Author: Islam Mahrouss

Ferdinand de Saussure course in General Linguistics gave me a whole new view point on language. It is something that we use in our everyday life to communicate with one another, but according to Saussure there is much more to language. One concept that I found the most interesting was the process between psychological and physiological. It requires at least two or more people and the whole process starts with “A given concept unlocks a corresponding sound-image in the brain; this purely psychological phenomenon is followed in turn by a physiological process: the brain transmits an impulse corresponding to the image to the organs used in producing sounds (Saussure).” What I learned from this process is that language is much more than just words that come out our mouths but that it is also just as much a physical process as it is a mental one. I can see this relating to design in the way that when we come up with ideas we are doing the psychological part. When we communicate the idea we do it through a design which is the physical part. 

“Language is not a function of the speaker it is a product that is passively assimilated by the individual (Saussure).” This specific quote stood out to me the most while I was reading. It made me think about how each individual person communicates based on their own opinions. For example, Someone’s reaction to a specific painting might be different than someone who knows more about it. How a person responds in language is possibly just not based on what they are responding to but how. This makes me wonder how this fits into design. Since it is called communication design, language does play a big role since it relates to how an individual will respond to a specific design based on the information shown. As Saussure states, “ It is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community.” The social side of language plays a role in communication because most of it is based on what we socially know, especially in one country a specific word might mean something else in a different country. 

Reading Linguistics was definitely confusing at first, especially when it came to describing how language works. After reading some sections a few times I think I came to understanding it a little more especially when the topic of words came up. Words aren’t exactly just a meaning or a name, but a reference to two terms. As Saussure describes it, “The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.” In the reading the example used with arbor and the image of the tree reminded me of last week’s reading, because it brought me back to the idea of symbols and how a symbol can sometimes be an exact representation of the meaning just like how arbor means tree.

Throughout history design has had one main function which is communicating a message. How this message is communicated has changed over the years and is also dependent on the culture it is made for.  From reading Graphic Design Theory by Helen Armstrong, design is more than just creating something that is aesthetically pleasing, but it is something that helps shape our society. Before reading this chapter what I knew about design was that I had to solve a problem and know how to organize information and create something out of it. To my surprise that isn’t the case. From what Armstrong taught me, as designers we have a social responsibility since we are actively engaging with the public through our work. Advertisements, posters, and logos are just a few of the things we design that interact with people. According to Armstrong, “ Designers are actively engaging their societies politically and culturally, increasingly thinking globally inside a tightly networked world.” This specific part started making me think about how design not only changes over time but changes based on what is currently happening in society. Especially today in our society we are facing many issues such as climate change and politics. It is events like these that impact how we design and the messages that we send out into the world. You also see this happening in the past as well like many art movements for example, Abstract expressionism which emerged after World War two. This is how new design strategies are made, by looking at the past and seeing what has been already done we can create something new as society continues to evolve. 

 Counting Sheep, Period Styles, Language of Dreams and Language of Vision by Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller also explores the idea of communication in design and how it has evolved over time. From the number of art history classes that I have taken I have  never come across the idea of archaic writing. From reading Counting Sheep design has played a huge role in how people used to count back then. For example, according to the reading “Groups on a tally stick might be indicated with larger or smaller cuts, or straight lines and diagonals.” The simple design of a few lines and diagonals show how there is a relationship between a symbol and the meaning behind it. The symbol sometimes isn’t the exact representation of the item but we know what item it represents. We see this pattern evolving throughout many different civilizations and eventually creating a language based on symbols. Even today in our modern society we still see this. For example, emojis are symbols that we use while texting and the meaning behind them is universally known. This reading made me consider how this translates to other things in design and the first thing I thought of was logos. We design logos to represent a brand but broken down a logo is just a symbol. One of the most popular logos that everyone knows is Target. It’s simply two red circles that represent a target and this symbol is something that everyone knows the meaning of but most importantly is associated with the brand Target. As a designer knowing what archaic writing and counting principles are you get a better understanding of what symbols are and how they are a part of language. 

As a designer, understanding the history of design is important and especially when it comes to the style of how people wrote back then. While reading Period Styles I came across many interesting things, such as how early Greek and Latin were written with no space in between and in all caps. This brought me back to my typography class where the first thing I learned was to never use all caps for body copy. I was shocked and surprised to see how far writing has evolved over time with the introduction to paragraphs, commas, colons, and even periods. All of these small things that we now take for granted not knowing how these did not exist at one point. It definitely made me appreciate them more because it not only makes reading and writing easier but, it makes me wonder if there might be more change to language in the future or maybe there already has been a change and we just aren’t aware of it.