Semiotics is a science of signs and their use or interpretation, that can be a way of seeing the world. It helps us to understand the idea of what we hear and what we see. ‘Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning.’ (Sign Salad, 2019). Semiology is everywhere, and even unconsciously, we let it affect our life’s. To think about every day using objects, such as a set of paired faucets on the sink, almost always, the left side is hot water and the right side is cold. In past, this taps had letters indicating  Hot (H) and Cold (C). Even though there are no letters and sometimes both hot and cold are in the same tap, faucets are still tilting or turning left for hot and right for cold. This shows how semiotics has an impact on our lives even if we don’t know it and how can signs stay the same after decades. 

Charles Sanders Pierce defined three categories of semiotics: Icon; Symbol; Index. this is based on how the sign is related to the object.

Icon directly resembles the object, it shares a tangible quality with the object, for example, Rene Magritte’s one of the most popular paintings, ‘The Treachery of Images’ is a painting of a pipe and there is a caption that says, ‘This is not a pipe’. it’s not a pipe, it’s a representation of it.

An index has an implied association with the object. the sign and the object are connected in a logical way.

The symbol has no connection with the object, it has to be learnt and understood culturally.

On the lecture, there was shown Joseph Kosuth’s installation image, that I think is a really effective way of showing one thing from three different perspectives.

‘How meanings of signs are constitutes’ and ‘How signs refer to extra-lingual phenomena’

Sources:

https://signsalad.com/our-thoughts/what-is-semiotics/

https://www.thoughtco.com/semiotics-definition-1692082

Everything can be seen in different ways, based on the viewer’s vision. Sometimes, I imagine, how things can be seen from other’s point of view. My object is a vintage Polaroid camera, that is not square or regular shaped camera, it opens, and can be seen from different angles. In this task, I had to draw my object according to the given directions.

This exercise was really interesting and fun, I had to draw in ways I haven’t drawn before. I discovered, that how one object can look different with only  changing the basic drawing technique.

On the Principles session, we looked at different types and how can type identify the hierarchy of the content. Typography is important for good, clear communication between the designer and the audience.

The most important part of designing a page with type is a grid. The grid is everything!!! It helps to structure the layout that can change a lot in a design. The task was to place type in a way it shows the hierarchy of the important and less important information using given text. The key was to use text in 3 different ways, for example for first exercise use only one size, one weight and for the second exercise, one size but two weights.

                                                             One size, one weight 

 

                                                           One size, two weights

 

                                                           Two sizes, two weights

 

This task was really interesting for me, as I really like minimalistic style and the idea of ‘Less is More’. I also like designing book covers, and previously placing type was quite a challenge as it contained the most information of the content and I wanted type layout to be perfect, so now I know that the grid is essential while designing covers and typographic layouts, that shows the idea of hierarchy and organisation.

 

Everything that communicates visually is a construction with basic geometrical shapes. In this task, we were given specific instructions to design images with cut out shapes and bring them into context. The instructions were quite straightforward but also open to our imagination. The main thing was to understand how people visualise things.

To start with, we had to cut out different sized strips to have shapes to work with and had to produce compositions to demonstrate three conditions: Symmetry; Isolation; Spatial depth. We also had the grid that would show exact dimensions and measurements. I had the shapes and started looking at different compositions to create a symmetrical illusion

Symmetry

I wanted my compositions to be really simple and easy to visualise, so I created this three designs that are quite similar but still differ from each other with the space used in the composition.

Isolation

To design isolation, I decided to use mostly squares, as I thought that it would communicate better with the composition. I like the second design as it clearly shows the odd square that is isolated from the others that are exactly same.

Spatial depth

So, as you can see, I decided to stick with simple and clear compositions, that would easily communicate the illusion of spatial depth.

Asymmetry                                                            Motion

Rhythm

 

The last task was to add coloured strips and also create three conditions: Perspective, Pattern and Fragmentation.

Perspective

                                  Pattern                                                              Fragmentation

 

 

In the groups, we were given a box full of posters, leaflets, books and other interesting papers from Andrew’s collected stuff. We chose a book that was visually very appealing and it turned out it is UAL LCC MA Photography 2017 Catalogue for displaying the students’ final work. The main task in this exercise was to work on primary and secondary research and look at the differences or similarities that these to kind of research have.

We were given two handouts, the first one contained questions that only needed primary research when for the second paper, we had to find information using the internet or other media sources. For the primary research, we were asked to describe the object through a drawing. As a group, we decided to sketch an open book to display the content of the book. It is a photographic catalogue, where on each page there is only one image, so for the sketch, we chose to draw a small pineapple on one side and on the other, a camera as it is a representation of photographs, to symbolise the content of the book. This sketch reminded me of the book we are reading, How to See the World by Nicholas Mirzoeff, where he says that we visualise things with our mind rather than our eyes.

