Visuell kommunikation i offentliga verksamheter

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the subject matter of visual communication in presentation brochures of two Swedish regions: Region Halland and Region Dalarna. My focuses are the following questions: what is the aim of the brochures and in what ways does the visual material relate to that aim? How can strategic communication be defined through a visual perspective and in what ways is it useful in the context of presentation brochures of the regions? What sort of communicational functions are specific for the visual material in relation to the written language of the brochures? Lead by these questions, I start by analyzing the brochures through a textual analysis and a social semiotic approach. The result shows that the aim seems to be both political and commercial, but that the visual elements relate more strongly to the commercial aim than to the political aim by the way they strive to present a positive image of the region. The visual elements work in strategic ways that I define as visual strategies. This concept is further defined by three different aspects of it: visual strategies seen as a visual communication chain, visual strategies as a subcategory to strategic communication and finally visual rhetoric and social semiotics as tools for working with visual elements strategically, as well as analyzing them. Finally, the result shows that visual elements and written language have specific characteristics and that the way these are combined make up a communicational entirety that differs between the brochures.