Metaphors of resonance for visual communication design

Introduction

The concept of resonance in visual communication is credited with enriching a reader’s experience of a visual text by amplifying intended meaning and urging an interpretive effort (McQuarrie and Mick, 1992; Meggs, 1989; Salen, 1993). In this context, resonance is a metaphor and predominantly described in terms that borrow from physics and acoustics, such as echo, reverberation and reinforcement. So far, discussion of resonance for visual communication design has been confined to such metaphors and also as a way of describing sensory experience.

Despite the fact that resonance is indicated as a contributing factor to effective visual communications and is related to a heightened experience for the reader (McCoy in Poynor, 1998: 51; Meggs, 1989), it has not received much attention in academic circles and there is little input from other design practitioners on the topic. However, designing the reader experience is a central concern for contemporary visual communication design and this is signalled by a shift in emphasis from designed artifacts that have an ongoing physical presence to communications that are ‘dematerialized, temporal and nonlinear … more experience than artifact’ (McCoy, 2002: 210). In a visually saturated world, designers are concerned with what cuts through to readers who are ‘bored with basic messages, and need challenge, gaming and play for engagement’ (McCoy et al., 2002: 331). For readers, an unsatisfactory experience with visual communication can impact on their response to similar kinds of communications and even whether they choose to engage with them at all.

This article proposes that resonance metaphors for visual communication emphasize the participation and experience of readers in a communication activity. I discuss the findings from a series of in-depth interviews with designers on the concept of resonance. ¹ The findings are considered in relation to conceptual metaphor theory as ‘a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system’ (Lakoff, 1993: 203). The metaphors that emerge show the way a concept that is elusive or less clearly delineated (i.e. resonance in visual communication) tends to be grounded in everyday concepts that are more concrete, such as spatial and physical orientations, physical objects and substances (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 112). The concept of resonance is described as a connection that is akin to a physical force, making physical contact and operating on the human body and its perceived boundaries. For example, visual communications resonate when they connect with a reader, by ‘touch’, ‘hitting the right spot’ or ‘reaching beyond the barriers’; indicating the human body as the locus of experience in the communication activity.

This article considers firstly, models of communication and the characterization of readers in visual communication and secondly, the existing literature on resonance in relation to visual communication design. Further to this, a theory of conceptual metaphor is considered as a suitable approach for further examining resonance, followed by the findings from interviews with designers. Finally, the author considers resonance metaphors that centre on the human body as a locus of experience in relation to reading as an activity that is inventive and participatory.

The article contributes to a conception of visual communication design in its broadest sense, as a purposeful activity that incorporates gesture, body language and sensory experience, where, as Helfand (in Soar, 2002: 13) argues, audiences are recognized as people, rather than ‘eyeballs’.

The Communication Activity and the Addressee

The primary subject matter of visual communication is communication itself (Margolin, 2002: 193). ² Communication is a term that can be understood in a number of ways; it can mean to impart or inform and also to share, divide out, join, unite, participate in, and each of these emphasizes different aspects of a communication activity. In models of communication, addressees are characterized according to the degree of agency relative to the way the communication is conceptualized. For example, an addressee can be understood as a passive receiver of messages, a cultural agent in the ‘production and exchange of meaning’ (Fiske, 1990: 2) or a ‘dynamic participant in argument’ (Tyler, 1995: 105). Each of these is aligned with a model or approach to communication that is related to design. Firstly, that visual communication can be understood as sending a message (process); secondly, as a production and exchange of meaning (semiotics); thirdly, as persuasive argument (rhetoric).

Communication as a process is commonly viewed as the transmission of a message from a sender to a receiver along a channel (or conduit). The model originates from Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) mathematical theory of communication (introduced by Shannon in 1948), in which communication is a linear process; a sender transmits a message (signal) along a channel for reproduction by a receiver. The model centres on the efficiency of a transmitted (pre-packaged) message and the degree of efficiency is gauged by the accuracy of the reproduced (unpackaged) message at its destination. The model is considered one of the main foundations of western communication studies yet its origins are embedded in technical rather than human communications (Fiske, 1990: 6–7). That communication is to impart or inform is evident in various process models. ³ They primarily emphasize sending messages in a regulated framework rather than the specificity of the receiver or the interpretation of meaning, contributing to the notion of receiver passivity.

Active participation in communication is central in both semiotic and rhetorical approaches as they both focus on the addressee as a cultural and social agent in the communication.

