In 2004, the Visuals for Developing Communication Skills in Foreign Language Classes project was initiated by Paul Toth, former Director of the Less-Commonly-Taught Languages Center. It was funded by the Provost through the Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) as part of the Innovation in Education Awards program, and brought to completion by Paul's successors, Dawn McCormick and David Quinto-Pozos. Over 400 illustrations were drawn by Alec Sarkas from the Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education (CIDDE). The project was managed by Nick Laudato and Bill Johnston from CIDDE.

This project was designed to support foreign language instructional tasks, such as describing objects and people or describing events and situations. These images are available to language instructors around the world as open-source media.

These images are available for all and can be found here.