Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and its is proposed by Charles Sanders Pierce. Pierce's idea distinguish between three type of signs which are, "Icon" , "Index" , "Symbol".

Icon is something that looks like what it is representing. For example, what can you see in this sign? Yes, it is a fire exit sign that's because it is well known already. But, just looking at this sign, it could be some one running away from something, it could be a race, an exit of something, an outdoor running field or something.

When something else is added to the picture, the whole meaning changes and its completely different. The sign at the left changes the meaning of the picture, giving more information to this sign. The fire that represents fire is telling you that the person is running away from the fire.

But since the "fire" icon could represent something else maybe sound noise or some other stuff you could think of. So, the letter "Fire Exit" made the whole picture make sense and is telling what it is meant to tell.

Index is referred to their objects of any similarity relation. There is a cause link between the sign and object. In this category smoke is an index of fire, as smoke is caused by fire. In the picture below you can see smoke and you will automatically linked it to "fire".

Symbol is an arbitrary sign in which the signifier has neither a direct (iconic) nor an indexical relationship to the signified, but rather represent it through convention. They usually have no logical connection. 

Signs are dependent on contexts, ideas can be directly brought into mind without being directly experience. Meanings can be expressed in various ways through a variety of sign system music, gestures, pictures etc.

Bibliography:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgxTKUP_WI

Viral go Viral!

Turn commercials into virus! Let the spread among themselves, may they grow wider and wider until everyone is affected! It is a brilliant thing to do to have the commercials to spread by themselves rather than the designer spreading it themselves. In this digital era, commercial are made as so called viral. They are videos that people will share amongst themselves and the discuss together. These are some of the viral videos.

Viral videos are what people are sharing and talking about rather people are simply watching. The Unruly Media that compiles a chart of Viral videos and this is the top ten viral videos that they have compiled.

Ethics

Design itself is ethics. It is all about what is the right thing to do. Our lives is all made as an argument about how we should live our lives. The word is contradiction within itself for our attention. Deciding where and how to employ the art of design is an ethical issue. Designers need to be both technically right and compellingly wise. Wisdom is about evaluating and choosing between competing principles. To be wise is to be aware, and awareness is the passage to action. We study ethics in order to improve our live, and therefore its principle concern is the nature of human well-being.

To prepare yourself for the multitude of ethical considerations you can start by examining your own stance as a designer, your own values, who you are designing for and what kind of values are you trying to embed in your design solutions and why?

The core about ethics is to ask yourself questions, "do you think it creates a better world?", "who is this for?", "Why?", "How?", "Is someone's good someone else's bad?". It is also about the moral of being a designer, the value you hold in within, the message you are trying to tell someone, is it something positive or negative? or what effects comes next.

Bibliography:
http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/polut/Yhteiskunnalliset/lisatieto_ethics_primer.html

SMILE =]

We were asked to design a logo for a children's toy maker so this is what I came up with.

I'm actually targeting parents. The smiley face with two rounded circles there is actually a trolley where almost every children has one. and the rope that they used to pull the trolley is illustrated as the brand name. The colours here are pale and babyish it gives the parents a feeling of pampering their children and the rounded corners is a message to consumers that everything here is safe and kids won't get harmed by the toys they play with.

Trying out some different styles

more smileys! =D

Every smiles do make a difference!

Before I had this final outcome I did some sketches and experimented different colours and few different types of typefaces. The "mile" from the word "smile" is actually written by my left hand! I wanted to give it a children's writing feel in it. This is the one I preferred most since everything blends in together well.

SO-ME

So-Me is a Parisian art director of Ed Banger Records and his real name is Bertrand Lagros de Langeron. Langeron is better known by his ego "So-Me". He never thought he would be nominated for an MTV Video Music Award. "I wouldn't know why they would nominate these French boys nobody knows," he explains. So-Me's funky visual is mostly the reason for making Ed Banger well known as it is for introducing hard-rockin' Parisian dance duo Justice into hipster-blog stardom. So-Me's humorous, punk-meets-graffiti imagery has created a cultural identity for the label that recalls how Peter Saville's distinctive minimalism defined New Order's Factory Records.

"We're playing with the format of pop," So-Me says. "we don't want to be George Michael or Michael Jackson. It's not commercial for the masses, but pop in the way we mis everything we want the music to be as important as the graphics, and vice versa."

This is the video that So-Me created and has been nominated for the MTV Video Music Award.

Twilight

This evening I was sitting in the library doing some research the sky drew my attention. It was like the whole sky is a big huge rainbow. I quickly took a picture (as seen on above). On the way home I happened to see a tree without leaves outside the campus. The tree was black only the lights from behind it. It quickly gave me an inspiration and here's the outcome. =]

Awesome site for adobe tutorials and inspirations

I ran into this website while looking for tutorials for my project. There are many things I could discover and quite inspiring. When you ran out of inspiration give this website a shot!

http://www.crazyvector.com/