This was my first official lecture, and as the first slide came up of the apple, and we were asked 'is it just an apple?' 'what else could it be?' I felt quite daunted. Of course I had the thought of Apple the brand but I felt rather unmotivated; but as the lecture went on, and as we all un-tensed it became rather fun.
So far, i've learned from a short video we watched about a typographer, our analyzing of two advertisements yesterday and the lecture this morning, just how much we actually know without realizing it. This ofcourse, is what we need to develop in terms of communicating our knowledge to other people and showing it through our design work. Our job is to communicate through type and image.
Our design work ofcourse is affected by the context, which can be historical/political/cultural, which we need to keep in mind during interpretation. This goes back to the fact we may know more than we think, as when we compared/contrasted those adverts yesterday we knew for example, that black slaves were the norm in the time of the advert, and could tell by clothing/decoration/typeface/distribution what they were putting out there and when. Pictures can be read by audiences, for example symbols. We were reminded often today in the presentation of how symbols that are the same, when adjusted slightly mean completely different things! For example, the red cross when inverted is the Danish flag, but when the cross is green, it means medical. This is something I never really considered before.
I reckon I will really enjoy these sorts of lectures as I need the motivation, and something to kick-start embedding my interest in to graphic design almost completely, as ill need to! I am already looking at day to day things and imagining how it could be put in to a design and for what.
In knowing symbols can mean different things to many different cultures/audiences, knowing references before going forward with a design is also going to be key (Ex.the Buddha symbol of peace/Nazi symbol of Hitler's Germany).
I also learnt some key terms I need to familiarize myself with such as Visual Syntax/Semantics/Semiotics which all make up designing a brand or logo especially, which we seem to be focusing on most so far. I think semantics are very important especially as it is for fitting in to cultural processes and the external info we cannot change. If stuck for ideas, this would be the absolute base of where to start.
By the end of this lecture, I did feel better about how much I know to do with Visual Literacy as I knew more than I had thought. Being honest, I am eager to get the Coral Rebranding done and do a brief independently whatever that may be! But I definetley like lectures and feel like they are essential, as I explained at the beginning of this post when I came in rather unready, and this kickstarted my day. I really feel like this is my chance to become an individual designer and in a few weeks hopefully I will be 100% confident, and knowing some of the information I took in today, basing designs on what is already out there you can't completely go wrong.
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