Discourse - Semiotics

Learning and understanding what semiotics is, probably be very mind-boggling unless you really want to know what it is. Well semiotics are fortunately everywhere in the environment that we live in. It is the study of sign processes or signification as well as communication, signs and symbols that are both individually and grouped into sign systems, so really it is what we visualize whether that being something that you see in front of you or picturing something or by hearing. However, there are two theories about semiotics that stem from way back in the 1900’s. The first theory was by a Swiss linguist called Ferdinand de Saussure who is known to be the “father” of modern day linguistics, his side is slightly easier to understand in which he had proposed a dualistic perception of signs that contrasts the denotation and connotation of something. He referred them as “signifier” which expresses the form of the word or other words saying what it actually is and “signified” as the mental concept, which is the meaning behind the denoted object. On the other hand, the other theory is from Charles Pierce who was the founder of pragmatism. He suggested that semiotics was to do with symbols in relation to the mind; he broke down semiotics into three categories, which are icon, index and symbols. In addition, the term definition can lead to deeper theories rather than signs and symbols therefore; semioticians are studying well beyond that such as how people interpret signs then how they physically and psychologically understand it.

Cereal Box & Advert

This project was about making your own cereal, whether that being the name, design, box or whatever was solely up to you. Therefore, I aimed to make my cereal for people from young teens to mid aged people, something like Crunchy Nut, Cheerios, Shreddies and so on.

My cereal name is called Choco Blocks Krispies, using cluster snacks to act as my marketing tool and therefore, I wanted to base my color scheme and designs around that.

Postcards

Within this project, we had to create 6 different postcards that you wouldn't find in a shop. Using creative ideas and designs you were expected to make something that you haven't seen before, we were given the option to work around a chosen theme. My theme was about Death Threats, simply because you don't need to buy death threats (you can't anyway) so I thought it was an innovative idea and thought it was something to show and suprise the class. Fortunately, it did.

This is one side that contains articles of recent deaths that happened and I thought that it worked well with my postcard, with this in particular.

This is the other side to my postcard that has a subliminal message to whoever recieves this postcard.

This postcard is of a skull with a balaclava, however, I used articles to show the skulls top face and the balaclava (white area) is to add the subliminal message.

This is similar to the 2 above but I used articles of gun crime.

Again, on the other side I showed the subliminal message.

This is an image of a grave stone, I tweaked the writing to "Wish you could join me", hence why I made the design as a puzzle as you join puzzles together to get the final result.

This is a view when De-assembled.

This idea is of a ransom letter threatening to kill someone's family if not abiding by the threat.

This image is of a typical postcard with the "fantasy" look.

But when you pull out the postcard inside, it portrays an image of where the sender is from. Having a message to help get him/her out of there.

Surrealism

High School Musical

Our Proposal:

To create a fun and entertaining project based around our brief about High School Musical, where the other student in the class and exhibition audience can participate in this project. This idea was brought up as I listened to everyone ideas in class and realized that everyone work was either to common or more then one group where doing the same thing, but these projects all of them had one thing in common none of them seem to interact or gets the audience involved therefore I decided to come up with a fun fair style shoot the duck style game, but instead of duck you had the horrible High School Musical cast lined up with the participants throwing darts at certain targets to accumulate points.

The dart style stand will be 88cm by 198cm with the image edited and printed out and stuck on corkwood for easy penetration of the darts. The group has been split into two. Group 1 will research the material, which they have already done, therefore what is left is to purchase the material and create the stand. Group 2 will be responsible for the measurements of the cast image and printing the image out and adjusting the image so that the resolution is perfect for the game.

The game is just simple clean fun using non-professional darts. You can play it on your own or with another player where they take it in turns to throw four darts at the HSM cast. Each cast has different points on them depending on popularity etc. The player to accumulate the most points is the winner. Plain and simple clean fun.

We all as a group came up with the name so easily as we all as a group had one thing in common "WE HATE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!".

Building the frame.

Adding the pads.

This is how it looked when everything was put together...

...Not forgetting the darts.

People enjoying themselves.

Excuses

Within this project we had to make up an excuse as to why we didn't do our project. In addition, ONLY typography is used, therefore no images. The font had to be in relation to your excuse.

This is the outcome of my project. I had used an Old English font combined with all 4 British notes (£5, £10, £20 and £50). I added money as a border to show what I had been earning to relate to my excuse.

A close up of all the words that are combined with the 4 notes.

Alphabet

The brief for this project was to take pictures of things such as natural resources and other objects within our environment that looks like any letter within the alphabet.