Modern Life is Rubbish?: Revolutionising the Image

 Style, Cubism & Futurism 

What exactly do we mean when we talk about styles and movements in the history of art or design?

The Canon – See story of Polykleitos’ bronze sculpture entitled – Doryphoros (The Spear Bearer). A theoretical work which comprises a set of aesthetic principles governing the work’s proportions, meaning ‘rule’. The proportionally ‘perfect’ work of art. A yardstick – a measure of what they believed art ‘should’ be, the quintessential embodiment of ‘good’ art. 

The Western art historical canon denotes a body of books, music and art that have been traditionally accepted by Western scholars as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. Idea of the celebrity artist or designer and the masterpiece. 

Canonised – accepted into the canon. 

Survey text – characterised by key individuals who represent styles and movements. 

What is ‘style’? 

A definition: Specific rather than simply a methodology. A particular kind, sort, or type, as with reference to form, appearance, or character e.g. the baroque style. Or... 

A particular, distinctive, or characteristic mode of construction or execution in any work of art/design. 

A way of doing something, especially one which is typical of a person, group of people, place or period (in the style of...). 

Used to classify and to describe e.g. when, where or when something was created/developed. Used to group and match works. When we study the style of something we are looking to place it in a relationship of similarity (and difference) with other works. 

How do we categorise and name works /movements in art and design? – Shared characteristics. 

Styles or movements are dialogical – meaning that they come about as part of a dialogue or conversation with previous styles – either embracing or reacting against elements of those styles. 

If something is stylised, it is represented with an emphasis on a particular style. 

Style was described by Meyer Schapiro as ‘a system of forms with a quality, through which the personality of the artist and the outlook of a group are visible’. Art/design ‘movement’, a definition: A tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time. 

Cubism 

Art nouveau inspired many artists to break with traditional forms of representation and to form their own artist groups. Originating in Paris and developing in part from the Vienna Secession movement, Cubism was an example of this tendency, which took a revolutionary new approach to representing reality.  

Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon is often considered to mark the beginning of Cubism. 

The name ‘Cubism’ may derive from Louis Vauxcelles’ comment that Georges Braque’s paintings exhibited in Paris in 1908 showed everything reduced to ‘geometric outlines’ and ‘cubes’. 

Art Nouveau movement

• of the, it’s impact was evident across urban centres throughout Europe and North America. Permeating art, craft, design and architecture, it could be recognised in buildings and advertisements, inside homes and outside street cafés. 
• •It was particularly prevalent in graphic design, in fact its ubiquity at the time was partly due to the fact that many artists of the time were using easily reproducible means of making work, such as graphic art. 
• •Despite only lasting a short period of time in the late 19th/early 20th century, it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s and today its motifs are returned to again and again in visual communications. 
• •It is regarded as an important predecessor of Modernism. 
• •Manifesting itself in an aesthetic foregrounding curves, ‘feminine’ motifs and, even, deformations, it reflected a return to an interest in nature and individuality. The English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley was one perhaps one the most controversial Art Nouveau figure due to his combination of the erotic and macabre. He created a number of posters in his brief career that employed graceful and rhythmic lines. Beardsley's highly decorative prints, were both decadent and simple, and represent the most direct link we can identify between Art Nouveau and Japanese influences. 

Ethos 

• Art Nouveau was, in part, a response to the radical changes caused by the rapid urban growth and technological advances that followed the Industrial Revolution . By the late nineteenth century the impact of industrialisation, its presumed benefits, and the growing focus on scientific and empirical knowledge and understanding was rejected by some. 
• •These developments lead to contemporary life appearing to become ‘standardised’, an a resulting sense of alienation; a loss of people's sense of ‘self’ lead to artists seeking new forms of expression. 
• •For some, this led to an emphasis on subjectivity or ‘interiority’, and a search for spirituality. 
• •It was also a somewhat anti-historicist aesthetic. While it looked back to previous themes and motifs to some degree, Art Nouveau was aimed at modernising design, seeking to escape the eclectic and idiosyncratic historical styles of the Victorian era which had been popular. It was also committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts. It also showed a concern that manufacturing processes were producing poorly made objects which imitated earlier periods. The practitioners of Art Nouveau, then, sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce genuinely modern design. 

