Presented to DeSForM 2013

1. The Value of a ‘Semiotic Sensibility’ in Graphic
and Communication Design
Dr. Alan Young
Auckland University of Technology
alan.young@aut.ac.nz

2. a semiotic sensibility
Roland Barthes describes this
image thus:
‘The signified is French imperiality, that is: the idea that France’s
empire treats all its subjects
equally. That France has dominated the world and the World loves
France for doing it.’
When Barthes ‘read’ the
image from Paris Match, he
was no longer a consumer, but
a semiotician.
That is, he had changed the
context to one of racial politics.

3. a semiotic sensibility
The power of semiotics is that
it can be applied to any
design artifact, from a film, to
an iPod . . .

4. a semiotic sensibility
. . . to a building.
Semiotics allows us to use the
same language across a range
of vastly different design artifacts, to understand how they
‘speak’ to us, through connation.
They ‘hail’ us, as viewers, audiences and consumers, through
signifiers and using a variety of
myths. Through the continuous
use of certain specific myths,
objects can thus critique or maintain and support hegemonic
ideological beliefs and values—
what we might term ‘ideology’.

5. a semiotic sensibility
The argument presented here is
that semiotics is such a powerful
way of understanding design artifacts, that rather than relegating
it to the ‘theory’ part of design
courses, it should form a fundamental basis for all design understanding.
One common exercise for teasing out the semiotic meaning
of products is the ‘Label Swap’
project, in which the key signifiers (excluding the actual words)
of two different products are
swapped. Thus, the colours, layout, typefaces, illustrative styles,
etc. are swapped, and students
are then required to describe
the effect of this swap on how
the product now ‘hails’ a target
market.

6. a semiotic sensibility
In many cases, the product
‘speaks’ in such an alien way of
the product, that it makes no
sense in our current ways of understanding markets.
At other times, the product
simply shifts from being directed
at one class, or gender, to being
directed at a completely different one. Either way, the power
of signification and the sense of
the ‘voice’ of a product is made
dramatically explicit through the
exercise.
Importantly, semiotics can also
be explored through exercises
directed at typography, at the
semiotic meanings of a film, or
of an advertisement, to provide a
‘semiotic sensibility’—an awareness of how design infuses products with meaning, with a ‘voice’.

7. a semiotic sensibility
Art therapists are able to analyse
a specific image to understand
the meanings which underlie it,
by using a sensibility gained from
performing similar analyses over
many years, along with reading
how others have also analysed
images. They cannot be taught
on an image by image basis, as
it is impossible to cover every
possible image a client might
produce.
Similarly, a semiotic sensibility
can only come from exposure to
semiotic analyses of a wide variety of artifacts, over an extended
period of time.
This semiotic sensibility becomes
part of a student’s world view,
and their tacit knowledge; and
as such impacts on the way they
create, as well as analyse work.

8. a semiotic sensibility
As well as providing a language
wih which to describe all design
artifacts, semiotics also provides
a political context from which to
approach design work.
Currently, almost all university
courses call for a global awareness and a sense of social
responsibility as part of their
graduate attributes. As students
learn the various contexts from
which to view the designs they
analyse—Marxist, feminist, racial
politics, and the like—they are
led to question the contexts and
effects of the designs they also
produce.

9. a semiotic sensibility
Semiotics taught through real
life projects serves to strengthen
students’ political awareness, and
provides alternative ways of
envisaging design futures.
Projects involving collaboration
across disciplines, universities
and even nations open up
possibilities for deeper
awareness of the political
potential of design work.
Some of the real life projects on
which students have been able to
work are:
still frame from Housing Commission project
Explosives Reserve: a project
working with a local community
to save important land from
developers.
Still Lives: a project which tells
the stories of people living on
a housing commission estate in
Melbournes inner city.

10. a semiotic sensibility
Equal Service was a project to
help Melbourne’s homeless
population—enough to fill the
Melbourne Cricket Ground every
night—such that service providers would stop seeing them as a
faceless group, but as individuals
with individual stories of heartbreak and tragedy, but also of
inspirational determinination and
resolve.
This project was a major contributor to the changing of the laws
which dealt with service provision
to homeless people in Australia.

11. a semiotic sensibility
Same Difference was a project to
fight discrimination against gay
and lesbian members of our society. Students produced posters
and t-shirt designs, an exhibition
of which was launched at the Justice Museum in Melbourne, and
which then toured Australia.
Semiotics is more than just a
useful element in the designer’s
toolkit. When used over an extended period, it can form a
semiotic sensibility—a foundational way of comprehending the
world. As such it impacts not only
how designers analyse, but how
they work creatively.

12. a semiotic sensibility

13. a semiotic sensibility

14. a semiotic sensibility

15. thank you