The role of Semiotics within design context

Semiotics is regarded as a discipline that has specialization in the study of processes of signification and meaning production using artifacts. Specialists in semiotics, work in projects of design to construct and understand communication, services, and objects that can meet the users' practices and needs. Semiotic tools and methods assist in analyzing the traditions of the users to understand and define the purposes and objectives of a project. Designers then turn such goals into actual plans, maintaining the implications, the values, and the meanings in a manner that is acceptable to the stakeholders. In the world there seem to be things with lousy design and stuff with good design. The kind of medium that one chooses will affect the message’s content.

Photographic is in most cases seen to be realistic particularly television or film. When it comes to a film, the signified and the signifier are almost same. The system of language’s power is that there exists a big difference between the signified and the signifier and the film’s power is that there is no difference between the signified and the signifier. In most cases, people do not confuse a film with a real thing, but there is a need for a reminder that what is seen is a sample of several representations (Vihma, 2010). Preferably one needs no manual in using a simple product. Several designers have assisted in making this field develop throughout the last decades. Designers need to be let to be part of the cycle of productions from initial stages.

Usage of metaphors in design is fundamental. Metaphors are a vital element in graphics, products, media or film. In graphic communication and product semiotics, the icon or sign that is readily identifiable with a product is the characteristic sign. Early semiotics engaged in deep structures that underlie the phenomena’s surface features. Structuralism describes the entire systems’ organization of signs as languages. It also emphasizes the opposition and differences in modes of a sign in a language. What differentiates a sign is what constitutes it, and an advertisement is excellent for this because what is essential in product positioning is the differentiation of every sign from those that it is a relationship with (Griffin, 2011). Paired signifiers are seen as part of the structure giving shape to the preferred texts reading (Griffin, 2011).

Sometimes signifiers that are paired get in alignment with a vertical relationship. The pair woman-body gets in alignment with the pair man-mind. A cultural code is organized around equations and oppositions that are key, whereby a term like 'man' gets the opposition to a term like 'woman. ' Every term is in alignment with several symbolic attributes. Throughout the 19th century, the function was regarded as different from form. The design of an object or even a building was by political and moral values and had no relationship to the practical functions it had and the use (Bürdek, Dale, Richter, & Hausmann, 2015). For instance, a smoking room’s chair was very different from the lounge of ladies’ chair not because women and men sat using different styles but because the design of the chairs was meant to give a picture of the difference between femininity and masculinity.

Style contained a meaning that was symbolic and was a way of showing someone’s values. But the 19th-century traditions and values came to an end at the beginning of the capitalist expansion. With more understanding of the factors, it will be easier for the designers to control the work products’ success that they create. It is semiotics that assists designers to avoid taking reality for granted and as something that is just there. It makes designers have an understanding that depends on the work’s intentions and the people’s interpretation with experience of the designers’ work. The meaning is not found in computers or the world, books, media and it is not just moved, but it is created in an active manner and according to interplay rules and systems of which most people are in most cases unaware of the rules.