Responding to the need she so clearly perceives, Ms. Dondis, a designer and teacherof broad experience, has provided a beginning text for art and design students and a basic text forall other students ;those who do not intend to become artists or designers but who need to acquirethe essential skills of understanding visual communication at a time when so much information isbeing studied and transmitted in non-verbal modes, especially through photography and film.Understanding through seeing only seems to be an obviously intuitive process. Actually, developingthe visual sense is something like learning a language, with its own special alphabet, lexicon, andsyntax. People find it necessary to be verbally literate whether they are "writers": or not; theyshould find it equally necessary to be visually literate, "artists" or not.This primer is designedto teach students the interconnected arts of visual communication. The subject is presented, not asa foreign language, but as a native one that the student "knows" but cannot yet "read." The analogyprovides a useful teaching method, in part because it is not overworked or too rigorously applied.This method of learning to see and read visual data has already been proved in practice, in settingsranging from Harlem to suburbia.Appropriately, the book makes some of its most telling pointsthrough visual means. Numerous illustrated examples are employed to clarify the basic elements ofdesign (teach an alphabet), to show how they are used in simple syntactic combinations ("See Janerun."), and finally, to present the meaningful synthesis of visual information that is a finishedwork of art (the apprehension of poetry...).
This primer is designed to teach students the interconnected arts of visualcommunication. The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that thestudent "knows" but cannot yet "read."