EcoLabs - Ecological Literacy Initiative

The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy

ABTRACT. This paper describes how graphic design can support ecological literacy. Starting with a brief introduction to ecological literacy and a proposal that communication design must join the crisis disciplines in responding to predicaments in the earth science, the paper proposes that within an increasingly visual culture, visual intelligence can support the development of new perceptual capabilities potentially leading to relational ways of knowing. Graphic design can facilitate emergent ecological literacy and ecological perception by displaying context, causality and complexity. Images can foster whole systems understanding due to their unique ability to reveal relationships, dynamics and patterns. Graphic design can thus nurture the development of ecological manners of thought by strategically constructing visual resources to encourage ecological perception. Download // read more...