Visible Signs - David Crow (2010)

'An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts'

Key Terms
Key Notes & Quotes:

Chapter: Components

• 'It is this relationship between the components of the sign that enables us to turn signals, in whatever form they appear, into a message which we can understand' - p.14
• Three main areas of semiotics:
• The signs themselves 
• The way they are organised into systems 
• The context in which they appear
• Ferdinand de Saussure's model for a sign:
• The two fundamental elements that make up a sign = 
• Signifier - Word 
• Signified - Object it represents 
• I.e. 'dog' / 'chien' / 'perro' / 'hund' - word used to describe dog bears no relation to the thing it represents. The word 'dog' does not bite. 
• 'This divorce between meaning and form is called duality. p.17
• 'All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another' - p.18 
• The 'interpretant' is not fixed - meaning can vary depending on reader, their culture etc. p.23 
• Certain signs are deeply embedding in out visual language - can now improvise around this basic shape without losing meaning. p.26 Example:

Chapter: How Meaning is Formed

• Charles Sanders Peirce defined three catergories of signs:
• Icon: Resembles the sign e.g. photographs 
• Index: Direct link between sign and object e.g. smoke = index of fire/ traffic signs
• Symbol: Have no logical connection between sign and what it means. Relies on the readers understanding - learnt e.g. red cross = aid
• Saussure's are similar:
• Icon = 'Iconic' 
• Symbol = 'Arbitrary' 
• Things can be more than one sign catergory e.g. Traffic Signs:

• Icon - resembles traffic lights 
• Symbol - learnt meaning 
• Index - placement of sign next to road 
• 'Its meaning is part formed by where the sign is placed' p.32
• Peirce also identified 3 levels or properties: 
• Firstness: A sense of something - could be described as a feeling or mood
• Secondness:  The level of fact - Physical relation of one thing to another
• Thirdness: The mental level - Level of general rules. Brings the other two together in a relationship. Relates sign to object as a convention. p.32
• Semiosis - Peirce used the term to describe the transfer of meaning-  the act of signifying.  
• His view - Semiosis is not a one-way process with a fixed meaning. The meaning of a sign is affected by the reader - their background, culture, education, experiences etc. e.g. symbolic use of colour
• Weston Europe- Black = death/ mourning 
• China - White = death / mourning
• Unlimited Semiosis - interpretant resulting in our mind from first representamen can become a further sign and trigger and infinite chain of associations e.g. plane - sky - birds etc. p.34
• Metaphor (substituting) - an image in a sequence for another - transfers the characteristics of one object to another. Use of metaphor is common in advertising where a product is imbued with particular properties it is not readily associated with.
• Metonymn - similar to metaphor except it is used to represent a totality e.g. if we want to represent all children we might use an image of a child. 
• 'Where there is choice, there is meaning '. p.43

How Meaning is Formed 

• Roland Barthes identified structural relationships in the components of the sign - ideas centre on two levels of signification:
• Denotation - Physical reality of the object e.g. photograph of a child represents a child 
• Connotation - Things that alter how we read something - i.e. different film, lighting, frame changes the way we read the image of the child - grainy black and white brings ideas of nostalgia. 
• Connotation is arbitrary - meaning brought to image are based on rules or conventions that the reader has learnt.
• Convention - An agreement about now we should respond to a sign.
• Motivation - Is used to denote how much the signifier describes the signified e.g. 
• Photo of a child- highly motivated 
• Cartoon of a child- less motivated 
• 'The less a sign is motivated, the more important it is that the reader has learnt the conventions that help to decode the image' p.56
• Myths- Barthes believes that myths were the results of meaning generated by the groups in society who have control of the language and the media p.60 

