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Visual Semiotics in Graphic Design

Creativity in graphic design is about the quality of clearness when communicating a massage with visible sign. In simple words, graphic design is about how to combine text and image, thus both elements collectively influence ideas to make a creative design. In addition, graphic designs is also an activity of combining pictures, illustrations, photographs, typography, and then print for purposes of promotion, information, or instruction. People can easily see things created with graphic design, such as ads, billboards and signboards. When a visible sign attracts their eye, they will try to interpret the whole design, and therein a visual interaction occurs in people’s minds.

Semiotics is a study of communication through signs; it is about interpreting signs. Signs split into two parts but as a whole, it is the relationship of Signifiers and Signified. The signifier is what the physical material of the signs is about, such as words, colours, gestures, images and any other artefacts, on the other hand, signified is the component of mental conception. Signifiers are meaningless by themselves, until someone makes a connection to the Signified as objects, ideas, or concepts.

For example, when we say a word ‘chair’, people in ‘bahasa’ interpret it as ‘kursi’, a seat with four legs. The word ‘chair’ alone means nothing, unless ‘bahasa’ users have perceived that ‘chair’ is ‘kursi’. Therefore, the spoken or written word of ‘chair’ is called signifier, the physical manifestation of what a ‘chair’ means in our mind’s conception. The signified is the idea about what is ‘chair’ or ‘kursi’, which is defined as a thing with four legs beneath a sitting pad. It doesn’t matter what is the exact shape of the ‘chair’, as long as bahasa users could perceived it as ‘kursi’.

These semiotics approaches to graphic designing can be said to be visual semiotics. In other words, it can be ultimately said that in graphic design, a signifier is their visual appearance, therein a signified is their related visual conception. The audience shows this visual semiotics through the whole design interpretation. A design cannot stand by itself. Further, it occurs when the audience looks at a design but does not have any reference to be connected as its context. In this case, that context is something which might be a conception to help them to understand the design purposes.
Visual semiotics in graphic design has three basic terms.


First, it has semantics, which is design tendencies or meaning, in which all the design elements are interacted. It emphasizes the grammatics of design, such as hierarchy, harmony, rhythm, and movement, dominancy.

Next, it has syntactics, which is how design elements interact each other creating a possible meaning. It emphasizes as vocabulary of design, such as point, line, space, tone, texture.

Moreover, it has pragmatics, which is how people perceive the effects of the design. It is how a design is seen, read and understood by the audience. It emphasizes speech of a design, such as dynamic, speed, strength, stable.

This visual semiotics works is described in three parts.
First, it is iconic, in which we saw a seamless design and its object is easily recognized, such as a kid draw an aeroplane that refer to the real plane.
Then, it is indexical, the design has a direct link with an object, such as a road signs with a man-crossing the street, which means drive carefully because there is a pedestrian (zebra) crossing.
Last, it is symbolic, which means design and its meaning has no necessary connection, yet there could be a metaphoric relation or it refers to a convention, such as red cross picture on white background is a signpost for a nearby hospital.

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