Appropriate Illustrations For Appropriate Functions – The Taxonomy Of Illustration

Illustrations play an important role in depicting information. As we move deeper and deeper into the world of visualization, illustrations play a vital role especially in the learning paradigm. More and more users use illustrations to convey messages or information to promote sales, to campaign an idea, to decipher a belief or teach a lesson because theories have shown that things that are visualized are learned more easily. Educationalists and many researches have supported this theory. Psychologists have found that people retain visual information longer than verbal information. It has been found that visual memories are most effective compared to all the different elements of memory such as audio, olfactory and tactile.

Knowing appropriate illustrations for appropriate functions will help us get the right message across to the right audiences at the right time and the right place. Therefore this book is useful to students in colleges or universities to produce good and relevant illustrations to convey a point of discussion or presentation be it in printed or electronic form; to educators to choose illustrations appropriate to the lesson in context; editors and reviewers of printed and non – printed materials to determine types of illustrations and functionality, for example, when conducting editing courses or practical hands-on experiences in the editing and reviewing field; to beginners from the team of industrial and book designers; text designers and interface designers; graphic artists and graphic designers as well as all those interested in making it right when it comes to visual representations.