Text and Image 

• For linguists, codes must be digital (composed of a fixed number of digits or units).
• Barthes questions whether is possible to have codes which are analogical. 
• Digital codes are paradigms - each of the units in a set are clearly different from each other e.g. the alphabet 
• Two basic characteristics:
• All units have something in common 
• Each unit is obviously different from the others in the set.    
• Digital codes- Paradigms where the units are different from each other 
• Analogue codes- Paradigms where the distinctions between the units are not clear, they operate on something more like a continuous scale e.g. music/ dance. p.71
• Advertising - 'should communicate the positive qualities of the product as clearly as possible to the chosen audience.' 
• Demonstrated by Frank Jenkins' 3 basic principles:
• Should be of interest and value to reader 
• Should be precise and straight to the point as quick as possible 
• Should be concise, say what it has to say in few words 
• Barthes - Text on an image consitutes a 'paristic message' - designed to quicken the reading with additional signifieds. 
• 'The addition of text can be a powerful method of altering or fixing the meaning of an image.' e.g. subtitles/ comic stripes p.74
• Anchorage - directs beholder through a number of possible readings of an image- through a 'floating chain of signifiers' - the text answers the question "what is it?"
• Relay - less common. Text is usually a snippet of dialogue and works in a complimentary way to the image (meanings that cannot be found in the images) e.g. comic strips. 

Abstract: The Art of Design

Key:

Key points

My own notes 

I figured it would probably be quite useful to look into the work of some Graphic Designers (as well as other artists/ professionals) as they tend to work in a more shape-driven manner and commonly use the art of simplification within their work - which is essentially what I will be investigating in my dissertation. 

I came across a Netflix documentary series called Abstract: The Art of Design, which I've been told by some peers is really interesting. Each episode focuses on a professional working within a specific creative discipline. I want to watch the illustration one soon, but started with the Graphic Design episode after having a think about cop.

Paula Scher

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator who has massively influenced the direction of graphic design over the last four decades. 

Notes & Quotes:

• "The city of signs" - referring to New York City - could be interesting as a starting point? Could look into symbols and signs in New York or take the idea of this further and investigate Leeds/ other places
• "I walk outside and I see typography everywhere"
• "The way numbers are on doors, no two are the same down the block" - interesting, things can be written differently but still have the same meaning
• "All messages are different and they're everywhere"
• "typography is painting with words"
• "I knew it had to be New York-ish, meaning it had to be loud and proud" - talking about design for The Public Theatre. Looks at tone and what it communicates
• "You can create an identity for a whole place based on the recognisability of type" - context
• "You instantly knew The Public. It's a language that could easily be dissected, taken apart, put back together" - could be interesting as a concept for making practical work- taking things apart and putting them back together in a different way? 
• "If a font is heavy and bold it may give you a feeling of immediacy. If a font is thin and has a serif form, it may feel classical. So that before you even read it, you have a sensibility and spirit and that if you can combine that with a meaning, then that's spectacular." - The way the type looks massively influences the way it's read. Could experiment with writing the same thing is different typefaces. Probably already a creative professional who does this- {research. 
• "Mostly what I design are identity systems. They have to exist in lots and lots and lots of ways." - explore this idea of identity systems
• "I generally try to want to push something as far as it can be pushed" - concept sort of explored in first year where we were given an object to draw and had to keep simplifying until we reached the most simplified form we could find (shown below): 

I actually really enjoyed this task and think it could be a good idea to revisit for this investigation.

• "You want to design something than can be adapted to its time"
• "Signalled a paradigm shift" - Research paradigms
• "I really started to understand that type had spirit and did not have to be some clean mechanical-like thing that was simply doing its job. It could be this marvellous thing to engage with" - Could explore type and image 
• "Design exists beyond screens, it has an impact in real like" - design is everywhere, I need to go and explore
• "an emotional sign system"
• "Design needs to take human behaviour into account" - needs to work in a way that people will easily understand. Maybe the idea of human behaviour could be interesting to explore - how do represent the notion of human behaviour/  characteristics in the most simple form
• "Paula has created a typographic language that is popular, it's American, it's New York"
• "a visual language... you don't need to see the logo to know what it is" - creating an identity for something
• "They want proof that this is really, really gonna work. The problem is there isn't proof. It's how do people see and perceive and accept things" - could carry out an investigation on the way different people perceive things.

One last quote I took from Scher was:

• "You have to been in a state of play to design. If you're not in a state of play, you can't make anything" 

I thought this was super inspirational and good thing to live by if you work creatively. It's important to play and explore different avenues and this is something I need to do within this investigation. 

This documentary was really interesting and definitely worth watching. Lots of ideas have been sparked which is exciting. These are highlighted in my added noted above. 

Warja Lavater - Image Analysis

Warja Lavater is a Swiss artist and illustrator who creates abstract re-tellings of fairy tales that use symbols instead of words. 