Alphonse Mucha – women in Art Nouveau 

• Archetypal Art Nouveau imagery. 
• Commodification of women making as ultimate symbol of the modern consumer world. 
• •Posters which sold a lifestyle dream, just as lifestyle became an issue for a growing metropolitan middle class with a disposable income. 
• •Many designers used women to sell products. The perfect male body emerged in many images of the period, most often when the subject-matter demanded a 'serious' approach. Traditional gender divides were reinforced through the symbolic use of male and female imagery. Women's capacities were traditionally perceived as being for pleasure and instinct, with men's for action and intellect. Designers often used the male body to promote industry and technology, while the female body was used for product and entertainment. 
• Many Art Nouveau decorative arts objects manipulated the female body to create different and often playful symbolic narratives. 

Art Nouveau through the ages 

Little Nemo, cartoon by Winsor McCay Experimented with the form of the comics page, its use of colour, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective, architectural and other detail. The familiar Art Nouveau-influenced style McCay outlined his characters in heavy blacks and used ornate architecture and curves. 

The Vienna Secession 

• 1897, Vienna. A group of visual artists, decorators, sculptors, architects and designers who first banded together in to promote their own work and oranise exhibitions that resisted the conservatism that still prevailed in so many of Europe's traditional art academies. Their first president was Gustav Klimt. See http://www.klimt.com/ 
• •How it began: Two principle institutions dominated the Visual Arts in the years prior to the secession: the Academy of fine arts and the Kunstlerhaus – a private exhibiting society founded in 1861 which became Vienna’s main exhibition hall often under the presidency of conservative bureaucrats. Any ‘established’ artist at the time needed to belong to the Kunstlerhaus and each year their work was either selected or rejected for public exhibition (juried selection). A group of artists in the Kunstlerhaus began to meet regularly at cafes to exchange ideas and discuss the work of new artists outside of the confines of the institution. Eventually these meetings would result in the forming of two informal art societies. 
• •Ethos: This group took a pluralist approach to the arts and brought together different ideas and disciplines, which collectively formed what they referred to as ‘Gesamkunstwerk’ (the ‘total work of art’). Similarly to broader Art Nouveau ideologies the Secessionists rejected 19th century manufacturing techniques and favoured quality handmade objects, believing that a return to the handmade could rescue society from what it saw as the ‘moral decay’ caused by industrialisation. 
• •The the secession developed its own unique ‘Secession style’ centred around symmetry and repetition - rather than using only natural and curved forms more common in Art Nouveau. One of the dominant forms was the square, and recurring motifs included the grid and checkerboard. 
• •Japanese design was quickly incorporated by the Secessionists for its restrained use of decoration, it’s preference for natural materials over artifice, the preference for hand-made over machine-made, and its balance of negative and positive space. 
• •Criticisms: Although the movement foregrounded the doctrine of ‘form following function’, some designers tended to be lavish in their use of decoration, and the style began to be criticsed for being overly elaborate. In a sense, as the style matured, it was regarded by some as reverting to the very habits it had reacted against, and some argued that it had simply swapped the old for the superficially new. 

• Secession House built by Architect Josef Olbrich – one of the three architects in the group. 
• •Olbirch saw the need for a versatile exhibition place that could accommodate the group’s vision of ‘Gesamkunstwerk’; where all disciplines of the arts could be exhibited simultaneously. He incorporated moveable interior partitions and columns which meant that each exhibition could have it’s own unique layout. Secession House had enough and floor space so that sculpture, painting and other art forms could be combined within one exhibition. 
• •Ver Sacrum, ‘Sacred Spring’ in Latin was the official magazine of the Vienna Secession from 1898 to 1903. It pioneered new techniques in graphic design such as the use of modular grid system and custom designed typography. This and its unique square format would be a great influence on the Dutch graphic design in the 1920s. 
• •The Wiener Werkstätte was founded in 1903 by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann, both of whom had been key members of the Vienna secession. The primary goal of the company was to bring good design and craft into all areas of life within the fields of ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture, and the graphic arts. Encouraged its patrons to look beyond the material value of objects and to embrace geometric symmetry over surface ornament. Architectural principles dictated the company’s early designs. 

Iconography/Iconology

Recap lecture 2 

How is communication made possible in the visual world? (Design, art, fashion, humour) 

•Looked at not what a 'visual text' means but how it means. 

•Saussure's model: Sign, signifier and signified 

•Arbitrariness - nothing naturally means anything. 