‘The point here is that we do not actually ‘see’ with our eyes but with our brains…What we see with the eyes, it turns out, is less like a photograph than it is like a rapidly drawn sketch. … We put together an understanding of the world that makes sense from what we already know or think we know’ (Mirzoeff, 2017, p.72)

So in our sketch, instead of drawing an actual replica of the book, we drew a camera that would give a viewer the idea of a content, so they would easily understand it.

The last thing we had to do was collaboratively write a creative story about the object using the primary and secondary object as if the object was speaking for itself.

I enjoyed this exercise as it vividly showed the difference between primary and secondary research, which is really important to know when doing research. Especially I liked the fact that we came across this book, cause I love the layout, the cover and each photograph that it contains and I think it was a really nice object to choose and research.

 

In the  IGMD week 2, in our groups, we discussed Peer Learning through SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis by recording personal thoughts of each member of the group. To contextualise this analysis, we worked as a team to organise our objects according to LATCH.

First, we arranged the objects with its origin place, location and used the table as a map to allocate objects geographically. Then we divided the objects according to the dominant colour. Lastly, the whole group decided to organise objects with its width. we had some troubles deciding how to place the objects but the most logical idea was to place them in a way they are used, so some horizontally some vertically.

To conclude, I liked working with the whole group rather than just doing it in smaller groups, as there were a variety of great ideas and different perspectives that helped us to classify our objects in order whether it was according to size or location.

 

 

 

During CTS week 2, we watched a documentary by Gary Hustwit, ‘Objectified’. It is about the relationship between us and the objects, what can we learn about ourselves looking at objects we own and what they say about us.

The film documents, how designers understand what people want; they don’t work in the vacuum and interact with the environment to fully perceive the needs. Good Design should be innovative, aesthetic, long-lived consistent and as little as possible (Dieter Rams, Objectified, 2009). The designers’ job is looking to the future and improving people’s daily life without people even thinking about it.

Almost everything is designed and every object speaks for itself according to material, colour and etc. Art can change something! it becomes your family and objects you keep define your true self.

We looked at other groups’ key concepts that they’ve gathered from individual notes.

On the first Principles session, we were introduced to the theory created by Richard Saul Wurman, ‘LATCH’, that is a method of organization. The ‘LATCH’ includes Location; Age; Time; Category and Hierarchy. this is the way of making sense of information through design. Even though it’s really simple, it’s a great way to find relationships between totally different objects.

 

First of all, we were asked to put out our belongings and lay them on the table. The table got messy and so did our minds. There were so many possibilities of organizing the objects, according to colour, size, shape, age and etc. The process of the finding was the most interesting part, especially when the connections got a bit

 

obvious. At first, we liked the idea of categorising by colour as we realised there was a huge colour diversity. But wanted something ‘better’, something that would be unique and fascinating to find. One of us discovered that most of the objects were circle shapes, or had a circular surface. So it started…

 

We got rid of the objects that didn’t fit ‘circle’ category and looked at the circles, some were big, some were small, so we laid them according to the size of the circle surface; height of the objects that were circular and colour. Finding the best way to show the organization of the relationship between these circles was quite challenging. We wanted to find the ‘best’ solution and decided to create a short ‘stop motion’ video that would show the hierarchy of the objects. As we didn’t have much time for this exercise, and the process of finding took the most of the time we didn’t have enough time to record good quality video and then edit it. But teamwork took it’s time here, we chose 3 categories, colour; height and surface size. So we took three different stop-motion videos that would show how it goes from the shortest or the smallest to the biggest.

 

            

 

 

 Introduction

Nicholas Mirzoeff, vividly shows how images shape our lives and have an impact on political and social changes. When in 1972, seeing “Blue Marble” (Jack Schmitt) was life-changing for people, today the world has changed radically; People started moving to cities and urban population grew rapidly with the majority of young generations; Internet and social networking has begun to be so big that it became ‘the first universal medium’ (Mirzoeff 6); As this constant change can be controversial and disputable, there always arises a question, “Is  ‘permanent revolution’ safe?”.

Chapter 1

‘Selfie’, a photograph taken by yourself, is originated from painted self-portraits. In the past, self-portraits, were available for society’s elite, even though they didn’t paint their own pictures, their wealth and power would represent it. To compare it to today’s world, we can all share and create photographs of ourselves instantly. Filmmakers, artists and even early painters,  have created self-portraitures using colours, atmosphere, composition, to make it seen in their desired way. to compare them to the modern world, ‘selfie’, where we only show the parts that we want to be seen, is the part of the performance, “Each selfie is a performance of a person as they hope to be seen by others” (Mirzoeff 62).