Reading Response 2 – EW

This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics

 Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012 (Chapters 1 & 2)

Questions/Prompts

• How has language shaped design historically?
• Can visual design accomplish things that language cannot? Why?
• How are signs, signifiers, and the signified employed in visual communication? Provide examples from contemporary or historical advertising.
• How are non-literal devices used to convey meaning in advertising? Provide examples from contemporary or historical advertising.

Response

Language has shaped design because it has made it possible for designers to remake the world using imitation or representation that connects society.  Language allows artists to remake works as a communicator with a signifier and the signified,  to deliver object, image, or text-based communication.  Language has also shaped how we as people see and make sense of the world.

Visual design can accomplish things that language with the help of typography, icon, index, and symbols, colors, and shapes. This helps designers express themselves and expands the perception of the viewer. For instance, a symbol may have more than one meaning, but to understand that symbol you should know what it means.  Visual designs have the opportunity to resonate with the viewer and allow them to dig deeper and discover there is more meaning behind the symbol than the original depiction. 

Sign, signifiers, and the signified are employed in visual communication by carrying messages in through a signifier (sound, image, or text) to the signified which is the idea or meaning being expressed by the signifier.   We can use sounds, smells, words, pictures, and symbols to help us. For example, a sign on a door “push” (signifier) is indicating a message for those users who have not yet received the message to push (signified). 

Non-literal devices are used to convey meaning in advertising with the key concepts of simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction, and representation. Non-literal devices create designs that will resonant new meanings in designs, advertising, illustration, fashion, and journalism. Heinz has an ad with a  great example of a metaphor concept.  The headline reads “No one grows ketchup like Heinz”. There is a tomato cut in slices in the shape of a Heinz ketchup bottle. The fresh-cut tomato resonates with individuals who are looking to eat healthy that Heinz ketchup is made with fresh and organic products. Heinz also places fresh products and healthy in the minds of their audience without using actual words. https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/slices

Annotation Links:

1. Reference Image:  Ferdinand de Saussure, Sean Hall, Charles Sanders Pierce
2. Rephrasing: In the field of semiotics, it is argued that the communication systems we devise actually frame or dictate in some way, how we see the world. In other words, the world is not directly accessed through these various systems of communication; it is mediated through them. The systems themselves are apt to change what we think the world really is
3. Rephrasing:  argued that the communication systems we devise actually frame or dictate in some way, how we see the world. In other words, the world is not directly accessed through these various systems of communication; it is mediated through them. The systems themselves are apt to change what we think the world
4. Rephrasing: numerous devices that can be employed to produce meanings of a nonliteral kind. The key concepts will include simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction, and representation. All of these concepts are of great consequence because they can help us to produce new insights into the meanings of objects, images, and texts. This, in turn, may allow us to create more resonant meanings in such disciplines as painting, design, advertising, illustration, filmmaking, fashion, and journalism.
5.  Definition: Semiotics, Enigmatic, Idiom