•Peirce's 'trichotomy' system of signs: symbol, icon, index. 

•See Anthony Burrill – Combining sign, signifier and signified in a literal way – Oil And Water Do Not Mix. 

Iconology 

One of the things that came up last week when we were looking at semiotics was how metaphor is used in visual communication – which leads nicely into this week’s session on Iconology. 

• Where we were looking last week at different theories which claim to explain how words and images communicate meaning (how we translate words and images into meanings through a shared knowledge of coded systems), today we’re looking at how broader meanings, and different nuances of meaning, can be communicated within these signifying systems. Iconology is about how we use individual – as well as collective – understandings and interpretations to seek a depth of meaning and nuances of meaning beyond that first level of semiotic communication. So, where Semiotics tells us that the phonemes (‘codes’) ‘r’ ‘e’ ‘d’ make up a bigger word (‘code’) ‘red’ which we have learned to associate with the colour we all think of when we hear the word ‘red’, iconology delves into the symbolic, cultural and, at times, idiosyncratic meanings associated with ‘red’. In this session we’ll consider what is being communicated within the context of particular examples of visual communication, and how, as interpreters and creators of graphic design/art/animation, we can play with that ‘gap’ between reading and interpretation (between the page/screen and its audience) to creative effect. 
• The study of meaning contained within in a particular work of art or design, and the branch of art history that addresses the description, analysis and interpretation of images. 
• Meanings are not always immediately obvious - this can enhance their impact. 
• Historical and theoretical context - Erwin Panofsky - iconologist - Studies in Iconology (1939). 
• Using visual evidence to 'unlock' meaning. 
• Iconology : Iconology is the study of the meaning contained within the symbols in a particular work of art. 
• Culturally specific. It examines the symbol on more than its face value and tries to find meaning by reconciling it with its historical context. To find out about the ORIGINS, purpose and meaning of something. 
• Looking as opposed to just seeing. 
• Metaphor - where meaning is derived through association, comparison or resemblance. 

The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, Jan Van Eyck, 1434 

This painting is a great example of an iconological mystery, but great for practicing iconological analysis (art historians have had a field day with this painting!). 

What can we glean from it immediately? What can we read into it if we look a little closer? 

What contesting views exist about this complex work of art? 

What happens when we ‘over-read’? Can we even do such a thing? 

John Howells notes in his book Visual Culture (2003), that ‘Paintings … have meanings that the artist would expect the viewer to understand. The successful communication of these meanings, however, depends upon shared cultural conventions between painter and viewer’. 

Erwin Panofsky 

• German art historian and iconologist (wrote Studies in Iconology in 1939) – regarded the role of iconology as being, ‘to identify and describe’. Considered the ‘conventional significance’ attached to the symbols in a work of art/design, and the significance of a common currency of cultural experiences through what might be considered familiar motifs and themes. 
• He systematised iconological analysis into three layers or strata: 
• 1. PRIMARY/’NATURAL’ Simple identification through familiarity, perception of the work’s pure form. We can say what we see and begin to understand it on a very basic level. 
• 2. SECONDARY/’CONVENTIONAL’ Linking of artistic/design motifs with themes, concepts, conventional meanings. Recognising a degree of allegory and metaphor within shared conventions of meaning. Beginning to bring in your own knowledge of the themes/motifs and their contextual circumstances. 
• 3. TERTIARY/’INTRINSIC’ Perhaps the most contentious level of interpretation. At this deepest level, the intrinsic meaning associated with themes and motifs – within a specific context – is apprehended. At this level we begin to ask questions about the content and what it might allude to, as well as the ideas that are more immediately apparent. Further, what does it mean to us as an individual when we bring our own personal experiences and knowledge into play? 

Panofsky’s three strata  

Think of the example we looked at of a man tipping his hat as he walks down the street. How can we apply these three strata to this gesture? – 

1. What do we see? – A man tipping his hat. We know it’s a man, we know that’s a hat, we see that he’s carrying out a gesture which involves removing his hat and placing it back on his head. We can begin to recognise and understand that this is probably a friendly gesture through the fact that he also smiles etc.... 
2. What does it mean? We know, through our understanding of cultural conventions, that this gesture is a greeting, and a polite and friendly one. 
3. A sort of synthesising or bringing together of the above strands of understanding, to asks, ultimately, what does this all mean?. What deeper meaning can we understand? We might be able to learn something about the background, education, characteristics etc. of the man as a result of viewing this scene. Considers it as part of a historic, geographic, cultural, social environment or context.