Some of the terms from a process model of communication such as sender, receiver and message are used in semiotics, but in a distinct way. In semiotics, communication is a ‘production and exchange of meanings’ located in texts (Fiske, 1990: 2) and the addressee, or reader, is recognized as a cultural agent in the exchange. The term reader is preferred as it is acknowledged as more active than receiver, and reading is understood as a process of interacting or negotiating with a text in the process of discovering meaning (p. 3). Semiotics is also concerned with body language and gestures as codes of communication. Whilst the particularity of possible readers is recognized (Eco, 1979b), the primary focus is on texts and the construction of meaning.

According to Tyler (1995: 105), rhetoric proposes to characterize an audience not as readers but as a ‘dynamic participant in argument’, a process concerned with the negotiation of beliefs and values. Design based on accurate interpretation of rhetoric typically characterizes the audience as active participants rather than passive recipients (Buchanan, 1995: 10). Designs are arguments that challenge respondents’ values and beliefs with the purpose of persuading an audience to adopt a new belief. The new belief relates to the communication goal so ‘the designer must discover the argument that will persuade a particular audience’ (Tyler, 1995: 112). Rhetoric places greater emphasis on the communicative strategy as active (Buchanan, 1989: 91–109) and the specificity of the audience. The rhetorical process is conscious and deliberate and as such can be considered as an exercise in control where the purpose is to regulate or influence the attitudes and beliefs of readers.

The term ‘reader’ that is used in this article draws specifically on Michel de Certeau’s interpretation of reading as an everyday activity that is active and inventive, not passive. For de Certeau (1984: 169) reading is one aspect of consumption, where ‘to read is to wander through an imposed system (that of the text, analogous to the constructed order of a city or of a supermarket)’. A reader is a mobile agent who participates in a text and navigates through it, bringing into play the physicality of the human body. Designed visual communications can be considered imposed texts that aim to direct or influence the behaviour and attitudes of readers. Within the interplay of relations is De Certeau’s reader, who actively ‘invents in texts something different from what they “intended”’ (p. 169). This is a different take on reading as passive or stationary; to read is to actively reappropriate a text to make sense for oneself. Furthermore, it reflects a contemporary design context in which people not only have the opportunity to ‘shape the information economy by choosing what to look at’ (Lupton, 2006: 25) but are directly shaping it.

Every model of communication characterizes the addressee in a communication activity in some way. In a sender–receiver model an emphasis on the accuracy and efficiency of message reproduction de-emphasizes the agency of a receiver and the capacity to actively make meaning. For example, the term ‘target audience’ perpetuates a sender–receiver communication model; it is used to denote a body of people who are the receivers of preformed meaning that is conceived ‘like an arrow, or a bullet … which exists before the communication takes place and which does not change as it is transported to its “target”, or destination’ (Barnard, 2005: 23). The addressee as a cultural agent or reader acknowledges a greater degree of activity, as does a dynamic participant. The notion of activity implies some kind of experience for the reader. De Certeau’s conception of a reader further highlights reading as active, inventive and participatory. This sets the scene for interpreting the experiential aspect of visual communication that is indicated by a concept of resonance.

Delineating Resonance

In order to understand where metaphors of resonance in the literature come from, it is useful to consider the roots of resonance. The term resonance originates from the Latin resonantia (echo), from resonare (resound), re- ‘back, again’ and sonare ‘to sound’, and can be traced back to the Roman architect Vitruvius ⁴ (c. 1st century BCE) as a reflection of sound. Resonance in physics has its roots in Newton’s third law of motion. This law explains the phenomenon of interactions; where, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, or action–reaction. In acoustics, resonance as an action–reaction is in ‘the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection, as from the walls of a hollow space, or by the synchronous vibration of a neighbouring object’. ⁵ An example is that of two objects matched in natural frequency that produce sympathetic vibrations, such as in the vibration created between two tuning forks sharing the same frequency. When one tuning fork is hit, the second fork vibrates even though it has not been physically struck.

The relationship between resonance and directing a person’s attention appears in the work of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) on the physiology of acoustic perception. In particular, his experiments using a device where a listener could pick out a particular tone from a human voice. A human voice is a compound tone comprising fundamental and upper partial tones. Helmholtz’s device, termed a ‘resonator’, enables a listener to pick out certain tones of a human voice not easily discerned in everyday environments ⁶ (Helmholtz, 1954: 41–45). Helmholtz refers to the capacity to distinguish between qualities of a tone as requiring ‘only the proper means for directing the attention of the observer’ (p. 51). As such, a resonator operates as a device for directing attention, to assist in the identification and reinforcement of a particular (simple) tone from a (complex) compound tone.

