Designing visual information for a global audience

This paper explores the design process in visualizing information that communicates to a global audience. The target audience is for educators and new media specialists who conceptualize, design and develop interactive multimedia applications and graphics for Web-based content. This paper reports on facilitating cross-cultural communication in interactive design being taught at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).The Web has evolved into a virtual global community. Global companies are spending an exorbitant amount of money and time in the localization of content. In an effort to reduce cost but still maintain cross-cultural communication, companies are focusing their attention on computer graphics designers. Can these designers push the visualization of information to communicate effectively with a global audience? The answer is right in front of us. We live in a visual world. The world's population may not share a common language, but we are all exposed visually to what is around us. Designers can reproduce what we see into visual roadmaps of information. Visual signposts act as navigational devices that require little translation yet remain instinctively comprehensible on a global level.