• Some meanings [of images] depend on shared cultural understandings that go beyond what is provided in the image alone. Refer to the example discussed – the child’s drawing of a cat. Not an example of ‘Mimesis’ (mimetic representations are those which mimic the appearance of things in the world, i.e. they look like the things to which they refer (like Saussure’s ‘icon’ to some extent). 
• This example highlights the relevance of Panofsky’s concern that, when trying to come up with a science of analysing works of art/design, we should be wary of what he calls ‘theme chasing’ without a consideration of cultural context. 
• Jason Munn’s Moma screenprints – how might we use iconology to analyse the possible meanings within these? http://jasonmunn.com/ 
• The Beatles iconology exercise: 
• The emergence in the 1960s of a proliferating youth culture, where postcards, magazines and record sleeves became legitimate source materials for art-making. – what different layers of meaning can be understood from studying the Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers (Peter Blake & Jann Haworth - arguably the most famous album sleeve of all time) poster/album cover? How/what do these ‘mean’ to a viewer? In this piece of design, a plethora of historical and contemporary references were made, many obvious in their referential meaning, many more abstract or cryptic, but presenting a narrative of influence and inspiration. Discussed the idea that an iconological reading of this cover might tell us not only about their musical and philosophical influences, but also the extent to traditional barriers between 'high' and 'low' culture were being eroded. Discussion also around the idea of it being a tableau acting as ‘a guidebook to the cultural topography of the decade’, and the idea that they were trying to be; to stand for ‘culture’. 

Semiotics and the making of meanings

Recap lecture 1 

• What is theory and why study it? Importance of having a language/vocabulary to articulate your ideas. 

• Designer as author – giving yourself a voice (Anthony Burrill, Don’t Say Nothing principle). 
• Theory as a vehicle for expressing your own ideas and as a source of inspiration (Anthony Burrill, I Like It, What Is It? 
• Thinking creatively, processes-led design – Conceptual Design and Daniel Eatock. 
• Theory realised as a Manifesto – thinking up a framework for realising your ideas. 
• Criticality and asking questions. 
• Historical understanding – influence of the past on work being made today. 

Why do we need to know about Semiotics? 

Tools, vocabulary, confidence in your ideas - Professional designers need to be able to explain to a client/viewer/audience/publisher how the choices they make effect and transform the message they are crafting for the intended audience. 

•The ability to explain how visual communication works, how it can be manipulated to the benefit of the message, and how a professional adds value to a product – a key area that separates the professional from the amateur. 

•It is not just about having the tools and the knowledge to make design that looks good; you need to be able to analyse and explain why your ideas work. 

All good designers are semioticians. 

Semiotics – the theory(ies) which explore how systems of signs work to make meaning. 

•Signs - spoken and written language, codes, symbols, sounds, non-linguistic. Signs can mean different things to different people depending on individual experiences, expectations. Signs can have an emotional impact. 

•As both creators and consumers of visual art and design – and as participants in a culture which functions on the basis of shared meanings and common understandings – we decode meaning from signs and symbols with ease. We are highly sophisticated readers of signs and do this subconsciously. 

•A good idea along with a brilliant aesthetic may fall down in the absence of proper and effective communication of the idea through the aesthetic. This is where semiotics comes in: Understanding semiotics can help us to ensure we're communicating messages effectively. 

Paul Rand IBM logo 

'Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting‘ (Paul Rand) 

•Paul Rand's popular Eye-Bee-M poster, an image-word ‘puzzle’ known as a rebus, was created in 1981. described as, 'Not just an identity but a basic design philosophy which permeated corporate consciousness and public awareness.’ 

Semiotics – the basics

Understanding how words and images – together with ideas and interpretations – are used to make sense of the world. 

How words and images communicate meaning. 

To understand how design works, we need first to understand how language – visual and verbal – works. 

