What Are The Four Strategies Of Visual Communication

For verbal communication to be effective, the sender must consider four strategies that will give emphasis to their message. Below I will describe each of these strategies, indicate which strategy I believe to be most effective, and although I have not delivered a speech before a group, public setting or mass media using one of these strategies, I will share a group presentation I witnessed and the strategies used.

The first major emphasis strategy is visual communication. Visual communication is where pictures, graphs, illustrations or video reinforce the topic of the message in well planned parts of the communication. The sender, or presenter if delivering a speech, verify the visuals support the topic, as well as mindful of the audience’s characteristics (age, demographics, gender, etc.) to ensure the visual communication adds value to the message, as opposed to drawing away from the discussed topic.

Signposts are the next emphasis strategy used to signal the audience where they are in the message. By using a phrase such as, “From here, we’ll look at…”, the listeners know a new point in the message will start. Think of signposts as a sort of signal the sender or writer uses to let the reader or audience know there will be a shift in topics.

Foreshadowing lets the audience know what they can expect to hear in the presentation by providing a line such as the one in the first and second lines of this paper, it was disclosed to the audience that four emphasis strategies were being discussed. Internal summaries recaps the topic points discussed thus far and although internal summaries are generally used at the end of a written document, they are oftentimes given throughout a speech by saying, “We’ve covered strategies 1, 2, and 3, now let’s continue onto strategy number 4,” for