Resonance in physics and acoustics is a dynamic interaction as it is dependent on the natural frequency (an essential quality) of an entity or body being matched with another, resulting in a two-way reinforcement. Physical resonance can be characterized as: action–reaction (back and forth), echo, reverberation, amplification, prolongation and reinforcement. Vibration is both sympathetic and synchronous: sympathetic refers to the interaction between two objects or bodies and synchronous refers to the vibration occurring simultaneously. Definitions from physics and acoustics inform existing metaphors of resonance in other fields, both in the terms used (echo, reverberation, reinforcement) and in the way resonance operates, as a sympathetic and synchronous vibration between two entities that are matched in some way and reinforce each other.

An Echo or Reinforcement of Meaning

In visual communication, a recurring metaphor is that resonance is an echo that reinforces or heightens the intended meaning of visual messages. For Meggs (1989: 1), resonance is a term borrowed from music; it is an echo or reverberation, a ‘richness of tone that heightens the expressive power of the page. It transcends the dry conveyance of information, intensifies the message, and enriches the audience’s experience’. For McQuarrie and Mick (1992), resonance in print advertising is a rhetorical device used to create an echo or reinforcement of meaning, typified by a wordplay combined with a pictorial that generates ambiguity or incongruity of meaning. The echo or reinforcement is located in the repetition of an advertisement’s elements that must be combined in such a way so that the meaning of either on its own is modified. It is not a simple repetition of elements but a departure from normal use; it must generate ‘exchange, condensation or multiplication of meaning’ for resonance to occur (McQuarrie, 1989).

This multiplication that modifies meaning urges an interpretive effort on the reader’s part. It is a departure from the expected that operates to overlap and link semantic pathways that are not usually associated (Eco, 1979a: 263). The disruption of a codified structure (such as the syntax of signs and their formal relationships to other signs) is said to result in resonance (Salen, 1993: 285). A reader must pick out or unravel the meaning. The reference to resonance in physics is apparent: that two or more elements or signs reinforce each other (action–reaction and vibration) to amplify or ‘create extra meaning’ (McQuarrie and Mick, 1992: 182–183). Such interpretations of resonance also refer to the multimodality of visual communications: interactions of type and image, visual and verbal elements, materials and media that reinforce or strengthen each other in making meaning (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). The implication is that the intended meaning is not expressed at the level of any one aspect or mode of representation, but in the overall combination.

Whilst a reader’s experience is said to be enriched and the reader is taken into account by helping ‘to create the meaning of the text by bringing to it his or her experience, attitudes and emotions’ (Fiske, 1990: 40), semiotic interpretations of resonance focus primarily on the text. Each example draws on definitions from physics in some way, be they echo, reverberation and reinforcement (of meaning) or the dependence of two or more entities being matched in some essential way (repetition or interaction of elements or modes of communication) that reinforce each other to amplify the meaning of the text. Communication is ‘rich’, more than literal, or ‘dry’ where richness is an intensity or depth of meaning. Dryness indicates neutral information that is literal, free from distortion or exaggeration, even though as Kinross (1989: 143) argues, neutrality in visual manifestation is not possible and all visual communication is rhetorical.

A Shift to Resonance as Experience

The usage of resonance in design has shifted to focus more on readers’ experiences and interactions and this is reflected in areas of growth such as user-centred and interaction design that incorporate visual communications. McCoy (2002: 210) associates resonance with the communication experience and the character and behaviour of users, arguing that the ‘semantic category of semiotics, the science of signs, describes some aspects of character and behavior, but neglects others’. According to McCoy, rather than pertaining only to verbal or language expression, character is also to do ‘with preverbal, subverbal or subconscious experience’. McCoy further highlights ‘stickiness’ as ‘the resonance of a rich user experience’ that designers can achieve by using sensual dimensions to trigger associations from previous experience:

Sight and sound are contemplative senses that deliver somewhat distanced, abstracted and more cerebral stimuli, which tend to be more culturally mediated. The contact senses of touch, taste and smell are more primal, evidencing some sort of hard-wired link to memory. (pp. 210–211)

This conception of resonance is indicated as a richness and reinforcement that refers to an intensity of sensory experience (‘stickiness’) rather than an intensity of meaning located in texts. Stickiness is something that can be felt. It may have either positive or negative associations, related to gripping or holding, or contamination (Djonov and Van Leeuwen, 2011: 550). Echo, reverberation and reinforcement are more to do with experience and dependent on a reader’s particular physical, social and cultural domains of experience. The association of resonance with non-verbal communication is also indicated in communication studies, where resonance is identified as part of rituals and cultural experience (St Clair, 1998–1999). Resonance in visual communication is also linked to richness as a deep or intense reverberation with past experience.

