Visual communication design elements and application analysis in outdoor advertising

Public areas take their places in the center of social life nowadays. The most significant feature of these public areas is that they are open to every single person, and all the thoughts and ideas are discussed freely. Public areas are places where the level of communication and interaction between people are the highest.The people living in crowded city centers are surrounded by numerous visual messages and graphic design products. In our globalized world, all of these products have become the most important advertisement tools in order to keep up with the time. Since these products have the biggest and the most important portion of the advertisement market, the competition between them have become its top level. In order not to perceive the open air advertisements as the parts of natural life, they should be differentiated from their counterparts by creating distinctions. This is why advertisements have become the indispensable parts of social life and the visual designs of the open air advertisements have big importance.This research aims to make an analysis of the decisive components of the visual design by observing the sociological, economical, psychological features between the target group and the consumer group. Therefore, the research is consisted of the evaluation of a survey study, about open air advertisement areas, answered by 150 people studying or graduated from the graphic and communication design departments of Istanbul's various universities.In the first section of the research; perception in public area is examined in terms of style, semantic, function and the communication and interaction between the area and the people, by giving information about the outer space/public area. In addition to this subjects, under the title of visual communication in public areas, the kinds and processes of communication, perception criteria in visual communication design process, and basic design elements are explained in details with visual examples.In the second section of the research; under the title of open air advertisement and the environment; the definition of advertisement, the historical development process of the advertisement, the areas of open air advertisements and their features, the advantages and disadvantages of open air advertisements, semiology in open air advertisements are studied in details with visual examples.In the last section of the research; a survey study is held to determine the components which draws the attention of the target group, and an evaluation is made how the advertisements should be designed in the perspective of communication design and the analysis of the visual design of the open air advertisements in terms of visual hierarchy and proportion, visual persistence, integrity, highligthing and typography is made.Key Words: Public Area, Outdoor Advertisement, Visual Communication, Design