This site is a useful starting point for understanding semiotics

Colour semiotics 

• Colours as ‘coded’ - how do colours act as vehicles for communicating a specific message or evoking a certain emotion? 
• Culturally conditioned – through habituation, interpretation becomes subconscious. Our actions and thoughts – the things we do automatically – are often governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions, and dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly. When we see the different colours of a traffic light, we automatically know how to react to them. This response has been taught – we learn such responses as children. For many signs, an amount of cultural knowledge is required to understand its meaning (or to interpret it in the desired way). Viewing and interpreting (or decoding) signs enable us to navigate the societal landscape. 
• 'Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorize reality in the same way. As John Passmore puts it, ‘Languages differ by differentiating differently’ (Passmore 1985,24)’. (Daniel Chandler, Semiotics) 
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• Two approaches to understanding visual communication have become definitive foundations for examinations of the topic. Ferdinand de Saussure (Swiss linguist) and Charles Sanders Peirce (American philosopher). 
• •Saussure’s Course on General Linguistics. Theory of signs and symbols which he called Semiology. Revolutionary in the world of linguistics, put culture at the centre of thought. His ideas were founded on the principle that there are no ideas in the mind before language puts them there: 'In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure.‘ (Saussure).
• Phonemes (sounds) form words, which in turn are signifiers: c -a –t / ‘cat’ = ‘signifier’. The thing to which it refers (a cat/idea of a cat) = the ‘signified’. The two brought together = ‘sign’. 

Arbitrariness 

• ‘Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no natural concepts or categories which are simply reflected in language. Language plays a crucial role in constructing reality.’ (Daniel Chandler, Semiotics) 
• •Saussure noted that linguistic signs are inherently arbitrary. The fact that a meanings are expressed using different words across different languages demonstrates that neither the sound nor their written form bears any resemblance to the object/meaning to which it refers. In this sense, meaning is purely subjective. 
• •Nothing about the 'c', 'a' or 't', or about the full word 'cat' have any inherent 'cat-ness' about them. Associating this word with the mental image of a cat is learned behaviour. 
• •The exception – onomatopoeia (where a word sounds like the thing to which it is referring e.g. ‘crash’, ‘splat’. Dictionary definition: ‘the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.’ How might this onomatopoeic relationship be extended to visual art/design through the combining of form and content? 

Peirce’s three categories of signs

• Symbol – no logical connection to referent, arbitrary, relies on habit or rule. E.g. words, flags, alphabet, 
• •Icon – resembles the sign, likeness. Representation question – will always entail a degree of convention/agreement about modes of representation. E.g. photograph, onomatopoeic word. 
• •Index – direct link between sign and object, factual relationship – causal/physical. E.g smoke is an index of fire. 
• As we learned in the lecture, many signs we read can be interpreted as one or more of these simultaneously! The boundaries are not always clear and are dependent upon context. 

Creative semiotics 

Understanding semiotics means you can play with how words and images communicate, subvert conventions and question how it all works. 'Where there is choice there is meaning' (David Crow)

                            In advertising 

• Because semiotics relies on common understandings and culturally shared conventions, even where the signified is absent the sign can still be meaningful in certain contexts. 
• Communicates that Heinz Ketchup is so iconic and irreplaceable that the viewer doesn't need to see it to know that it is the subject of the advert. Sense of confidence. 

Semiotics and the history of visual communication - early beginnings 

• An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek word for 'idea' and 'gráphō'; 'to write') is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. 
• Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as 'pictograms' or 'pictographs'. 
• Pictograms form part of our daily lives through their use in medication, transport, computing etc. They indicate – in iconic form – places, directions, actions or constraints on actions in either the real world (a town, a road, etc.) or virtual space (computer desktop, Internet, etc.). A stylised figurative drawing that is used to convey information. 
• They are used to replace written indications and instructions, expressing regulatory, mandatory, and warning information, often used when that information must be processed quickly (e.g. road traffic signs) as well as when users speak different languages, have limited linguistic ability, or have visual problems, and especially when there is a legal obligation to inform or for the user to comply with instructions. 

