Communication potential of pictorial illustrations

Summary

As readability studies have investigated factors which influence the reading difficulty of verbal text, so this study has been a beginning attempt to isolate the factors which influence the communication potential of illustrative material. It is interesting to note that as readability researchers have found a correlational relationship between idea density (number of different ideas per number of running words) and reading difficulty, so this study has shown an inverse relationship between complexity of an illustration and its effectiveness in communicating clearly. Similarly, as readability studies show that we must use words that are familiar to the reader, so we must present visual concepts in terms of the background of experience of the intended viewer. And as in constructing effective textual material we must organize our material logically, eliminating the unnecessary, so we must simplify the design of illustration, taking care, of course, not to lose the essential.