If I’m being completely honest —
I haven’t learned too much about the visual media program…
And I don’t really know what it does.
I understand that I’ve been quietly consuming it on a daily basis, it’s one of those things that have come about in the wake of capitalism like many other things, graphic design included. However, I’m not able to clearly pinpoint it. I don’t really know how it does or doesn’t differ from the design program as we haven’t had very many opportunities to talk to others in the program separate from ours (added excuse is that my new media module is majority design students).
But, from my mostly guessing hypothesis, visual media is image and video based which focuses on proper execution of concepts through fluency in production means (i.e technology, lighting, etc). Technically both graphic design and visual media are meant to be forms of communication, but the difference is that graphic design uses… graphics… (shapes, color and typography) with computer based rendering and creation while visual media uses mainly images and physical world items(?)
I heard that the visual media program has gone under a rebranding of sorts to be more broadly applicable, but it used to be a photography program (I have a family friend Cassandra who went through the program and that’s what it was when she attended) which is where i’m pulling this blog out of nowhere from.
So my scope of the program is probably very narrow.
However, I do know that people often mix up our respective fields,
Trying to google the difference isn’t going super well for me at this moment.
Online communities can’t seem to agree where a line is drawn, which makes me think that there is a slight overlap in our content and/or we usually end up working closely together in various professional settings. Both of them just seem harmonious and like we can fill in the gaps of what the other can’t or doesn’t want to do.
In the syllabus week, some of the instructors were talking about future projects and recommended us (design students) sourcing content from people in the visual media program.
For example, I could make something for packaging design but need to be able to properly show it off in something like a presentation or a portfolio or share it in a digital format– which is something I don’t have a ton of experience in.
In this case, I could enlist someone in visual media, who has knowledge in photography and lighting and they could do much better at shooting the product than I ever could.
We all have the specialties we want to pursue or eventually will fall into but I also understand that knowing each other’s subject will allow all of us to have better in-depth conversations with each other in professional settings later down the line as we know where each other will be coming from. All in all I’m excited to get to know the people of the fifth floor better as the year and program progresses 🙂