Category Archives: Reading Visual Communications

Denotation: You can see a man from the navy riding a torpedo in the water, and seems to be enjoying it, almost as if he’s riding a bull. Connotation: There could be many meanings Babcock was intending on, for example in order to recruit people to join the navy he made the man in theContinue reading “Join the Navy Poster”

Semiotic analysis uses the idea of denotation and connotation to describe literal and implied meanings within the visual. Denotation describes what can be seen and its literal interpretation (e.g. a piece of fruit called and apple). Connotation describes the possible meanings that are suggested by the literal elements (e.g. in a Renaissance painting, an appleContinue reading “Denotations and Connotations”

By looking at some artistic painting and comparing it to the apples you see in TV adverts you can see that there is a difference between them. The apples in paintings seem to be more realistic and revealing to all the different types of apples, including those with bruises and with different colours etc. ArtistsContinue reading “What does this Apple mean?”

Combining the right kind of typeface, image, and materials to support a given message is fundamental to structuring a visual communication. Structuralism proposed that human culture can be understood through its relationships within underlying structures such as language. We draw meaning from images or form language through systems of signs. Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas uneContinue reading “Reading Visual Communications”