ABSTRACT
This book has tried to explain graphic design as a form of visual communication. In order to do this, it has been necessary first to explain what communication is and then to present examples of graphic design as communication. Of the two basic models of communication investigated, those found in communication theory and semiological theory, the latter was shown to be more useful and productive for describing, analysing and explaining graphic communication. Where communication theory proposed the sending and receiving of already constituted messages between already existing subjects, semiology proposed that membership of cultural formations was produced and either challenged and reproduced in the active construction of meanings. Communication in graphic design was explained as the interaction of the beliefs and values held by members of cultural groups and the formal elements of graphic design (such as shapes, lines, colours, imagery, text and layout, for example). Rather than existing, naturally and prefabricated, in graphic designs, meaning was explained as being constructed in the activity of communication itself. As such, graphic design is not the innocent, or even the guilty, conveyor of messages but the constructor of (other people's) identities. The notion of the arbitrary nature of the sign, and the following emphasis on difference – as what Derrida (1973: 141) calls the non-full, non-simple ‘origin’ of meaning – was seen to be fundamental to this conception of communication, as Saussure (1974: 68) rightly pointed out at the beginning of the twentieth century. Semi-ological theory was then used to explain the variety of different types of signs and the ways in which signs could be constructed as meaningful. The types of signs were explained as icon, index and symbol; denotation and connotation were explained as analytic distinctions between two types of meaning; layout was presented as a way of constructing meaning and the role of words and texts in relation to images was explained as anchorage and relay.
