Fivos Spyrides

Paul Ekman

Visual Communication is the transportation of different ideas and information, in forms that can be clearly read or viewed. It is the communication within visual aid. Visual communication is made of various sectors, such as: Graphic Design, Illustration, Animation for Books, Prints, Magazines, interactive web design, short film, design for advertising, promotion, corporate identity, package design etc. It includes signs, typography, drawings, illustrations, color and generally everything that an eye can see and create a message. One of the messages that the idea of visual communication wants to pass to the audience is that, the exploration of the idea that a visual message text has a greater power to inform, educate or persuade people more easily. Whatever we see our brain retains better than anything written. The 60% of the population are visual learners. The visual way is faster and more efficient because the brain can store easily a photo instead of a thousand words. The assessment of a decent visual communication design is principally grounded on evaluating understanding by the audience. There are no universal references for stating what is beautiful and what is ugly so the evaluation must not be personal. By eliminating the two dimensional images, there are many other ways to express some information visually. For example, gestures, body language, animations, film etc. Visual communication by text is most of the times expressed by emoticons, and other digital images and it can be said that the use of emoticons can give stronger messages instead of a text. There are thousands of firms around the world. Implies that there are thousands of different logos representing each firm. All those simple shapes of logos that we see every day, they are not as simple as they look and they are not chosen randomly. If not all of them, most of them have a psychological work as a background. The different shapes in logos send various psychological messages. The use of circles, ovals and ellipses provide a positive emotional message. The use of a circular shape in a logo can give the message of love, friendship, community, relationship and unity. Squares and triangles give the feeling of stability and balance. They also make you think of strength, professionalism and efficiency. Triangles are most of the times tending to the side of power, science, religion and law. We also have vertical and horizontal lines. The vertical lines are representing the masculinity, the strength and the aggression while horizontal lines are expressing community, tranquility and calmness. When the designers want to show aggression or dynamic on their logos they use various angles and when they want to give the feeling of youth they use rounded lines. Here is where Gestalt theory appears to connect design with psychology. Gestalt theory explains how small and simple changes in a sentence, such as spacing can dramatically change the whole meaning of what we see.

Visual communication can profit significantly from what Gestalt theory offers.

For example it offers the context of understanding on which designers can base the design decisions. As Greg Bergmann stated in his book Notes On Graphic Design and Visual Communication “Gestalt perceptual factor build a visual frame of reference which can provide the designer with a reliable psychological basis for the spatial organization of the graphic information.” Since design, and more specifically visual communication, is related with psychology, I am forced to refer at the name of Paul Ekman. A human lie detector.

Paul Ekman was born in 15th of February 1934 in Washington D.C but he never lived there. He was raised in New Jersey. He is an American psychologist. He studied at the Adelphi University (1958), the University of Chicago and in New York University. His studies in psychology helped him to become the inventor of the study of different emotions and their relation to facial expressions. In the early years of Paul Ekman’s career, viewing the different ideas of semiotics and ethology influenced his method. He was mostly concentrated on gestures. During the 1960’s he

focused himself on the face and emotion, initiating a series of studies on expression and gesture. In 2001 he named by the American Psychological Association as one of the most influential people in the sector of psychology of the 20th century. In the rankings he was the number 59th out of 100 most mentioned psychologists. He was awarded as one of the top 100 most influential people of 2009 from the Times Magazine. In 2004 when he finished his duties as professor of the University of California after 30 years, where he was lecturing from 1974. After this he decided to translate all the researches that he had done up to that date into training tools, workshops and books, so that can be helpful to humanity. He formed the Paul Ekman Group PEG LLC, he wrote a book with the title EMOTIONS REVEALED recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life, he established online interactive training tools and workshops. When his book TELLING LIES 4th edition (first edition 1985) was published in 2009, he got many offers by different law enforcement groups to help them with the workshops that he provided and with the online training tools. The Micro Expression Training Tool (METT) helps the user, in less than an hour, to find concealed emotions not visible for most people without taking the training sessions. The Subtle Emotion Training Tool (SETT) helps the user, again in less than an hour, to find the first sign of when an emotion begins to make its appearance. These tools are proven useful not just to law and national security sectors but also to therapists, health professionals, salespersons, Human Recourses people and negotiators. These tools are working like symbol or logo machines. It is like while you are driving and you see the stop sign, you stop. Because your brain understands that, that particular sign is the stop sign and you get it without any words. The same thing is valid with these machines. For example when a national security agency interrogates a suspect, when that machine understand that the suspect is lying, it will say it. This is connected with visual communication because the machine will understand that the suspect is lying by his facial expressions. So since the face will give a message without the mouth speaking, this can be consider as a visual communication method.

He is famous for his test of emotions recognition, which was named Picture Of Facial Affect. The test was consisting of 110 black and white pictures of Caucasian actors representing the six universal emotions and the neutral expressions. Afterwards he established the Facial Acting Coding System, which made every facial expression official. F.A.C.S is a research tool useful for measuring any facial expression a human being can make. Each noticeable component of facial movement is termed as an Action Unit (AU).

