Ch 7 & 8

In 7th chapter, the authors discussed the role of meaning making in different material production of the sign. The material production of a design is an important part of meaning making and also a crucial semiotic feature. They addressed that “Every culture has systems of meaning coded in these materials and means of production, and sign in their materiality are fully motivated by the producer of the sing in a particular culture” (p.216-217). Material production comprised the interrelated semiotic resources of surface, substance and tools of production that produced complex effects of meaning. The forms of productions are related to society’s technologies. They categorized three classes of production technologies: 1) technologies of the hand, 2) recording technologies such as audiotape, film, 3) digitally synthesized technologies. Those technologies developed different distribution media and have profound semiotic consequences. In addition, they also discussed the relationship between color and the semiotic mode. Color is a means for making representations and has been used as a semiotic resource. For instance in Chinese culture, people use the color yellow to worship Emperor.

From ideational function perspective, color can be used to denote people, place and things. For instance Clemson University uses the orange color to signal their identities. Moreover, color also conveys interpersonal meaning and constructs social relation. For example, if people go to watch football game, they will wear an orange Clemson t-shirt to represent their support for tiger team. The authors talk about the semiotic of color from different approach, such as saturation, modulation, purity. In terms of saturation, the higher saturation represent positive, adventurous, and the low saturation represent subtle and repressed. In the modulation, flat color may be perceived as simple, overly basic, simplified, and modulated color may be perceived as subtle, overly fussy, detailed. They stated that “the truth of flat color is an abstract truth and the truth of modulated color a naturalistic truth” (p.234). The semiotic of color should depend on people’s character and social value.

In chapter 8, the authors discussed the role of three-dimensional visual communication in the visual grammar framework. The visual grammar framework of two-dimensional images can be applied in three-dimensional visual communication but they pointed out a couple difference between them. For instance, the distance and angle between producer and viewer in a two-dimensional image are static, but in a moving image the relationship is dynamic. In other words, distance and angle in most film change constantly, and usually use multiple perspectives.

The image is static

The sections appear to be revolving