Get a head start in your creative Career with visual communication: the canvas for future creativity

"Content creation and distribution in the current world is majority visual communication. Therefore where there is transformation, there is an essential requirement for strong visual communicators"

In an idyllic world, the different skills people adopt, and the jobs they do with them, create a symbiotic network that keeps humanity moving stubbornly forward. It seems illogical to think of it this way, but if you think of time as an ocean, and humanity as an aquatic vessel, like a ship, you start to realise that all jobs fit into 3 categories.

The first categories are the anchors. The jobs that make sure we don’t travel backwards into the seas of time. Gathering the lessons learnt from hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of experience and remind us that we know better now, making us smarter as a species than we were yesterday. These jobs act like a wall, to keep us from regressing. To keep us from making the mistakes our ancestors made, and instead, to learn from them and not walk backwards. This is why jobs in education, philosophy, and history are important. They serve as a chronicle of the Do’s and Don'ts of humanity.

The second category are the buoyancy devices. The jobs that maintain the status quo, and keep us afloat. This is the section that most tertiary jobs fall under. Commerce, cookery, hospitality, entertainment even farming or mining for resources. The range is impossibly large, but these are the jobs that keep the world running. They don’t change much temporally speaking, but without them we wouldn’t be able to accommodate the third and most integral category. The engines.

The engines are the jobs that propel us forward. Pushing through the waves of time in a confident trajectory. Quantum mechanics. Engineering. Astrophysics. Biochemistry. Robotics. These are the jobs that pave the way for the future, through breakthroughs and discoveries and a thirst for more.

 With this categorization established, we can now talk about the importance of visual communication and design. Because it’s one of the few fields that lies in the grey area. Serves as the bridge between all three categories. Because at its core, visual communication is storytelling with shape and colour. And stories can remind us of the past, and how to be wary of it. But they also frame the present, through advertising, marketing, and the likes. But at the same time. They also remind us that reality is what we make of it. That nothing is impossible. Inspiring us to look past the mundane. Animations. Art. Surreal, mind-bending projections of imagination that keep us inspired to create brighter futures for ourselves. There’s something beautiful about harnessing the power of design and using it to tap into that primal part of the human psyche that just really likes to look at nice things. And it’s something that, like it connects the past to the future, connects us as human beings too. This is what makes visual communication, in its own way, the ultimate career path.

While a rather esoteric approach, it’s one that allows you to appreciate creativity as a major driving force in the world.

Why is a graphics / visual communication designer, a must have for any organisation in any industry?

In a time of transformation, communication is an essential part required to strengthen this transformation and reflect the new fronts of every industry. And in this world of transformation, communicating visually trumps all other modes of communication. Content creation and distribution in the current world is majority visual communication. Therefore where there is transformation, there is an essential requirement for strong visual communicators. 

How would AOD visual communication designers become future proof professionals? 

The key philosophy in a visual communication designer of AOD is to always have an aspiration to autonomously learn to make the world a better place. So AOD doesn't create a graphic designer, we create a trans disciplinary content creator who adapts, evolves and collaborates with any platform, industry, idea, venture to deeply create, enhance and elevate the stories they need. And these stories are always one of a kind. So now everyone does need a visual communicator therefore. If there’s any more advice you need, AODs blog, at AOD.lk, is stocked with a plethora of success stories, advice, and words from many alumni just like me reaching out to help anyone in need of some guidance.

Why are visual communication designers a must have for Sri Lanka?

It goes back to transformation. Despite popular belief, Sri Lanka, especially from a point of creative economy and knowledge economy are in essential need of this calibre of visual communicators. They will make this transformation be able to sit on par with the international world from a point of visual communication. The standard of branding, publication design, UI/UX design, packaging design, info graphic etc. are a reflection of content creation representing the skills set of visual communication in Sri Lanka. 

The tasks assigned to the storytellers of the future are immense…but that’s exactly why we need more of them.