La visualizzazione nel processo di comunicazione. Tra scienza e arte

The drawing of a process or an action, or the communication of information about a process through graphic illustration, is now an open field of research and full of significant developments. At a time when the social system has broken down the barriers of verbal language, creating multiple interactions through a variety of alternative media, increasing attention is being paid to the development of visual communication techniques that quickly arise as a system of divulging efficiently and effectively. The graphic display, in fact, as the verbalization, generates a real language with precise rules of structuring and use. It becomes more and more complex the task of translating images into concepts and processes, combining together different types of competencies: those graphic and engineering to those in the psychology of perception to the artistic ones. This article aims to highlight the fundamental aspects of visual communication processes, paying attention the procedures for graphic translation of visual messages. Through extensive research, still in progress, were in fact collected many examples, in various fields related to visual representations of processes and of these have been critically analyzed a set of choices (representation methods, layouts, colors, font choices, etc.) in order to understand the possible structuring of a real-based language elements and reading mode widely shared. In the field of communication through visualization was here focused attention on a particular model that is related to the procedures - such as those in the operating instructions or mounting of objects, or indications of routes - or to those tasks that require explanations of actions in space. In this type of visual communication in fact the images have the property that must be arranged in a particular space-time configuration and require special skills in drawing and reading. The representation of these processes has been studied extensively and from different points of view, taking into account both the structure of the space-time configuration without of course neglecting the components purely aesthetic and graphic. The main objective of this study, based also on a didactic experience, is to identify the role of illustration in graphic communication processes, and to shed light on how the image affects learning skills compared to traditional verbal methods.