The face is the most common symbol in our every day lives. It is the only

symbol, which can take so many different shapes (expressions). They say that the cover prepares the viewer for what is going to see behind it. Is like you are standing outside of a cinema and you wanted to choose a movie by its cover. Obviously you will choose the most attractive poster. Based on this we can see that even the face can offer this opportunity. A happy smile hides a happy person; a sad face covers a sad person and goes on. From our very early age until our last days and our last breath on

this planet we can see a face’s expression and we can immediately understand what that face want’s to show us. Happiness, sadness, anger, enthusiasm, fear, surprise, contempt, disgust, confusion, shame, focus, exhaustion, seduction, content, curious, depressed, disappointed, energetic, flirty and many others.

Another field of the studies of Paul Ekman are the micro-expressions. This

type of expressions is for the expressions that are lasting for less than a second (e.g. as we mentioned above: anger, fear, disgust, happiness etc.). Micro expressions are important because are helping us to improve our emotional intelligence by developing our skills of understanding the human face. The face can be seen as an icon, symbol, photo etc., which is showing what is in the back of that figure. When we see the Marlboro sign we are thinking immediately of cigarettes, when we see a bitten apple we are thinking of the biggest computer company and when we see a face with different gestures, Paul Ekman helps us to understand what is hiding behind of this face (which it can be seen either as vector or illustration or portrait). Our face is the label for what we are hiding inside us every minute. It is the only source to understand how people feel. He can be named as the human lie director due to his many projects and researches on how to understand the face with many details. He has searched for

hidden signs in human faces. He inspired the American TV show “Lie to me” which is a series about how the CIA and FBI agents interrogate the suspects and they understand there innocence through their facial expression. I am pointing this out to emphasize the fact that there are about six and a half billion people in the world all with different characteristics on their face. Every muscle that moves in our face is telling a story. When we lie the facial expression is the same. For example, the

Apple’s icon, you will see it and understand that is representing that computer company, no matter if you see it upside down, or in any other color.

Not only in the TV, but Ekman’s pioneer helped US forces in real life as well. CIA, FBI, US Army and other organizations in America used his pioneers for many of their investigations. New applications on his findings introduced by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Pixar, Affectiva and many other firms that are creating software with face and body recognition. Affectiva is a firm, which aims to create software that helps people. All programs are based on facial expressions, which are all created on Paul Ekman’s pioneer. The firm said that in the near future all software will be based on facial and emotional expressions. Another firm, which is in the same sector, is London based Real Eyes. Its CEO, Mr. Jaatma said: “Less of keyboards, less of using a mouse, more of users just being themselves. More devices and more applications will understand the face of the person” and he added, “Full body gestures tracking will enable more understanding of emotions and allow us to categorize behavior in places like shopping malls, casinos and transportation hubs”. These quotes can make us think of the future. The future of visual communication. Visual communication is the most natural form of human interaction. Before the invention of writing people were making paintings on rocks, leafs and cave walls to achieve a conversation, to tell a story, to send a letter and generally a painting it was their only way for communication. This is how the word visual communication coming from. Paintings and later photos captured the top historical moments of humanity in much more effective way than writing. The following photograph will show the progress of visual communication from its beginning up to now. The following picture is showing the progress of visual communication.

[taken from: The Future Of Visual Communication. Applications For Government And Their Impact on the IT Infrastructure – POLYCOM]

The visual communication was the past and the present of our lives. The future has to be even more interesting and exciting. It has to be something that will make our lives easier. The firms that are specialized on the pioneer of Paul Ekman can create different programs for airport security, in cinemas, in the roads, in the shops and everywhere. For example in fashion visual communication can work for the benefit of the firm. In my opinion if they put a camera, with facial expression recognition on the dolls of each shop’s show room, the customer’s face will work as a symbol/logo. When the people will see the cloths on the doll, the camera will capture the expressions of their faces. This can help the firm to understand the percentage of costumers that like that product and the customers that did not. The face will work as a symbol and will help the firms to avoid the interviews to individual for asking if they like particular products or not. Here I will state two ancient phrases that state that the outside appearance is leading the inner characteristics. “Οία η µορφή, τοιάδε και η ψυχή” this is an ancient Greek proverb which says that however is the form; this is how is the soul. Which means that our outside form is the same as our inside soul. The next proverb is coming from the Latin language “Vultus est index animi”. This means “the face is the guide of the soul” which again it has the same meaning as the previous one. The reason that I have chosen Paul Ekman for this particular project is to show the connection of design with scientific sectors and that design is not just a simple sector, easy to everyone. The fact that the design sector can easily connect with a scientific subject such as psychology, it makes me happy that I am into this sector and I am ready to help and improve it.

Recourses http://oeilsj.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/visual-communication-and-its-role-in-advertising/ http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/Whitepapers/Visual_Communication.pdf http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/avantgarde.html http://www.fastcompany.com/1800709/human-lie-detector-paul-ekman-decodes-faces-depression-terrorism-and-joy http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2008/articles/1288.pdf http://www.taivara.com/mobile-a-perfect-tool-customer-validation/ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/emotient-launches-new-software-development-kit-for-real-time-emotion-recognition-235564101.html http://www.pixarportal.com/blog.php?id=lie-experts-advising-pixar http://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/psychology-logo-shapes-8133918 http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/events/boot_camp_2009/tdlc_bootcamp2009_facs_cert.pdf http://www.paulekman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Classifying-Facial-Action.pdf http://infogr.am/Paul-Ekman-318251?src=web PDF: The Future Of Visual Communication. Applications For Government And Their Impact on the IT Infrastructure – POLYCOM