Author: Yiqiang Wang (Page 3 of 3)

Language to me is the way people communicate with each other, but after I read the two readings this week I have a new understanding of language. A long time ago people expressed things like objects, actions and feelings in various elements in order to communicate better, and the combination of these elements is language. Ferdinand de Sausurre, in his Course in General Linguistics, refers to language as “sign”, “signified”, “signifier”. The signified represents a concept or meaning. The signifier represents a symbol, sound, or image that represents an underlying concept or meaning. The sign represents the whole resulting from the connection between the signifier and the signified.

Language has existed for a long time in human history. The meaning of language will change in different times of culture and events. The same is true for symbols or icons because different symbols or icons also have different meanings. However, language is not the only way for human communication. In addition to language, human beings can also communicate through body language, gestures, music, painting, and others. The difference between language and other forms of communication is that language will be more specific, but it needs to be learned first, But other forms of communication do not need to be learned, and people can get some information from them.

Language is something we come into contact with at birth. At first, we learn language from the voice of our parents, then we learn language from communication with others, and then we learn language from the Internet. Language is with us all our life. People’s brain has connected all kinds of signs, colors and elements with language unconsciously. In the design, designers also make use of this feature of people such as using symbols, colors, and images to convey information to customers. The advantage of this method is that it will not make customers see disgust, because symbols, colors and images are not directly conveying information, but indirectly affect customers through psychological hidden way. Now people are in the Internet era, and new popular culture will be born every day, which also accelerates the change of language because the design also needs to be based on language, so designers also need to constantly learn language to make better design.

This week’s two articles, written by Armstrong and Munari, are about designers respond in a changing era. Armstrong mentioned art and designers in different periods in his article. In the early 20th century, people thought that society at that time became corrupt because of the class systems and subjective thoughts, so they began to deal with problems from an objective perspective. This also changed the design style at that time into a modernist art style that pursues practicality, functionality, and order. After the war, people yearned for a peaceful and stable life because of the impact of the war. This also led to the popularity of the international typography style that pursues simplicity, clarity, and practicality at that time. At this time, designers maintained a more neutral position, Focusing on highlighting the content itself in the design, rather than the designer’s personal style. In the 1970s and 1980s, due to personal styles being suppressed for a long time, people began to resist objectivity and turned to the post-modernist art style, which admired individual style and innovation. Therefore, there were much design works with obvious personal style in the society at that time. In these more than 100 years, the artistic style has changed many times, and designers need to constantly adjust their own technology and ideas in order to create design works that can meet the style at that time. According to Munari’s article, he believes that the goal of designers is to please and solve customers’ problems, so the focus is to satisfy the client rather than to satisfy the designer himself. I think this is the difference between designers and other types of creativity, because other types of creativity mainly create their own things according to their own ideas, What designers do is use their own design knowledge to help customers create things that meet customer requirements.

Designers should concern themselves with unsolvable theoretical questions.  Because when designers think about problems, they can be inspired to have new questions and new ideas. Only in this way can they constantly think about problems and solve problems, so as to contribute to the development of the design.

The most pressing problem facing designers today is that they can’t really express themselves. In today’s Internet age, there are too many contents, designers’ works are difficult to be found, and their works are easy to be stolen. But I believe that as long as the designer’s ability is good enough, he is not afraid that excellent works will not be discovered. In addition, I think the rapid development of science and technology may also have an impact on some designers because the development of science and technology has produced a lot of design software, which may be a good thing for young designers because it makes the design more convenient and simple, but it may have a great impact on some older designers, Because they are not familiar with these design software, they need to learn again.