Abstract

Design in the 21st century is expanding its effectiveness, influence, and reach through research methods borrowed from other disciplines, such as the social sciences. However, those other disciplines can also benefit by borrowing theoretical and practical understanding from the design field. Speaking and writing skills have long been prized in academia and business, resulting in many universities implementing communication across the curriculum programs. Historically, this “communication” has excluded visual communication or design knowledge. In our increasingly visual culture—and online culture of user-created content—non-designers are called upon in the professional realm to illustrate their ideas. Graduates entering the workforce will encounter situations where they will benefit from possessing some level of design sensibility, even if only to communicate effectively with professional designers. As educators and researchers from different ends of the visual communication spectrum, we believe professional designers should lead the way in integrating visual communications literacy into higher education curricula. They also present an outline of basic design elements and practices that could be incorporated into a visual communication initiative across the curriculum program (or visual communication center), from color, layout, and composition to iterative sketching, modeling, and concept mapping.