THE RVJ - Developing Visual Language

I took my influences for developing visual language from artists such as Georgia O’keeffe, her pictures are elegantly simple and although I don’t have my study surrounded in her works of art, I certainly can appreciate them and find meaning in her quote which is a particular favourite of mine ''I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower significant to me at the particular time.’’ It’s about finding significance within your work; it may not need to make sense, or be visually aesthetic to others but it speaks YOUR experience and tells a story for that time.





A piece of art/photograph can speak on so many levels for itself, it can communicate many emotions and although verbally it is not communicating with you, you can visualize its meaning and purpose instead. It’s a way to extract opinions and creativity with how you see it, and subconsciously you can get an immediate perception without a distraction of speech/text.

However visual thinking doesn’t just have to be limited to images but being creative and organising text opens up different elements when using written language.

Need to get in the habit of using visuals rather than textual to represent language, connections become visible when linking your thoughts and putting it down on paper. I researched Tony Buzan’s mind mapping and downloaded an IMindMap5 trial to put this into practice.