Existing Usage of a Resonance Metaphor

A resonance metaphor is proposed as an alternative to a conduit metaphor of communication ⁷ and as an indicator of ‘active’ perception. Studies in perception and cognition discuss resonance as ‘active’ in contrast to ‘non-active’ perception (Gedenryd, 1993; Grossberg, 1995). ⁸ Non-active perception is said to follow a conduit metaphor, where all information is contained in sensory data (‘bottom up’ external stimuli) and ‘information about physical objects in the environment “flows” into mental space through a perceptual tube’ (Gedenryd, 1993: 2). Resonance is articulated as being dependent on factors in one’s mind (‘top down’ internal drives), just as resonance in a physical object (e.g. tuning fork) depends on characteristics inherent in the object itself. With this resonance metaphor, the mind works like a resonator and has a ‘natural’ or preferred vibrational state, relating to an individual’s domains of experience (p. 5).

However, it is not the intention of this author to take an essentialist view of resonance and suggest that it is reducible to a reader’s inherent state of mind in response to particular stimuli. To reiterate de Certeau’s (1984: 169) point, reading is an active reappropriation of texts (ordered constructs) by a mobile agent (a reader) who ‘combines their fragments and creates something unknown in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings’. In this sense, resonance is generated through ‘a permutation of texts, an intertextuality’ (Kristeva, 1980: 36). Kristeva’s (1986: 37) notion of intertextuality builds on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin when she says ‘any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.’ In other words, a reader is immersed in the intertextuality of communication in everyday life as a dynamic intersection of texts, in which meaning is mediated socially, culturally and historically, and through which resonance is generated.

Interpreting Metaphors of Resonance

The traditional view of metaphor dates back to Aristotle and is situated in linguistic communication. Conceptual metaphor theory differentiates from a classic view of metaphor. Lakoff (1993: 203) defines conceptual metaphor as ‘a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system’ where

The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another. The general theory of metaphor is given by characterizing such cross-domain mappings. And in the process, everyday abstract concepts like time, states, change, causation and purpose also turn out to be metaphorical.

In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 112) discuss how concepts that are elusive or less clearly delineated (such as emotions, time and ideas) tend to be grounded in terms that are more concrete, such as spatial and physical orientations and physical objects and substances. This is particularly suited to interpreting an elusive concept such as resonance for visual communication design, and the notion of grounding is evidenced in metaphors of resonance as a vibration and reinforcement that reference physics and acoustics. Of particular interest are metaphors that organize a whole system of concepts with regard to each other such as:

Orientational metaphors that refer to spatial orientations such as up–down, back–front, in–out, on–off, shallow–deep, near–far, centre–periphery. Concepts arise as spatial orientations as a result of experiences with one’s body and interactions in the environment and are coherent with one’s culture (p. 14);

and

Ontological metaphors that arise from one’s experience with physical objects and substances, in particular one’s body. They are ways of viewing events, activities, ideas and emotions as substances and entities. In container metaphors the human body is an entity, a surface with an inside and outside and a boundary. In personification metaphors, a physical object or entity is specified as a person, enabling comprehension of experiences in terms of human characteristics and actions. (pp. 25–34)

These metaphors have a basis in physical and cultural experience arising from one’s body, interactions with the physical environment and with other people. The concept of resonance in visual communications is therefore a human construct motivated by a particular culture. In this sense, resonance is constituted in the ways that one conceptualizes and has learnt to make sense of the world whilst immersed in the intertextuality of communication inherent to everyday life. Bakhtin’s (1981: 291) concept of heteroglossia (from the Greek hetero ‘other’ + glossia ‘tongue’) acknowledges that language is a co-existence of any number of legitimate voices, ‘at any given moment, languages of various epochs and periods of socio-ideological life cohabit with one another.’ In other words, knowledge of resonance is constructed in its context of use, mediated by social and historical factors and motivated by the physical and cultural experiences of those people concerned.

In the context of this article, orientational and ontological metaphors provide a coherent and systematic way of understanding one domain of human experience in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 117). Recent studies that provide a neural account of conceptual metaphor reinforce the grounding of metaphors in cognition and domains of human experience (Fauconnier and Turner, 2008; Lakoff, 2008).

