Silent Noise: Channel Noise in Visual Communications

Visual communications are disseminated across channels such as web-based channels, broadcast channels, print channels and others. Visual designers manipulate textual messages, photographs, charts and other graphic devices to create complex interrelating presentations. In doing so, designers become mediators of their clients’ messages. Communications theories from various related disciplines have shown that noise occurs within communications channels and can compromise the fidelity of messages. This paper relates various communications models to visual communications scenarios and finds similar occurrences of noise in visual communications design. We explore several subtopics, including visual noise within text, data graphics and visual noise created by interrelated objects within graphic layouts. Visual examples are shown illustrating occurrences of noise within each subtopic. Terminology and concepts are considered to enable visual designers to establish a body of knowledge relating to visual channel noise and to communicate them in a multidisciplinary forum.