Designing Visual Lingo

A belated link pack with short ruminations: As the saying goes, a picture can convey a thousand words.  Static photos can communicate unexpected concepts like these genetic portraits.

I’ve been drawn to several fun sites over the past year that reflect dynamic and even interactive ways of constructing (new) meanings through images rather than words.  This video series from Mysteries of the Vernacular (one sample above) and TEDEd animations reinterpret simultaneous verbal dialogue.  Looking at one word Pinterest boards is like over-hearing/over-reading a gestalt conversation about what something means to someone — take for example Halloween.  On the more experimental end, vizlingo translates each word of a sentence into stringed video clips that can be sent as a message.  I just typed in “i need more hours in my day” and it made me smile.  And a final link share, the non-verbal and non-textual online game WAY pushes intentionally at an “alternative language” by challenging two anonymous strangers to learn and communicate through a common visual, gestural lingo.