Interviews with Design Practitioners

The research set out to discover how other design practitioners might understand the concept of resonance in visual communication design. A series of in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 12 designers in the field of visual communication. To be eligible for selection, participants were required to meet certain criteria. To participate they had to be a practising designer and/or design writer with a minimum of 10 years’ practice experience and to have achieved peer recognition through award/commendation from specific Australian and international professional design associations ⁹ and/or publication in scholarly and professional design journals. Potential participants were recruited from the professional associations. Of the designers who were interviewed, all had practised for more than 20 years and 60 per cent for more than 30 years. Of these, 75 per cent had practised in one country and 25 per cent in more than one. All designers had primarily practised in western countries. ¹⁰ Of the total sample of interviewees, 40 per cent were female and 60 per cent male.

Metaphors of Resonance

In the absence of an agreed definition of resonance, the findings show that interviewees readily use metaphorical concepts to interpret resonance for visual communication design. However, rather than frequently borrowing terms from physics and acoustics to describe resonance, the metaphors are informed by the notion of connection and they draw primarily from experiences of the human body, interactions with the environment and with other people. Although this connection takes a number of forms, there is coherence across the descriptions. Every interviewee discusses resonance as making a connection of some kind with the person that the visual communication is intended for. This suggests a degree of coherence amongst interviewees; they are design practitioners with decades of experience and whilst individual priorities vary relative to what each designer finds important and of value, there is coherence in this case with a wider professional culture of visual communication design practice.

Furthermore, interviewees locate themselves as both designer and reader in their responses. Some of their statements are from the perspective of a design practitioner whose focus is on the intent and purpose of communication, highlighting a rhetorical aspect of design. In other statements, interviewees are readers drawing and reflecting on their own experiences of visual communications that have resonated. This slippage between designer and reader highlights an empathic aspect to the way these interviewees interpret resonance.

Each interviewee uses metaphors that encapsulate the nature of the connection being discussed. These have been identified through a process of firstly, reading each interview as a whole, then line by line to identify metaphors pertaining to resonance from each interviewee. Secondly, metaphorical concepts found in each interview have been compared across the corpus of interviews to identify similarities, variations and coherence of metaphors between interviewees. Thirdly, metaphors have been analysed and grouped in relation to orientational and ontological metaphors as discussed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The metaphors presented in this article are drawn from participants’ responses to open-ended questions asking what resonance in visual communication design is about (or could be about) and the kinds of effects that resonance might have.

The metaphors drawn from individual interviews are termed by the author individual metaphors. Individual metaphors are organized under what are termed principal metaphors that relate to the theme of connection. The three principal metaphors discussed in this paper are:

Resonance is a physical force

Resonance is physical contact

The human body is a container

The three principal metaphors have been identified as conceptual mappings. Lakoff (1993: 207) argues that metaphors are mappings, and mappings are ‘sets of conceptual correspondences’. He uses the example of the metaphor ‘love is a journey’ to explain that a mapping is not a proposition (i.e. not proposing or saying that love is actually a journey). Rather, a conceptual mapping enables one to map knowledge about one thing onto knowledge about another; in Lakoff’s example ‘to reason about love using the knowledge we use to reason about journeys’. Thus Lakoff argues that mappings are ‘ontological correspondences that characterize epistemic correspondences’ (p. 207). The metaphors of resonance discussed in this article show the way that interviewees reason about resonance in visual communication design using their knowledge of connection, in relation to experiences of the human body, as a physical force and contact.

For this discussion, responses are drawn from a cross section of all 12 interviews. Interviewees are identified in parentheses after each individual metaphor, i.e. (A) through to (L).

Discussion

The notion of resonance as a connection indicates receptiveness on the part of a reader and acceptance of the invitation to participate or share in the communication. This relates to the way readers actively reappropriate texts to make sense for themselves, rather than the persuasive power of a design. The implication is that designers cannot design to make a connection if they do not know what will connect with specific readers, in what ways and contexts.

The three principal metaphors of resonance discussed in this article are not discrete; the human body is the locus of experience upon which resonant forces and contacts operate and responses to design take place, embedded in the intertextuality of communications inherent to everyday life. Space is a negotiation of distance and orientation between the human body and visual communications and proximity highlights a more intimate experience. The notion of resonant visual communications touching, sticking and moving in and out of one’s body involve the whole body in a sensory and kinaesthetic experience. Resonance as stickiness that leaves a mark and has a residual effect can be pleasant or unpleasant. In this way visual communication design proposes to act upon the human body, controlling and directing activity.

