Today in our lecture with Fred, we began looking into Semiotics and how we can use signs in our design work to communicate with our target audience.
Fred used a great example of a plus sign, "+". without any context it could mean anything, but when we place a - + = in the image, we realise that the plus is in fact for mathematical purposes. Whereas if the cross was coloured red, it would represent England or first aid (which is in fact a misconception that we have learnt from TV, which is a very large teacher of signs). The actual colour for first aid would be green or white on green as seen below.
A cross, if manipulated slightly could represent Christianity. The point is that it is just a shapes. Our society have been taught to recognise these signs at such a young age that most of the recognition of the sign is completely subconscious. The problem is that because we know how to read these signs because of our culture, other cultures will have some diferent signs. This could make it hard to communicate with an image to them. Many signs could be easily communicated to teenagers, that older people might not understand. This is because teenagers have such a large, common influence growing up; The internet.
A common example for semiotics is Rene Magritte's painting "The Treachery Of Images". which you can see below. The caption translates to "This is not a pipe"
A sign is made up of 2 parts:
The Signifier:
The signifier is the actual painting of a pipe.
The Signified:
The signified is that there is a pipe in frame.
This is quite an obvious example, but it gets you thinking how much we use semiotics and visual literacy in our everyday lives. Rene Magritte was trying to show that it isn't in fact a pipe. It is visual representation that we perceive as a pipe. In reality it's just painted shapes and colours. Even letters signs. They are shapes that we created and gave meaning to them for the purpose of communication.
Below are a variety of examples that I could find.
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