Visual Literacy in Non-Western Cultures

Miltenburg, Anne. “Visual Literacy in Non-Western Cultures,” in Morf 3 (2005). http://anne miltenburg.com/morf/ (accessed February 10, 2011).

This article was originally published in a Dutch-language design magazine. While it is not a traditional journal article, it describes issues that affect how non-Western cultures interpret visuals developed by Western cultures. The author notes that non-Western cultures often have higher illiteracy rates than Western cultures, and are often have limited exposure to visuals developed by Western cultures. The author cites research on visual literacy by scholar and art-director Andreas Fuglesang. Fuglesang found that people who are visually illiterate have trouble reading two-dimensional images like photos and illustrations. This translates into difficulty perceiving differences in shape, size, height, and perspective. As many non-Western cultures convey information through oral means, people in these cultures may also be less familiar in the use of visuals to convey information. In this article, Miltenburg outlines areas where non-Western cultures have trouble interpreting visuals, specifically regarding photos, depth perception, portraying movement, object identification, cropped images, and illustrations. Miltenburg also discusses the use of color, as the significance of various colors can vary from culture to culture, impacting the interpretation of the visual. Miltenburg cites Fuglesang’s research throughout her article, and provides a citation to his book Applied Communication in Development Countries, Ideas and Observations (as this article was originally written in Dutch, the English title may be slightly different). The primary drawback to this source is that it relies on the author’s interpretation of Fuglesang’s research—there isn’t any new research described in this article. Also, Fuglesang’s book is out of print, so it would be hard to analyze his research directly. I also noted that Miltenburg describes Fuglesang as Norwegian in this article, and as Swedish in a different article. This discrepancy does shed some doubt as to the credibility of this piece.