Michel Foucault (1991[1977]) discusses a docile body as one that is regulated, measured and has its movements analysed and he traces a genealogy of human purposes that is manifest in regulatory forces operating upon the body. The designer’s intent and the communication goal that are manifest in the individual metaphors discussed above highlight the rhetorical aspect of visual communication design that seeks to direct readers (behaviours, attitudes, beliefs) so as to elicit a response commensurate with the particular communication goal.

However, to consider a reader of visual communication as passive or docile may operate to predispose one’s thinking to the very concept. Furthermore, in every situation in which visual communications are supposed to exert a force to elicit a response, the relation will vary depending on how a person assimilates or acts upon herself or himself in response to the communication, mediated by social, cultural and historical factors. This is what de Certeau (1984: 166) refers to when arguing against the suggestion that consumers are passive and the claim that ‘producers’ inform or ‘“give form” to social practices’:

This misunderstanding assumes that ‘assimilating’ necessarily means ‘becoming similar to’ what one absorbs, and not ‘making something similar to’ what one is, making it one’s own, appropriating or reappropriating it.

The idea of assimilation as making something one’s own is more about what a reader brings to visual communication rather than a force exerted upon them. Foucault’s (1981: 92) analysis of power rejects the ‘over-all unity of a domination … given at the outset; rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes’. Power is a ‘multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization’. It is in the interplay of mobile relations that a subject (reader) is constantly formed. This can be observed in the rhetorical aspects of visual communication, the inventive and reappropriating activity of reading and when a designer slips into a reader’s place thereby extending an effort to understand a reader’s experience.

To address and be addressed is at the heart of communication; to communicate is not only to impart information as the activity itself presupposes a person being addressed. In the mobile sphere of relations in which resonance is generated, the designer seeks to effect responses to design that are sticky, that leave a mark and reach beyond the barriers to touch what is ‘unique’, but that do not necessarily ‘scream’ at someone and are more indicative of satisfaction. Readers, in actively reappropriating a text, are acting upon themselves at any given moment, indicating the importance of relevance in the visual communication in order to ‘hit the right spot’ and be open to the possibility of a design reaching beyond the ‘buffer zone’ and a mark being made.

In other words, to design visual communications is to impose structures and systems (texts) that readers navigate and reappropriate, actively participating to make sense for themselves. Given this, an approach to designing visual communications in everyday practice that is more about dialogue and experience is required, such as inviting readers to actively participate as they construct answers for themselves, based on possible conclusions (McCoy et al., 2002: 331).

Conclusion

This article set out to discuss metaphors of resonance for visual communication design and the potential contribution that the concept of resonance makes with regard to enhancing a reader’s experience and engagement with design. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory, the article discusses findings from interviews with designers that show the way that metaphors reveal the tendency to ground an elusive concept such as resonance in visual communication in physical terms that are culturally and socially mediated. The metaphors of resonance discussed here provide an insight not only to the ways in which these interviewees relate resonance to design, but also to a sense of self and to the characterization of readers in visual communication design.

Metaphors of resonance as a physical force and contact emphasize the human body as a locus of experience rather than focus on resonance in relation to meaning located in design artifacts. The idea that when visual communications resonate they connect with a reader rather than make an assault, holds new possibility for design approaches; a vocabulary of designing to ‘touch’ or ‘stick’ but not ‘hit someone over the head’ that contributes to a sense of intimacy and satisfaction for readers. The notion of resonance opens up several perspectives in design practice that relate not only to the conduct of designers and the formation of the reader as a subject, but to the ways in which both designers and readers are agents, acting upon themselves in navigating visual communications immersed in the intertextuality of everyday life. Further research by the author, beyond the scope of this article, examines the ways in which designers apply their understanding of resonance to the practice of visual communication design.

The concept of resonance emphasizes interactions that draw from domains of human experience and reiterates a conception of visual communication in its broadest sense, as an activity and experience incorporating all the senses. Visual communication design ‘acts’ upon the human body, as a means of controlling and directing activity; however, the activity of reading is more about making something one’s own and what a reader brings to visual communication than a force exerted upon them. In this way, metaphors of resonance that centre on the human body emphasize the participation and experience of readers in a communication activity that can be understood as an interaction of multiple force relations in the sphere around people and design.