Understanding visual communication: They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Indeed, some pictures are better at conveying some things than words. Still, not all pictures are created equal, and the power of visual communication is sometimes misunderstood, if not misused. Pictures are no panacea; some words may well convey concepts better than a thousand pictures, too.

With its numerous examples, during the workshop, the speaker took the audience on a journey into the nature of visual communication. He clarified the fundamental differences between visual codings (pictures) and verbal ones (text), underlining the strengths and the weaknesses of each. Focusing on pictures, he then proposed a way to classify them, and hence to select the right visual representation for a given purpose. Finally, once a representation is selected, recommendations on how to optimise it were presented.