Semiotics and fashion  

• What assumptions do we make from a semiotic 'reading' of clothing?’ 
• Roland Barthes (literary theorist, philosopher, linguist) is widely regarded as one of the most subtle and perceptive critics of the 2oth century. He was particularly fascinated with language and fashion, and the history of clothes. 
• 'Clothing concerns all of the human person, all of the body all the relationships of man to body as well as the relationships of body to society' - Roland Barthes. 
• 'Blue is the Fashion This Year': A Note on Research into Signifying Units in Fashion Clothing ‘When I read in a fashion magazine that an item is defined as THE accessory for springtime, or that blue is in fashion this year, I cannot but see a semantic structure in these suggestions...I see imposed upon me a link of equivalence between a concept (spring, youth, fashion this year) and a form (the accessory, this suit, the colour blue); between a signifier and a signified. A raincoat protects from the rain, but also and indissociably , it points to its status as a raincoat. This is moreover the fundamental status of clothes: an item of clothing that is purely functional us conceivable only outside of any notion of society - as soon as an item is actually manufactured, it inevitably becomes an element in semiology. (Roland Barthes). 
• We give off signs/signals about ourselves through our clothing – even if unintentional (and often misconstrued). Semiotics aids us in constructing opinions about others and assists us in adapting to our environment. Fashion, with its own idiolect can, arguably, be seen, and interpreted, as a type of visual language. 
• Example of Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphries of OMD (1980s) saw themselves as artists not popstars, so purposely chose to look exceptionally ordinary – buying bank clerk-style clothes off the peg from C&A, intending not to let anything distract from their music. Perhaps inevitably, and despite their intentions, this caught on as a style statement. 

                        Anchorage and relay (Barthes) 

• Anchorage – text which anchors or ‘pins down' how the image is read. The reader is directed through a ‘floating chain of signifiers’. The text clarifies or ‘anchors’ the meaning, hinted at through visual clues. Where the image is complex, it helps to underline a relationship between text and image. E.g. adverts, maps, narrated documentaries on TV. 
• Relay – the words and images tell a story more ‘equally’ and stand in a complementary relationship. Important in film and comic strips, the text advances the reading of the images and supplies meanings not found in the images alone. Both the words and images are fragments which together create the unity of the message – which is ultimately realised on a higher level. 

Semiotics in art Joseph Kosuth 

• American conceptual artist, thinker and writer. The work comprises a life-size photograph of a chair, the actual chair positioned in the same spot as it was photographed, and a photograph of a dictionary definition of the word ‘chair’. 
• •Consider - which is the sign, signifier and signified? Do they shift depending upon how they’re read/their context? 
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• •‘Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.’ (Joseph Kosuth). 
• •Kosuth investigates what it means to make art, to experience art, to think about art, to see it as a global model for language and culture. ‘If one wanted to make a work of art devoid of meaning, it would be impossible because we’ve already given meaning to the work by indicating that it’s a work of art’ (Joseph Kosuth). 

Rene Magritte 

• His interest was in probing how words and images differ in their modes of signifying. Magritte was not making a primer in semiotics: he was making a sort of ‘meta’ art; that which de-automatises conventions and makes us aware of the processes by which we see and read the world. These works are also violations that provide a way of seeing how early schooling teaches us canonical recognition forms both of language and visual representation. But the side-, eye-level views of the objects, their lack of extraneous detail such as labels or decoration, and their presentation floating in a dark, featureless space without shadows conforms to the rules for creating images of 'a class of objects' that are part of our common visual culture. 
• •‘When, in the twentieth century, an artist decisively abandons representation in favour of ‘abstraction’ or a focus on formal values and medium, the title represents the image itself, usually in terms of its main compositional features (e.g. Red Square and White Square, Improvisation: Green Centre). When representation is itself under scrutiny, the titles tend to become oblique and sometimes teasingly definite references to things that are not part of common knowledge or experience, allusions to things in a code we don't share (e.g. Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even) 

Martha Rosler 

• The Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) 
• Semiotics of the Kitchen is a feminist parody video and performance piece released in 1975 by Martha Rosler. The video is considered a critique of the commodified versions of traditional women's roles in modern society. Featuring Rosler as a generic cooking show host, the camera observes as she presents an array of kitchen hand utensils, many of them out-dated or strange, and, after identifying them, plays out unproductive, sometimes, violent, uses for each. It uses a largely static camera and a plain set, allowing the viewer to focus more on Rosler's performance and adding a primitive quality. Letter by letter, Rosler navigates a culinary lexicon, using a different kitchen implement for each step along the way. She begins with an apron, which she ties around her waist, and, with deadpan humour, journeys through the alphabet. The focus on linguistics and words is important, since Rosler intended the video to challenge 'the familiar system of everyday kitchen meanings - the securely understood signs of domestic industry and food production. 

