Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and their relationship to the actual objects or things that they represent. It look at the language and asks the question of whether a word or image can represent object it names and hoe effectively it can do so. This some time, the designer will use language and images to represent the real-world concepts and to evoke a genuine, emotional response from an audience.

Sign: the smallest unit of meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

Symbolic (arbitrary) signs: signs where the relation between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally specific, e.g., most words.

Iconic signs: signs where the signifier resembles the signified, e.g., a picture.

Example :


For example, the letters on the screen spelling "rose" would be the signifier, and the signified would be the concept of the particular flower (not the image above, but the concept in your head).

It's important to remember that this graphic representation of how signs work is itself made up of signs. The image of the rose above is not really the signified, it's another sign, that I'm using to signify the signified. (The signified, remember, is what's in your head.) One of the reasons semiotics can be so difficult to understand is because it inevitably involves using signs to talk about signs.


SOCIAL AND VISUAL SEMIOTICS



Social Semiotics is defined as 'the use of signs, symbols, and icons whose meanings are socially agreed upon and culturally-bound.'

Example :
A picture of a tree will be seen as a tree to each person usually, but it may signify many different things. For one person they may see the tree as clean air, or to someone else history, or to someone else family origins.


Visual Semiotics in advertisement

Example 1:

The Nissan ad shown here was part of a campaign targetting a new model of car primarily at women drivers (the Micra).

We notice two people: in soft focus we see a man absorbed in eating his food at a table;

in sharp focus close-up we see a woman facing him, hiding behind her back an open can.

As we read the label we realize that she has fed him dog-food (because he didn't ask before borrowing her car).

Example 2:

This adv said that drinking this brand of water you will feel like you are flowing.
Example 3:




Example 4:


It is saying about smoking is bad for you but there may have miracle for you to survives is very low chances to break out of smoking too.

Example 5:

Most viewers of this ad, in turn, will also associate such a health club with wealth and the luxurious forms of leisure one might imagine that frequenters of such a desert resort might be accustomed to. The gold, shiny color of the plaque strengthens this connotation, because gold is generally associated with wealth.

Other signs in this ad, particularly the Faberge egg (most famously known as an item of conspicuous consumption in the collection of millionaire and apologist for the rich, Malcolm Forbes) and the written sign, the word "wealthy." Together, all these signs suggesting wealth constitute a cultural paradigm, a chain or collection of signs which invoke each other because they are culturally, or paradigmatically, related: a collection of related associations.

The cleverness in this ad is that the verbal syntagmatic relations of the phrase "healthy, wealthy, and wise" are used to establish a visual sequence that builds a relationship between otherwise unrelated images: the plaque, the egg, and the Canadian Club symbol.

And by this means, the advertisers are able to associate their product, not only with paradigms of wealth and health, but -- most improbably -- with wisdom.


These is all i found out of about 'semiotics' that i know about. Thanks for taking ur times to read what i know about semiotics.