Visual Vs Symbolic Language

In this image; woman, man, all ethnic backgrounds, a hat, chairs line up, lights, people waiting, looking around, a pair of glasses, warm clothing, waiting patiently, hands together, praying, they all have been waiting for long, waiting for their turn, rows and columns of people sitting right next to each other,  talking, a room full of people.
People have to endure extreme hardship when it comes to unemployment. Many have waited and waited for their turn, for their chance, for a job that will support them, that will at least provide them with a meal. In the photo we see that many people of all ethnic backgrounds have gather in a room of many rows and columns of chairs waiting patiently for their turn. Some look like they have waited for a long time. Since morning possibly, and constantly looking around, talking to their neighbor. In the area out of focus we can also see how one of them have her/his hands cross in hope of getting something, of getting somewhere. The main character in photo, though it looks like the man is asleep because of his head is down leaning against his hands, he portrays an image of someone that has persevere the long waiting, praying the today will be the day he will get something. Most of us have already experience the long waiting at the DMV office, just to get some document that it takes a few minutes to process, imagine how it feels to wait hours, days, weeks even months to get a job.

Visual Thinking Research

Me

My Brother's

I challenged my brother to do the puzzles with me but with a time limit. I wanted to employ the "perceptual speed" test. We are constantly challenging each other all the time so this was a pretty fun activity. We started with "The Cat" puzzle to start off easy or so I thought. It didn't took me long to solve the puzzle yet my bother was struggling still. I'm way faster than him because every time he played a video game such as "Resident Evil" where puzzle solving, dealing with riddles, and finding clues to complete a mission was necessary, i was the one who solve them all, so i got used to it. My patter-seeking perception was/is always active, constantly filling in missing pieces of information, finding ways to fill those missing pieces in, matching objects, categorizing and so on to solve the game.Everyone is constantly doing it too, they're just not aware of it. Though i finish mine first with an 18 as an answer and my bother kept getting 16 somehow every time, my answer was wrong. I kept the answer on my image and my brothers' too. On my brother's image you can see that the number was originally 16 till after he realize he wasn't counting the inside of the eyes that he change it to 18. It was until i looked at the answer that i found out the correct answer was 20. So i went back and looked at the puzzle again compering my answer with the answer sheet to see where i had miss some information. It was on the tail. I initially counted 5 triangles but there are 7. 

Me

My Brother's

The challenge was not over yet. Our next challenge was "The Quarrelsome Neighbors", quite an interesting puzzle. So we did the same thing, we set a time limit to see who was better.  So i begin with what i usually do; i categorize and match the information provided. Then i find more details to fill out the missing pieces. This puzzle was more challenging and it took me more time to figure it out . At the end it was me again who won. My brother in other hand just got frustrated so he decided to looked at my answer when i went to get a glass of water. Thought the answer wasn't exactly the same as in the answer sheet it still worked. There was more than one answer.

Feature Hierarchy & Visual Search

2010 Taipei International Floral Exposition Logo

At a simple glance of the image, we are capable of grasping the intended meaning in seconds, though not completely. Through our visual search - feature channel hierarchies - we get a general overview about the intended meaning. The difference in color represents variety, the human shape like represents people, the number of people, a community and their placement, unity, therefore the unity of a diverse community. "The logo represent human celebrations and shared values". The result could differ if any of this elements were to be change. For example, just by changing the color to just black and white, the interpretation might differ because color was excluded from our feature channels. Our attention is bias and if any feature channel is not present at that moment then its excluded. As a visual communication major my feature channels are always active. My area of professional interest its just like the logo, it varies. But by unifying the variety I'm capable of creative successful designs.

Top-Down Visual Processing

McDonald’s Large Coffee: Outdoor puzzle

This outdoor poster was turned into a large interactive push puzzles that consumers could solve in order to “sort your head”. This was done to promote McDonald’s Large Coffee for only 1 Euro. Just as the advertisement has successfully accomplish the action, dragging consumers attention and cognitive goal getting the consumer to understand the idea through visuals, Visual Communication, my existing area of study, has the same goals. The Ad's goal is to entice consumers to approach, solve the puzzle and see the final results. We are strongly bias beings when we are attempting to accomplish something. In the Ad, to solve the puzzle, we have to look at each piece individually, prioritizing each of them and moving along accordingly. Putting the features such as the eyes, lips, nose etc. of the woman according to what we know is the appropriate place. Doing massive eye movement - active vision -  even though we are not always aware of it, to accomplish our task. Beginning with short “fixations” to get overview, then longer fixations in concert with goals and current tasks, look-aheads to enable future actions. Reconstructing the McDonald's logo, looking at each color and how they are related to each other while constantly re-link between action goal, dragging the right piece and cognitive goal, making sense. Visual communication does not differ. We get the overview of what visual communication is about. We begin an action goal, such as where we need to go and when we need to do it. Along with a cognitive goal, what we need to do, how do we do it, and why are we doing it. We also do our short “fixations” to get the overview of the class, then our longer fixations to keep us focus, and our look-aheads to what's next while constantly re-linking between actions and cognition so we accomplish our goal and graduate in time.