ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter, as in the two preceding it, is on information in graphic communication. In chapters 2 and 3, the topic was addressed from the standpoint of its transmission and its receiver. In chapter 2, we considered how information coming from the external world can be conveyed by an image. Starting from the work of Gibson and his theory of perceptual invariants, we reached the conclusion that the notion of invariants can represent a useful tool to understand how visual information can be conveyed with graphics. In chapter 3, we tried to understand how information can circulate inside textual or pictorial material. We noted that different elements of these materials can interact, completing and defining each other, promoting viewer interpretation in a complex interplay that the notion of context can capture only in part. In this chapter, we address information from a different standpoint, that of the emitter. In the case of graphic communication, the emitter is the person drawing the image, and the problem we address here is that of understanding how the artist selects the elements that are included in any specific image.
