “icon” represents its quality.

5) Information design

Information design I believe is the way we use design to make information presentable in a very interesting way, instead of just presenting figures we can now present numbers and information with different interesting looking graphs which I believe is the basis of information design.“When the crafting of messages and meaning is so central to our lives, information design is not only important—it is essential.”   The idea is that information can longer just be presented in a boring way but rather with a more eye catching appeal. 

4c) Playstation 3, Grand theft auto, political statement, Controversy, GameStop, Rock star games, childrens game, adult game, Mature, paradox, cartoon, fox, Cat, Firefox   

6) I believe that Google does the most work of the search engines. Google is dominant with all its results although they can be general. Alta Vista seems to have a outdated logo but the results tend to gear towards education, Yahoo and Google are both the among the most popular but not so much for Alta vista which is not as popular.

13) three pieces of advice for people trying to conduct research on the web and trying to assess the validity and credibility of websites in general, is to check the websites name .com’s seem to be less valid then .org or .gov because they are most likely nonprofit websites., do the statistics or numbers seem realistic to be used as fact and where did the research come from?  Most of the time research tends to be most reliable if it is the least unbiased, usually from school websites (.edu) which have databases. 13.b) the visual content on the web can be altered with developments in “Photoshop” technology   the best way to check validity and credibility of visual content to think critically if the photo is possible. Second is to check the website it came from.