Skip to main content

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and the interpretation of their meaning. We use signs to communicate with our audience, as a graphic designer, this is something that will come to play a lot when I am working. I will need the context and cultural background for what I'm trying to say to come across appropriately. What is happening around the sign is very important as well. 

Above is three different situations a thumbs up has been used. Each can be interpreted differently because of the context, the first can be seen as signifying 'good job' I think this because of the suit, it is something that can be associated with work and professionals. The second implying the diver is having a good time and that he is okay, although you can't see a facial expression you know he is posing for a photograph which tells me he wants to document he's having a good time. The last photo is of a hitchhiker looking for a lift, he is using he thumb to signify to drivers what he is looking for. This is a universal sign which I can instantly recognise because of what is happening in his environment. 

 All signs have two aspect according to Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of semiology, they have the signifier and the signified. If you take the word closed, and the person thinks of a shop door. The would take the word closed as the signifier and then the signified concept for the word closed, would be the shop is not open for business. This is something that automatically happens  in our brains and doesn't require a lot of thought. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kandinsky's Experiment - Circle, Square, Triangle

Wassily Kandinsky, a student from Bauhaus, circulated a questionnaire trying to determine the universal response for the relationship between colour and form. The questionnaire consisted of three shapes, a triangle, square and circle, he recipient was then to colour each one with a different primary colour etc. Red, blue or yellow.  His questionnaire received a remarkable about of the same response. This may because those in the school had the same theoretical ideals. They believed that the triangle was yellow, square to be red, and the circle to be blue. This product influenced many projects in the early days of Bauhaus. They were also to give an explanation where possible.  I decided to do this myself deciding differently to the Kandinsky original consensus. I felt as if the triangle should be red as this is what most red warning sign are shaped and coloured like. The circle is to be yellow as it reminds me of the sun. And the the blue to colour the square because it remi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Bechers & Idris Khan

During the Lecture two lots of work caught my eye, the first from The Bechers and the second from Idris Khan.  Brent and Hilla Becher made photographic typologies as an archive of uniform photograph. The grid structure helps give symmetry, Each object is large and as important as any other. Consistency is key in the photographs of the gas containers, the light, scale and viewpoint all correspond. Their work was often placed in a grid of neutral white frames. Idris Khan was born in England, 1978, he completed his master in 2004 at the Royal College of Art in London.  He works in sculpture, painting and photography.  His ideas are based on a repeating process of creation and deletion, or even adding of new layers while retaining traces of what has gone before. He is well known for his large-scale works in which techniques of layering are used to arrive at what might be considered the essence of an image, and to create something entirely new through repetition and sup
Post a Comment
Read more

Surrealism

According to the dictionary the definition of Surrealism is a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. Artist who are inspired by the surrealism movement look into the fine like between reality and the dream world. They use juxtaposing images to demonstrate this and create the weird and wonderful. The characteristics of surrealism are all based around the subconscious, they took a lot inspiration from Sigmund Freud's psychological theories on ego, superego and id.  Some famous examples of surrealism are:  René Magritte -  This is not a Pipe Magritte believed that art was not  reality but actual a representation of it. IN order to highlight this point he painted a piece called 'This is not a Pipe' the message being that although yes he had painted a pipe is wasn't an actual pipe but an imitation or representation of one. T
Post a Comment
Read more