Visual Thinking for Design

Chapter 6 Visual Objects, Words, and Meaning

In the movie A Clockwork Orange, the antihero, Alex, a sadistic punk of the future, is a guinea pig in an experiment to “reprogram” him and thereby make him a useful member of society. Ultimately, it is hoped, the method will remove the need for prisons. The reprogramming involves pairing images of sex and violence with nausea-inducing drugs. It is a plausible idea that this should work because images can evoke strong emotional responses and are often associated with obsessive behavior; however, this kind of treatment has not been successful in reality.

The activation of meaning from an image generally occurs in a small fraction of a second, much less time than it takes to read a paragraph of text. ...