Criticisms of Semiotic AnalysisSemioticians 

• Semiotics does not always make explicit the limitations of its techniques, and semiotics is sometimes uncritically presented as a general-purpose tool. Saussurean semiotics is based on a linguistic model but not everyone agrees that it is productive to treat photography and film, for instance, as 'languages'. Some people believe that we can’t 'read' the formal codes of photographic and audio-visual media, arguing that the resemblance of their images to observable reality is not merely a matter of cultural convention: 'to a substantial degree the formal conventions encountered in still or motion pictures should make a good deal of sense even to a first-time viewer'. (Messaris 1994, 7). 
• •The way in which some semioticians have treated almost anything as a code, whilst leaving the details of such codes inexplicit, has been criticised. (Corner 1980). 
• •Sometimes semioticians present their analyses as if they were purely objective 'scientific' accounts rather than subjective interpretations. Some semioticians seem to choose examples which illustrate the points they wish to make rather than applying semiotic analysis to an extensive random sample. (Leiss et al. 1990, 214). 
• •Some semiotic analysis has been criticised as nothing more than an abstract and 'arid formalism' which is preoccupied with classification. Some people believe that semiotics can lead to 'a crushing of the aesthetic response through the weight of the theoretical framework' (Susan Hayward 1996, 352). 

What's in a theory?

Visual communication: The conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or viewed. Primarily presented or expressed with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, advertising and animation. It explores the idea that a visual message, with or without accompanying text, has a power to inform, educate, or persuade a viewer (rhetoric). 

'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak.' (John Berger, 1972). 

‘...Words [spoken] are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven pieces of information. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.‘ (Lynell Burmark, Thornburg Centre for Professional Development) 

A theory provides an explanatory framework which can be used to explore or support ideas, develop hypotheses, or as a basis for critique. 

Anthony Burrill, I Like It, What Is It? (2000) 

• Substance and style. The one reflected in the other. 
• Theory is about asking ‘why?’, as opposed to just ‘how’ something should be designed or created. 
• It’s about ideas - creating a framework through which to think through your ideas. 
• It's about having the vocabulary and language to articulate your ideas and describe your work to others. 
• It sets your work apart from other design in the competitive commercial world of visual communication. 
• Design theory raises aesthetic, philosophical, historical, political questions about design - a socially engaged activity which, by its very nature, has to become part of wider narratives and discourses in order for it to work (discourses with clients, with other designers and design theorists, and with the general public). 
• Although practical theories like colour, perception and symbolism have been taught since the Bauhaus, theoretical concepts such as ‘semiotics’ and ‘deconstruction’ have extended critical thinking around design and are used as foundations upon which to build effective design methodologies. 
• Rather than basing judgements on design outcomes on aesthetics alone, theory enables us to say why something is ‘good’ or effective. It provides the vocabulary and contextual detail which enables us to rationalise and justify our work. Justifying, arguing and questioning leads to discovery, reason and intuition. Paul Rand defines intuition as ‘a flash of light conditioned by experience, culture, and imagination’. 
• Designing intelligently rather than ‘blindly’, helping you to develop your unique visual ‘voice’, and a sense of authorship – carving out your own style/approach to design problems. Helping to illuminate your work and make it visible. 
• Critical thinking around your work and that of others helps to open up new lines of enquiry and theoretical directions. 
• No design is produced in a vacuum. A knowledge of theory can enhance your work and expand your creative freedom, rather than limiting it. 

Design Authorship 

'Design authorship' is a relatively new concept which, according to critic Steven Heller, emerged in the late 1980s, promising a counterintuitive shift in graphic design practice - from designers solely serving clients, to becoming their own 'client'. It was more successful as a concept in the 1990s where it became understood as 'design entrepreneurship' and saw designers commanding their own creativity and moving from traditional service design to self-sustaining, self-generated ideas for consumables. Compare with the concept of the ‘auteur’ in film theory, In film theory, where the author’s creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process. The idea references films whose content and style reflect the director's personal and recognisable creative vision (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson). 

How does theory translate into practice? 

In advertising... 

•Alan Burles Silk Cut advertisment (1998). What theoretical frameworks can we use to ‘read’ this? How does it ‘work’ as an advert? 

•International Yves Klein Blue (see 

In commercial and conceptual design... 

Experimental Jetset studio’s Tshirtism. Beatles T-Shirt and ‘Anti’ T-shirt graphics. 

