a TV
show but when my little brother was
released from prison he had lost almost
all of his memory and as a result he had
now my brother wasn’t a bad guy he
didn’t hurt anyone he went to prison on
a gun possession charge and the funny
thing was is that when he went to prison
he was mad at our family he didn’t tell
us he got arrested he didn’t tell us he
was going to prison but we knew he was
in prison because when you have someone
like John in your life you check
criminal justice databases and so yep
John’s in prison and so what so the
story really begins is when my parents
who live up almost in the Canadian
border get a call from an ex-girlfriend
my brother’s saying that John was in the
hospital in the Bronx okay and just just
you understand New York is a big state I
mean like there’s like three or four
hundred miles between those things and
most of the people from up there I’ve
never been down there and I guarantee
most of people from the city I’ve never
been there and so thanks to a heroic
effort on the part of my sister and her
husband they got to him back to our
hometown and what we found out was that
my brother had gotten brain cancer when
he was in prison and they had operated
on it and they tried to take it out and
as a result John was left in a very
childlike state he couldn’t remember
names you can remember most of his life
he wanted my mom and dad he recognized
faces but at the same time we’re trying
to make sense of this like what you been
doing John you know tell us about your
life and you had absolutely no ability
to do that and so as a natural reaction
we’re trying to make sense of this thing
John has tattoos like this and and so
everyone said you like this and so but
the idea being that so John what’s that
mean no I don’t know and he would laugh
you know so but he really has no idea
what that means and I mean if anyone
here recognizes what this means please
tell me because we don’t know like Oso
we learn French where I’m from not
Spanish but that means bare apparently
but the second part like there’s an O
and then it looks like a Y except for
that if you look at the R it’s like this
no idea and so for someone like me I’m a
professor and I teach courses sort of
centered on visual communication this is
a very sort of personal and hard lesson
and something that I would consider
applied
Ma’at X now if you’re not familiar with
semiotic most of us know linguistics
you know there’s grammar which is basic
language but then a more complex study
of languages than twist X and we all of
course know mathematics you know where
there’s arithmetic and then there’s
mathematics you know more complex deep
study but we are such visual creatures
that when it comes to dealing with
visuals we often don’t formalize that
like for example we all take art or
whole lies which is awesome and art is
very important but imagine instead of
being taught to write prose the only
thing you learned in school was to write
poetry well that’s how we handle visuals
like we don’t teach visual communication
we just teach art and and there’s
nothing wrong with poetry teaching
poetry is great so anyway so we have
semiotics you know in semiotic sizz the
formal study of signs and sign processes
how we communicate visually there is a
formal structure to these things and
understanding semiotic scan make you
better at visual communication for
example just as we have nouns verbs and
adjectives and visuals we have things
like icons and icons when you want to
show a picture of the thing directly
like this means girl that’s my daughter
Ella and so I want to indicate her so we
do an icon of the thing a direct picture
very literal we have indexical signs and
indexical signs is when you show
something associated usually that’s
things are more complex like love like
how do you show love visually and so we
use a heart because that’s associated
indexical signs when you can’t show the
thing you want to show so you show
something associated so a heart is
associated with whoops all right the the
way we feel inside so indexical sign and
then lastly we have symbols and symbols
someone has to teach you that is the
important delineator with a symbol maybe
you read me but someone that was engaged
and actively teaching you the meaning of
that thing so for you guys like that
could mean the red cross but it also
could mean a plus from addition and so
it just depends on what you’ve been
taught and if you understand like this
is not just theoretical you want to take
it to a different world think about
branding right like a local ice cream
shop they put an ice cream cone on the
sign
they put an icon they’re very literal
but more expensive branding well that’s
over here like for example the
mercedes-benz symbol we all know what
that is but maybe you don’t know that
the three points in it stand for lane
and air and water somebody has to teach
you that and so for example if you’re
marketing or branding you generally want
to make a logo that’s over here and so
anyway when I was trying to research my
brother’s tattoos and try to figure out
what they meant and I was trying to see
if I could figure out what they meant I
realized that these categories fit very
neatly in prison tattooing so for
example some Prison tattoos are icons
like I drew this picture myself but it’s
a famous case where a guy was convicted
because he actually tattooed a murder he
had committed on his chest and if any of
you were planning on murdering someone
don’t do this
okay but the idea is so he actually
tattooed the stabbing himself stabbing
somebody the street pole to make sure
people knew where the address was as
well as the building where he did the
murder on his chest so it’s an icon he
literally tattooed the murder on his
chest
there was indexical science in prison
tattooing so for example we all
associate like if you see someone who
has a lot of ribbons and things we
associate that with rank and police
forces of the military
well criminal gangs will tattoo that
kind of stuff on themselves in order to
indicate rank so it’s associated they’re
using images for one thing to mean
something else
through association and then lastly
there’s symbols and symbols are
especially important in prison tattooing
because they allow groups to communicate
covertly so for example now a swastika
we all know in our culture what a
swastika means but 1488 you know there’s
lots of mug shots of guys with 1488 on
their face and most of us would say well
is that like four years before
Christopher Columbus like what is 1488
but the 14 is the 14 words and a white
supremacist credo about making a future
for white children or some dumb thing
and then the 88 stands for the eighth
letter of the alphabet is H Heil Hitler
so to all of us you think 1488 maybe you
guys forget this pin number a lot or
something but he’s indicating that he is
a white supremacist but you have to know
someone has to teach that to you okay
and so and so that’s why my brother’s
tattoos they’re symbols we just don’t
know what they mean we’re never going to
know what they mean because anybody who
could teach us those meanings now can’t
