Visual communication for the masses

Visual communication is vitally important to a variety of disciplines. Generally, information is communicated in a way that is deemed appropriate for the discipline, governed by established rules based on prior research. However when communicating to general audiences en masse, it is imperative that information be presented as simply as possible-the rules governing specialized scientific communication may or may not be applicable. In short, accessing information should be straightforward, allowing the users to efficiently gain the knowledge for which they are searching. The visual content that is presented should be clear, concise and accurate. With this in mind, this paper discusses issues related to delivering spatially-oriented data to the general populace. Communication through computer graphics should be for the masses as much as it is for individual disciplines. As such, the first half of this paper examines issues related to visual communication for the mass population, while the later half examines one such resource being used for visualization and communication at Purdue University