When words don’t say it all

The inclusion of the ‘face with tears of joy’ emoticon in the Oxford Dictionary as 2015’s Word of the Year was a watershed moment in the transition phase between written and visual communication. The recognition given to an image as a legitimate word by a renowned institution marks the beginning of a unique coming together of visuals and text to create a new and enriched paradigm of communication.

As words get shorter and shorter, and emoticons become the new method to convey emotions, one cannot help but wonder if time has started rolling its wheels backwards to the world of pidgin languages.

Faster processing : Mike Parkinson, founder of Billion Dollar Graphics, in his article ‘The Power of Visual Communication’ stated that human beings process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

Visual communication is processed at lightning speeds by the human mind. Furthermore, while we may sometimes get confused by written words overlapping each other, the presence of persistence of vision, that is the imprint left by an image till another one emerges, helps us to join together and interpret images. This is the fundamental principle on which media such as cinema are based.

Mass reach : The visual medium enables instant communication with a huge audience. One of the prime reasons for the success of the visual medium in the 21st century is that it serves as the ultimate ally to the vast platform of the internet. The web being the platform and the visual medium being the preferred choice of communication, content is being generated as well as consumed at great speed.

Greater retention : It has been seen that information shared via a visual medium impacts the human mind more, leading to greater retention. Anatomically as well, humans are wired to process visual concepts better, with 40 per cent of nerve fibres of the brain being connected to the retina.

Loss during transformation much less : Enjoying at Tomorrowland, the biggest electronic music festival, and want to let the world know? What seems the more effective choice? A sentence or a Snapchat video of the actual jumping-in-the-air session? Indeed, the intensity of the experience gets watered down as one tries to put it into the written word. In terms of spontaneity, visual communication definitely scores higher.

Visual communication, starting from the bison paintings in the caves of Altamira, has existed for over 30,000 years. The history of the written form is of a mere 4000 years. But if visual communication was such an evolved medium, why did the medium of language arrive in the first place?

This was because knowledge, in a structured form, had to be stored and passed down from generation to generation to ensure that the accumulated wisdom is not lost. Also, communicating a specific emotion or message in its intrinsic meaning was much easier through language.

In today’s world, however, the amount of data being generated has achieved such epic proportions that the textual medium is unable to keep it in control any more. It needs the visual medium as a support mechanism. Stickers and emoticons, for instance, can still not be used to convey meaningful sentences due to the probability of associating multiple meanings to an image (the eggplant emoji is used to convey meanings that are anything but vegetable-related), but they are undoubtedly a preferred medium of communication for the youth who have resorted to the rudimentary, yet creative, way of visual communication as it opens up possibilities to express numerous thoughts through different combinations of a few images.

The National Center of Biotechnology Information has stated that the average online customer’s attention span has come down to eight seconds from 12 seconds in the year 2000. That is officially less than the attention span of a goldfish!

The need for visual communication stems from the fact that communication these days is driven by two things: immediacy and impact. While earlier, a film, a book or a work of art was conjured after a painstaking process that took a lot of time and effort, giving it a lot of time to evolve inside the mind, these days any emotion or feeling, before being felt, is immediately expressed. Standing in front of a beautiful sunset? Instagram. Feeling angry at the government? Post on Facebook. Today, visually stimulating content is the way to go forward as the speed of interpretation and expression is much higher, which leaves advertisers much more time to bombard the audience with information to push the customer further down the path to purchase.

In view of these changes, several start-ups and social networks are going the extra mile to offer users stickers and emoticons that they can relate to. Blackberry Messenger continued to enjoy extreme popularity despite the advent of the cross-platform WhatsApp simply because of the sheer love that the tech-addicted generation had for BBM’s emoticons. Hike Messenger became all the rage in India as its stickers offered a very India-specific flavour. With Indian figures, catchphrases and more, finally the user in the country was able to express in a perfectly localised way that wasn’t just more appealing but also more eloquent. After all, the fun of fighting with your friend using a doodle that shows a “sardarji” pointing an accusing finger and saying “jhoot” can’t really be matched by a text-based message. Besides chat platforms, even social networks are adding fun ‘stickers’ on their platforms.

Given the enthusiasm with which consumers and Indians in particular are embracing visual communication over text-based messages, there is certainly a palpable shift in the way we express our emotions and seek to draw responses from friends and followers.

As social media pervades every aspect of our existence and as the need for quick and immediate expression spirals, visuals are sure to take over traditional text-based formats of exchanging ideas and feelings. The time to come will certainly be the epitome of the age-old adage, “a picture can speak a thousand words” and emoticons and stickers will help us better convey our love, disdain, excitement and anger.

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