OM2 Corinne Goode

Biography

Corinne Goode is has recently completed a degree in Bachelor of Design (Visual Communications) at the University of Technology Sydney. Corinne’s work has been largely involved with the production and integration of video into new media applications. She has a passion for production design and has been involved in a number of short films, including 2005 AFI [Australian Film Institute] nominee Jabe Babe: A Heightened Life. Corinne’s enthusiasm for moving image content will see her pursuing these areas of design well into the future.

A thousand words.

An essay by C.G.

{5th of July 2005}

Introduction.

We’ve all heard it—there’s no denying it: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This is never more true than in the world of graphic design. However, graphic design professionals are rarely bestowed with such an abundant word limit when they are explaining and analysing design work. This essay examines the tenuous relationship between verbal and visual communication, and more specifically, the need for the verbalisation of ‘visual language’, and its associated problems.

The need to communicate.

As human society has become more complex, we have had to leave behind the grunts and squeaks of the animal world and develop systems of language that can be used not only to ensure survival, but also to express ideas and emotions, to tell stories and remember the past, and to negotiate with one another.

As the world became more complex still, the pool of available words was no longer adequate. Shakespeare, for example, added more new words, phrases and idioms to the English language than has been added by all writers in the 400 years since. Western society made the transition from an oral to a literary culture with the invention of the printing press and the subsequent proliferation of written texts, which allowed communication between all literate levels of society and even between different societies.

As new concepts and technologies rapidly continued to emerge, modern language faced the recurrent challenge of providing a vocabulary in which these innovations could be identified, discussed and criticised to the point where literary language was stretched to its limits.