Through all the brevity and impact-fulness that comes with images, there is a clear gap for words to bridge. Pictures came first, and are universal when paralleled against strict language barriers. With interactivity becoming more widespread, there is much to consider as information becomes more of a two-way communication practice. Information should be built upon in order to be open-access to anyone.
The way the field is continuing to evolve and adapt to the newer technologies creates an expanding divide between adopters and traditionalists. This past Saturday I was able to go to the Iconathon event at Duke, and the entire premise behind The Noun Project’s work is to bring information to the public domain through singular icons. We took concepts like Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Crowd Sourcing and then worked in small groups to create monochromatic scalable images. The sheer complexity of thought and planning that must go into each image is astounding.
Creative ways of disseminating information is just another example of media convergence. It incorporates a lot of different fields, and can be really intimidating when thinking big picture. For me, I find it to be more comforting to view the smaller details and nuances found in making words more aesthetically pleasing.
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