What is semiotics? Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning.
Chapter openings for David Crow's 'Visible Signs', have been designed through the subject matter of fingerprints; as the meaning of fingerprints are more than what meets the eye.
Brief/Client––
Graphic Behaviours-
'Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts' by David Crow
Task––
Design chapter covers and a book cover for 'Visible Signs' by David Crow.
Each chapter opening should be characterised through open interpretation but in relation to each chapters particular facet of semiotic theory.
Creative Services––
Digital Design
Book Design
Print Design
Typography
CH1 'Components'- Fingerprints are composed of three different patterns. Loops, whorls and arches are the components which make up a print. The colour yellow was chosen for this design to resemble crime-scene tape, another interpretation within the design.
CH2 'How Meaning Is Formed'- Despite looking like plain lines, barcodes are a method of representing data. The system of DNA barcoding was used as inspiration to represent the idea of formed meaning.
CH3 'Reading The Sign'- Is based on an official, signed fingerprint document. Fingerprints need to be closely read and analysed in order to tell apart, despite looking the same at a distance.
The book cover was designed by manipulating the scan of a mono-print recreation of a famous image known as 'Photo 51', an X-ray diffraction of DNA fibre.
Playful composition and colour use has been used to form the book title, generating the word "signs" twice, to emphasise the idea of interpretations using existing visible signs.