Visual Literacy

Make sure your chosen images are fit for purpose. What works well in one scenario might not work so well in another.

Don’t use images as a distraction or to ‘liven up’ an otherwise dull slide unless they enforce or support your message: A humorous image may be memorable but may irritate or offend some viewers.

You should:

• Use only images that are relevant to your message.
• Use good software and store your images safely and sustainably  
• Edit images for clarity, focus, colour contrast, detail
• Provide appropriate captions to reinforce and interpret the meaning of your chosen image

If you are showing a detail from a larger image, make sure you indicate that this is what you have done.

The following University of Birmingham Academic Skills Gateway short guides may be useful:

Short guide to using visuals in your writing

Short guide to referencing figures and tables

Please note that the images on this page are licensed for use without attribution.

Do not assume that just because an image is available online that it was uploaded by the copyright holder or that you have permission to use it.  Make sure you are familiar with the terms and conditions of licences of image databases, or suppliers of images such as museums and galleries, and operate within the restrictions laid down by those terms and conditions.

You should:

• Recognise your own intellectual property rights as an image creator. When you share your own created images, you should indicate the rights and attribution information so that potential users of your images know on what terms they may use and share them.
• Consider matters of privacy, ethics, and safety when creating, using, and sharing images.
• Be aware of issues surrounding image censorship. What may be freely available in one country may not be in another.

Always cite images and visual media you use in your presentations, and projects.  This includes:

1. Acknowledging authorship and author rights
2. Information about the sources of images so that other researchers can trace them

For more information on copyright see Copyright

For more information on citing your images see iCite - referencing at the University of Birmingham

Citations

Citations are a key part of good academic practice. They are used to acknowledge an intellectual debt to another author where you have drawn on their ideas and enable you reader to trace a copy of the original resource.  Citations are typically used for copyrighted works with restricted rights or “all rights reserved.” They are written using styles such as MLA, MHRA and Harvard.  A reference list of cited resources is usually placed at the end of the document.

Attributions

Attributions are used to acknowledge the author/creator of a resource such as an image and to indicate that the author of the resource has given advanced permissions for others to use their work and to explain the terms under which the image can be used and changed. Attribution statements are ideally placed as close to the resource as possible and include the Title, the Author, the Source, and the type of License.