now the funny thing is is that I have
been in prison to in a much less
exciting way than my brother
where I’m from as I showed earlier that
part on the northern side of the
Adirondacks in New York along the border
that is really the prison region of New
York a few decades ago New York had
these things called the Rockefeller drug
laws where you could get 15 years to
life like that on a nonviolent drug
offense and that didn’t really do
anything to stop drugs in New York but
it definitely created a massive prison
population and New York had to build
dozens of prisons in order to house that
prison population the most common job
that guys that went to high school with
have today is prison guard and so that
picture right there that is me on my
first ever day after I graduated college
I use it as like my Facebook I can’t
always say like I am having a better day
than that day okay and my job was to
teach kindergarten to fifth grade level
math in prison and when I say that
people think like really bad
eight-year-olds for something like that
but these are grown men who do not know
when I started this job they told me
before I went in there you’re gonna have
guys in your class who do not know the
alphabet and just understand where I’m
from it’s not diverse my high school
class is over 99% white and so therefore
I had never met anybody who didn’t read
you know that was crazy to me and the
funny thing is is that yes
multiple guys in my class head to
classes of fit of 25 50 total multiple
guys did not know the alphabet so okay
I’ve established this then okay I’d like
I write my name on the fruit and the
first day on the board why no one can
read it so I was mr. sniper all summer
but the point is is that teaching in a
prison is sort of a scary place you know
like because like these are some of the
rules I had to follow and one of the
biggest rules they’ll tell you when you
start working in a prison is don’t break
a rule for anyone because the first time
you break that rule you might do it for
a favor the second time you’re not gonna
have a choice the inmates gonna say I
will turn you in for the last time you
broke that rule unless you break it for
me this time okay and also as part of
that fear you know the the employees are
afraid of getting in trouble
okay the inmates are afraid of everyone
okay and a part of that fear if you
combine what I was just talking about is
in big embarrassment you know imagine
in New York City and not being able to
read imagine not knowing numbers right I
had guys in classic and not through
single-digit arithmetic so imagine
trying to take someone out in a date the
menu shows up what’s this mean the bill
shows up what’s this mean right
embarrassment and many of these men I
mean they spent 16 years in school how
do you spend 6 go to 16 and then not
know a number and so therefore as I got
to know some of these guys they would
let their guard down somewhat and the
question the embarrassing question that
I’ll never forget is when one of the
guys asked me because remember we’re way
up there there’s more Canadian radio
stations than American one of my
students asked me said okay mr. sniper
how come it’s so much colder in Canada
and he said the radio will say it’s 80
degrees in Plattsburgh but it’s 40
degrees in Montreal because he had never
heard of Celsius right like no one had
told him Celsius and then as I started
to talk to some of the other guys I had
in class I realized that most of them
did not know where they were okay a
common question would be like which
direction like they’d never been away
from New York City enough that they
couldn’t see the skyline which way is
the sky listen New York City skyline
like good luck and so and so anyway as I
got to realize this I passed out maps
the United States so I give 50 guys maps
and out of 50 guys four of them could
identify any states okay just think
about that imagine then one of them
looks at me and says so you’re telling
me that these dark outlines are States
and that’s when I understood visual
literacy is you know we are so visual we
don’t think about these things you know
and so imagine again that you don’t
understand like we live in a world of
symbols so on top of you can’t under
read anything and you can’t do math
there’s also a host of thousands of
other symbols that someone has to teach
you remember like the things on the
right side here again somebody has to
teach you those things and unless
someone did that it’s going to be a
mystery to you okay and that’s why today
as a professor I’m vice president of the
international visual literacy
Association it’s a group dead
to promoting these ideas you know to get
people to understand visual
communication and promote visual
literacy and I’ve been lucky enough to
work on some projects promoting these
ideas like for example some of the
places that suffer the worst public
health crisis EES also have high rates
of illiteracy and my personal interest
is comic books we tend to ghetto eyes
comic books to say oh it’s a lesser form
of media comic books are not reading but
if you have trying to teach people how
not to get cholera in a place as a high
level of illiteracy comic books are
probably a good idea okay because that
combination of images and words helps
improve people’s conceptual
understanding and most recently I was
lucky enough to be involved in a project
based on bibliotherapy now if you’re not
familiar with bibliotherapy a doctor if
you have a health problem may prescribe
physical therapy so they would prescribe
physical therapy rather than a medicine
well a therapist or psychiatrist may
prescribe readings you know rather than
give somebody a pill to deal with
depression how about reading some
accounts of people who have powered
through depression how about borrowing
some of their strategies to deal with a
parent who has cancer or deal with
anorexia and so I was lucky enough to
work with people getting a grant for a
women’s drug treatment facility because
if you think about people in prison
number one literacy as I said number two
a lot of them are there for mental
health reasons okay like we have a real
problem as everyone knows with mental
health in the United States that way the
criminal justice system is a mental
health system and it’s not meant to be
okay and lastly they’re in prison
because they have chemical dependency
and so switching over to something like
bibliotherapy it helps with literacy it
helps with mental health comic books
have a special ability to address mental
health issues and it also helps them
with chemical dependency because if
you’re in prison for chemical dependency
but you have mental health problems
probably the last thing you need is
another prescription right and so that’s
why I throughout my career
encourage people to consider visual
communication and especially when you’re
trying to solve a learning problem or
dealing with an organizational issue
consider the visual literacy level of
the people
you’re working with because often visual
literacy is so ubiquitous it is so
inherent in us that visual literacy can be invisible thanks a lot