While countless terms and phrases are used regularly in the visual communication industry, I chose to include only a select few here. I consider these the most common and important lingo to know. If you're not a designer, the terminology that follows will help you better communicate with designers. If you are a designer, the definitions will help you better present your ideas and your work to stakeholders.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Visual communication graphically represents information to efficiently and effectively create meaning. When necessary, limited text is used to explicate that meaning. There are two distinct products of visual communication: information visualization and visual storytelling.

INFORMATION VISUALIZATION

Information visualization aims to convey meaning from information as quickly as possible. The primary focus is to educate the viewer, not persuade them to form a specific opinion.

VISUAL STORYTELLING

Visual storytelling uses visual communication to craft a narrative. It can be used across all visual media, including infographics, motion graphics, and interactive content. Education is one of the end goals, but this approach aims to persuade the viewer to reach a specific conclusion.

VISUAL IDENTITY

A visual identity is a codified system of visual elements that express a brand's purpose, values, ambitions, characteristics, and promise. It translates a brand's identity into an easily identifiable style, and is typically housed in a brand book or set of brand guidelines. A well-developed visual identity will so accurately capture a brand's story that a casual observer should be able to view any piece of brand collateral and immediately understand the brand's fundamental character.

VISUAL LANGUAGE

A visual language is a tactical deployment of a brand's visual identity, created for a specific campaign, initiative, product, or audience in order to achieve specific communication and business goals. A visual language draws on select components of the brand's visual identity, as well as introducing new visual elements (such as character- and icon-illustration styles, data-visualization styles, and more), in order to create a unique aesthetic deployment of the brand. It is a “style guide” for a campaign.

While a brand's visual identity is necessarily broad (as it attempts to anticipate all possible visual deployments of the brand), a visual language is more focused and specialized in order to provide tactical guidance for the specific deliverables comprising a given campaign. A visual language can't always answer the question, “Is ‘X' on-brand?”

VISUAL STRATEGY

Visual strategy encompasses the creative and analytic decisions that inform any visual expression of a brand. That expression could be a visual identity or a visual language. It could also direct a visual content marketing initiative by strategizing on what content to produce, what it should look like, and where it should live both online and offline.

The visual strategy you develop for a particular engagement should define what you are going to produce, how you are going to produce it (i.e., the creative direction), and where it should be deployed (including how elements should link to one another). All of those decisions are made after thorough consideration of the primary stakeholder's brand, audience, and communication goals.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN

A visual communication campaign targets one or more common goals using strategic visual content. It is a series of branded media that lives within a defined art direction (i.e., a visual language) and typically does not require external explanation to give context, relying instead on visual content to drive meaning. Campaigns may include graphic design, animation, interactivity, and more to aid in the delivery of the main message.

Definitions written by Josh Miles, president and chief creative officer at Killer Visual Strategies.