Skip to content
APDD
My library
ESEN
See my library

Specialty

Audiovisual design

Designs image-and-sound pieces for screens (video, multimedia, projections, content for platforms), deciding the image, the sound, the rhythm and how they work together to communicate.

In Spanish
Diseño audiovisual
Origin
Image and sound design degrees in Latin America (FADU-UBA, 1989); Chion (1990) on the relation between image and sound

What problem it addresses

Image and sound don't simply add up: each changes how the other is perceived. If you design them separately, the piece says something other than what you meant.

Principles

  • Image and sound together

    They are planned together from the script; the music is not added at the end.

  • Rhythm communicates

    How long each shot lasts and where the cuts fall shape what is understood and felt.

  • Made for its screen

    A projection in a room, a video on a phone and a piece on a platform call for different decisions.

Applications in design

  • Use it like this

    Watch the piece with sound, with image only and with sound only, to see what each part adds.

  • Avoid

    Treating sound as filler added once the image is locked.

  • Don’t fall for it

    Check the piece on the real screen and in the real place: on a phone, many people will watch it without sound.

Connections

Related to

Authors and works

  1. 1990

    Michel Chion

    Called "added value" the effect by which sound changes what we see in the image, and the image what we hear, even when the image seems to say it all.

  2. FADU-UBA, Image and Sound Design

    Undergraduate degree within a design school in Buenos Aires, created in 1989 according to its profile at CILECT, the international association of film and television schools.

  3. 2023

    Dario Gabriel Palermo

    Analyzed that degree's curriculum and showed that it treats audiovisual design as a field of its own, which studies cinema but analyzes pieces with design methods.

  4. Universidad de Palermo (Argentina)

    Offers an Image and Sound Design degree in its design school, with image, interaction, animation and post-production as areas.

Sources

Original sources

  • Chion, M. (1993). La audiovisión: introducción a un análisis conjunto de la imagen y el sonido (A. López Ruiz, Trans.). Paidós. (Obra original publicada en 1990: L'audio-vision. Son et image au cinéma, Nathan).

Secondary sources

  • CILECT (n.d.). Universidad de Buenos Aires / Diseño de Imagen & Sonido FADU (UBA) [perfil de escuela miembro]. Consultado el October 26, 2026. View source: CILECT (n.d.)
  • Palermo, D. G. (2023). Contenidos, objetivos y escalas: una aproximación hacia el análisis del plan de estudios de la carrera de diseño de imagen y sonido de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. In SI+ Escalas. XXXVII Jornadas de Investigación & XIX Encuentro Regional. FADU-UBA. View source: Palermo, D. G. (2023)
  • Universidad de Palermo, Facultad de Diseño & Comunicación (n.d.). Diseño Digital (Diseño de Imagen & Sonido): presentación de la carrera. Consultado el October 26, 2026. View source: Universidad de Palermo, Facultad de Diseño & Comunicación (n.d.)

Last reviewed: