Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
A product design that are provided with signs,
symbols, and linguistic expressions may acquire
additional meaning by:
rainbow colors, became white without any other
changes in design; a girl with an umbrella drawn
on cylindrical boxes of the Morton Salt has been
replaced with another but similar girl with an
umbrella; on the other hand, boxes of the Quaker
oats and grits remain almost unchanged since
tens of years.
• Imitating something else (a telephone in a
shape of a duck decoy);
• Adding symbols of value from another se-
mantic domain (non-functional additions);
• Replacing materials and still maintaining
valued appearances (Navaho jewelry out of
plastic); or
• Associating products with prestigious indi-
viduals or designers.
PRODUCT SEMANTICS IN PRODUCT
DESIGN AND MARKETING
Designers and advertisers consider visual imag-
ery as non-verbal processing. By applying icons
in design designers can support our learning of
using a complicated product, so it's easy to an-
swer a question, for example, “How to open this
thing?” Specialists in marketing and advertising
are ever more aware of the importance of aesthet-
ics in marketing. Color is considered important
in product semantics. Many times color sends a
message, using generally accepted associations,
such as green = calm and soothing, red = hot and
violent, etc.
See Figure 2 for examples of product design.
To convey a message visually with an icon,
we take in those features that best identify an
object, and suppress those features that are not
basic to comprehending it. For example, in a
“slippery when wet” road sign even a driver has
been removed from cars, to make the road sign
easy to understand fast (Figure 3).
One may see pretenders used as metaphors in
many areas of everyday life. Healthy food products
are often designed to pretend something else, for
example, one may eat hamburgers made with
portabella mushroom to 'pretend' they are made
of meat, or buy “meatless meatballs.” Similar
actions help in replacing sugar with artificial
sweeteners. One may also see human pretenders
in activities celebrated every year as festivities of
pretending to be somebody else by wearing cos-
tumes, masks, and props.
The design or use of signs and symbols is often
called signage. Signage may include billboards,
posters, placards, etc. It may refer to a number of
signs thought of as a group. Symbols, iconic and
canonical objects are used in commercials. They
often cause that we take a suggestive commercial
message for granted, without thinking. Also, body
language may encompass some iconic features. A
big problem may arise in another country where
the same signs may mean something different,
and one does not even know that one is conveying
strong messages. To assist the tourists, Dieter Graf
and several other authors designed the traveler's
language kits in the form of wordless booklets
containing pictures of items one may need when
travelling in another country.
In product design, it often pays to obey tradi-
tional solutions. The choice of material may be an
important factor; material that has been tradition-
ally serving for a product is often simulated, for
example by designing imitated knots on a plastic
surface of a table. In case of a remote control, our
habituation requests consistency in application of
the usual solution; operating an unusually designed
remote control would be tedious and tiresome.
Therefore, many of the well-known producers
offer their customers small innovations added to
the familiar designs. For example, a bitten apple
logo of Apple computers, originally rendered in