The illustrations within her books are accompanied by a key that helps the reader to understand what is what and consequently 'read' the book. What is great about these books is their ability to be universally understood due to the fact that each page of illustration has been created using simple shapes, of different colours and sizes.

Little Red Riding Hood

Above are some examples from one of her books- Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (1965). I was surprised by how easy it actually was to see what was happening once you know what each colour dot symbolises.

Image Analysis

 In the image on the left, we see the beginning scene of the fairy tale, where Little Red Riding Hood is leaving her Mother to go into the woods to find Granny's house. In the image on the right we see Little Red's encounter with the wolf. The scale and placement of the dots is really interesting here and massively helps with how the scene is read. The difference in size between the red dot (Little Red) and the black dot (the Wolf) makes you fear for the protagonist. It enables you to perceive Little Red as young, small in size, and somewhat vulnerable, and in contrast the Wolf appears large, frightening and a threat to the young girl. The placement of the dots also creates a further level of emotion. The closeness of the red dot to the black dot in addition to the multitude of green dots (the forest) closely surrounding them represents the fact that the protagonist is trapped in an enclosed space with the villain, making it a very dangerous situation for her and thus causing you to feel a sense of worry. The simplicity and stillness of the illustration also enables you to imagine a pause in time where Little Red feels somewhat helpless adding to the depth of the emotion felt when 'reading' the book.

Snow White

Image Analysis

 I firstly want to pick up on the symbol used to depict the character of Snow White in Lavater's edition of Snow White (1974). Lavater has cleverly picked up on the fact that there are three main colours used to describe the protagonist- these being white, black and red. The placement and ratio of these colours within the circle symbol has been determined by what the colours describe - her skin, her hair and her lips- allowing us to instantly understand that this is Snow White. Coincidentally, this symbol also has similarities to that of a target, which we know is essentially what Snow is in this tale- she is being targeted by the Evil Queen.

 In comparison to the page example provided for Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (1965), the illustration is a little more complex, possibly due to Lavater later experimenting and pushing the boundaries of how simple the illustrations needed to be. Both scenes contain a forest, however in this example, the green dots (trees) are overlapped and extremely close to Snow White, creating the illusion that the forest is closing in on her. Furthermore, the forest is littered with black dots that have a triangle shape cut out. These appear to look like creatures with open mouths, especially because most of them are facing Snow White. Once all of this information is put together in the readers mind and processed as a whole image, it is clear that it represents the commonly-known scene in the story after which Snow White has run into the woods in an attempt to escape the huntsman who was sent to kill her. She is let go and then finds herself within the forest where she is lost and frightened by her surroundings. 

Semantic Typography

Semantic typography is closely linked with the idea of semiotics and metaphor and is something that I've come across quite a lot on instagram and pinterest. Some of the examples are really simple but still very clever and it completely blows my mind sometimes! Semantic typography also looks into the relationship between type and image- type being something I've found myself becoming more interested in as time goes on, so this could be fun to explore?

Semiotics

Semiotics is a key topic to research while investigating the simplification of imagery into simple shapes. It's something that I've not looked into much before (apart from some lectures in first and second year) but I feel would be really beneficial to know more about. 

I popped into the library to get out some books and found a couple on semiotics. As I'm fairly new to the topic and don't specifically know what it is I want to focus on in my investigation yet, I got out - Visible Signs: The Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts (the 2nd and 3rd editions) written by David Crow. Doing some general reading around the subject will help me to understand the topic and give me some ideas into what I want to look into further.

Change of Plan

I've been having a think about my potential line of enquiry for COP3 and have decided it might be more beneficial to look at a topic more closely related to my current practice. Although I enjoyed researching and producing work for the subject matter of fairy tales, I'm not sure it would be relevant enough to revisit in Level 6 as fairy tales isn't something I definitely want to explore within my future practice. 

I've discovered over the last two years that shape is something I'm super interested in. I'm excited by the simplification of imagery to simple shapes within graphics and also the composition and cleverness presented in visual metaphors. I feel as though this is something I should be investigating into further and COP3 would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

I popped into uni and spoke to Jamie and Teresa about this and they confirmed changing my idea would be a good decision as I haven't really started much research for my old topic. So, I think it's time to get cracking! 

Task:

Go to the library and find a few books on semiotics to get me started. (There will be more on semiotics on the next post).