Week 9
Evaluate
collect “dream imagery” mounted prints.
Lecture
Discussion: origins of art and design
clone and liquefy
design education : visual language : elements and principals of design
Semiotics
What is Semiotics?
Semiotics is the study of signs.
A sign is something that stands for something else.
Signs
We humans have forever been driven by a desire to communicate. From early on we have have used gestures and grunts, song, dance, image making and writing to help with this endeavor. We are obsessed with signification; meaning making. Call it what you will, connotation, content, context, definition, denotation, this desire to signify is central to the study of semiotics. The meaningful units which take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures or objects in semiotics, are called ‘signs’. Semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). Signs have meaning. Graeme Turner notes that for something to qualify as a sign, ‘it must have a physical form, it must refer to something other than itself, and it must be recognized as doing this by other users of the sign system’ (Turner 1992, 17).
Types of Signs
Following C. S. Peirce there are three kinds of signs:
C. S. Peirce’s Idea of Sign
Symbolic: a sign which does not resemble the signified but which is ‘arbitrary’ or purely conventional (e.g. the word ‘stop’, a red traffic light, a national flag, a number);
Iconic: a sign which resembles the signified (e.g. a portrait, a cinematic image, an x-ray, a diagram, a scale-model, onomatopoeia, ‘realistic’ sounds in music, sound effects in radio drama, a dubbed film sound track, imitative gestures);
Indexical: a sign which is directly connected in some way (existentially or causally) to the signified (e.g. smoke, weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level, footprint, fingerprint, knock on door, pulse rate, rashes, pain)
Reading
Adobe Photoshop Studio Techniques:
Chapter 18, Retouching tools
Prroject description:
Design visual language education web site design.
Research and gather the visual material (scans etc), for the design of a web site front-end homepage for an online book on visual design or visual language. Your hope page needs to incorporate ALL the elements and principals of design.
Due next class:
Your research should uncover all the principals and elements of design.
The depth of your research will be evaluated next week.
Turn in image and text files that reflects all sketches and all your digital visual material. Include all visual and text elements, navigation buttons as well look and feel. Your audience is college age 1st year design students. We will begin work on this in class next week. Also bring to class the URLs for 2 of the best designed web sites you can find. Be prepared to address why you feel they are successful. i.e.; how do they use the elements of design in a successful manner. |
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