'We have been often wondering why our shirt became such a popular subject. Our way of designing is actually quite closed and hermetic: we never...try to guess what will be popular or not. We just concentrate on the aesthetical-conceptual integrity of the design itself, and we always try to fully focus on the inner-logic of the designed object.‘ (Experimental JetSet) 

Daniel Eatock - conceptual design 

'The idea becomes a machine that makes the art‘. (Sol Le Witt) 

Responding to a design problem/challenge; the Big Brother logo: 

‘I had to generate a logo that moved, and didn’t know anything about animation. I was interested in the visual effect that occurs when someone wears pinstripe or a check shirt on TV, you get those crazy flickers from a static pattern. So I thought it would be perfect to use this problem and create patterns to intentionally cause this effect. From this simple idea I created an identity based on horizontal black and white stripes that caused the TV screen to flicker and flash. That was the beginning of the Big Brother identity.’ 

Theory realised as a Manifesto 

• A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto either accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus, or promotes a new idea with prescriptive notions for carrying out changes the author believes should be made. It often is political or artistic in nature, but may present an individual's life stance. 
• Daniel Eatock, Manifesto: 
• ‘Begin with ideasEmbrace chanceCelebrate coincidenceAd-lib and make things upEliminate superfluous elementsSubvert expectationMake something difficult look easyBe first or lastBelieve complex ideas can produce simple thingsTrust the processAllow concepts to determine formReduce material and production to their essenceSustain the integrity of an ideaPropose honesty as a solution.’ 
• Ken Garland, on First Things First: ‘Written and proclaimed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on an evening in December 1963, the manifesto was published in January 1964. Inexplicably, to me, reverberations are still being felt.’ 
• The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper. Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the 1960s, it tried to re-radicalise a design industry which the signatories felt had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by critical theory and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that design is not a neutral, value-free process. It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto. 
• First Things First Adbusters Magazine update for 2000. 
• First Things First 2014 (http://firstthingsfirst2014.org). In light of the challenges and opportunities created by the networked world we live in today, Cole Peters, a Canadian-born designer based in the UK, has updated the manifesto for 2014, aiming to reflect the influence of the Internet on communications and design, and also to open it up to any signatories. 

Conditional Design manifesto 

• Through the influence of the media and technology on our world, our lives are increasingly characterized by speed and constant change. We live in a dynamic, data-driven society that is continually sparking new forms of human interaction and social contexts. Instead of romanticizing the past, we want to adapt our way of working to coincide with these developments, and we want our work to reflect the here and now. We want to embrace the complexity of this landscape, deliver insight into it and show both its beauty and its shortcomings. Our work focuses on processes rather than products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasize change and show difference. Instead of operating under the terms of Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Media Art or Sound Design, we want to introduce Conditional Design as a term that refers to our approach rather than our chosen media. We conduct our activities using the methods of philosophers, engineers, inventors and mystics. 
• Process: ‘The process is the product. The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship and change. The process produces formations rather than forms. We search for unexpected but correlative, emergent patterns. Even though a process has the appearance of objectivity, we realize the fact that it stems from subjective intentions.’ (See http://conditionaldesign.org/) 

Why is a historical understanding important?

•  Design as a microcosm of society. 
• Design as a reaction to society. 
• Visual communication is powerful. The language of protest and revolution. Creativity as a reaction to adversity. Some fairly recent examples: 
• Andrew Wong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ designs 
• Obama ‘Hope’ poster 
• Scottish Referendum ‘Yes’ campaign. 
• Anthony Burrill – Don’t Say Nothing 
• 
  

                                Historical perspective... 

• What was happening in the world? 
• What ideas/theories were emerging as a result? 
• What was happening in art and design? 
• Contemporary examples - what's happening today that draws on these ideas? How can they inspire new ones? 

Drawing on the past 

• To what extent are recognisable designs today drawing on past ideas? Evolution of graphic design

•Examples which reference: 

-Art nouveau 

-1980s futuristic typefaces 

-Saul Bass-style film poster designs 

-60s psychedelia 

Final reflection on theory and practice 

An interview with ‘Invader’: 

AP: You’re serving up edible Space Invader waffles at your current show, Attack of the Space Waffles. Is this a comment on the consumable, or perhaps ephemeral, nature of much art? 

I: No, it is just that when I look at an object composed by a grid of squares, I think...Space Invader. That’s just what happened with waffles! 

Notes on the lecture:

I found this lecture very informative and it has expanded my knowledge on visual communication.