Ideology affects nearly everything people see. According to Sturken and Cartwright, ideologies are “the broad but indispensable shared set of values and beliefs through which individuals live out their complex relations in a range of social networks” (23). These values, such as familial devotion and the right to free speech in the United States, shape our way of looking at the world. However, not only personal experiences relate and change our ideologies, but the media does as well. Television shows viewers values that may be true to society, but they may be fabricated by the medium itself in order to convey these values as “normal.” It is frightening to think that the media controls our beliefs in what we consider real or natural, when, in fact, these beliefs are false.
Artist Yue Minjun plays with the falsity of smiles in a lot of his paintings. Instead of showing happiness, as many smiles seem to connote, his subjects’ smiles show irony, agony, sadness and a plethora of other negative emotions. All these various meanings are explained by Charles Sanders Pierce, who believed that signs mean nothing unless they are interpreted by our thought processes. This idea stems from semiotics. Barthes took this idea and explained signs as a combination of a signifier (the image or word) and the signified (the meaning of the image or word) (Sturken and Cartwright 29). There are three types of signs: iconic, which resemble their objects; indexical, which coexisted with their objects at one time; and symbolic, which do not have a direct relationship to their objects, such as words.
The values of images are incredibly interesting, especially in the case of icons. If something is mass-produced and turned into a commodity, nearly anything can become an icon. Andy Warhol embraces the allure of the icon with the celebrity Marilyn Monroe in his 1962 piece, Marilyn Diptych. He reproduces Monroe’s image several times, showing us how ubiquitous she was in the entertainment industry throughout the ’50s and ’60s.
The readings in Document Design opened my eyes to the many ways that a document can be visually appealing or displeasing. Documents are made by the designer in order to satisfy the needs of the client as well as to allow users to effectively interact with the documents. The seven visual variables to manipulate objects within a two-dimensional design consist of shape, orientation, texture, color, value, size and position. I had always known that when these variables are used effectively, they can create a good document. However, I was not consciously aware of the fact that the designer must actively manipulate them before delivering the final document. Before submitting the work, the designer may run into problems with inadequate figure-ground contrast, for example. Then, he or she might distinguish between the object and its background by changing the value of the object so that it can be seen more clearly. I was also aware of the six basic principles of design: similarity, contrast, proximity, alignment, order and enclosure, although I did not know of the different theories that surround these principles and the way we interpret documents.
I understand the Gestalt laws of perception, which include figure-ground discrimination, grouping and good figure. However, I find it unsatisfactory that Gestalt only concentrates on a general human being interpreting documents, rather than individuals or small groups of people. Constructivism makes sense because although we cannot constantly view and experience all things in the world, we take the fragments that we are experiencing at the moment to produce a whole. I find this theory more believable than ecological perception, which insists that we experience everything through direct perception, which allows our senses to perceive things without any indirect neurological responses. Since I believe that I only know my perception of reality, rather than reality itself, it is hard for me to fathom that this theory can be true, even though I wish it were.
I had not previously realized that visual rhetoric can be witnessed in any document. Each document combines ethos, pathos and logos to provide users with a sense of the authors, emotional responses from the users and the facts the document wishes to present. For example, in many Nike advertisements, the company wishes to convey the image of being cool, trendy and athletic. They want users to feel that they themselves will be cool and athletic if they purchase Nike products. It is important in these advertisements to show that the products are made of quality material and will satisfy the customer; it is not important to divulge how expensive these products are.
Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
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