Visual Semiotics

1. Kuliah Proses Komunikasi
Oleh Coky Fauzi Alfi
cokyfauzialfi.wordpress.com
Visual Semiotics

2. Topics
• Semiotics
• Sign
• The Hidden Meaning of Layout

3. “A message is a construction of
signs and through interaction
with the viewer it produces
meaning”
(Fiske, 1990)

4. Semiotics

5. • Semiotics is generally described as the
“study of signs.”
• Semiotics tries to investigate how images
create meaning.
• Visual semiotics is a subdomain of
semiotics that analyzes visual signs.
• The philosopher: Ferdinand de
Saussure, Roland Barthes and Charles
Sanders Peirce

6. Three important principles when analyzing a
semiotic system:
1. Semioticians believe all people see the world
through signs.
2. The meaning of signs is created by people
and does not exist separately from them and
the life of their social/cultural community.
3. Semiotic systems provide people with a
variety of resources for making meaning.

8. Sign

10. • Denotation: What you see
• Signifier: The visible or present component
1. Icon: The signifer represents the signifed by
apparently having likeness to it (as for example
photographs and maps)
2. Symbol: Symbolic signs have a conventionalized
but clearly arbitrary relationship between
signifer and signifed.
3. Index: The sign refers to something, which is not
in the image (you see smoke, but not what
produced the smoke). It is about causal
relationships and narrative aspects

11. • Connotation: What you think
• Signified: The invisible or tacit
component
1. Paradigm: A substitution of a group of
elements
2. Syntagm: A whole sequence of elements,
like a layout.

12. The text operates on a denotative level. It
describes what is already shown in the image.

13. In this image the anchorage of the text works on the connotative meaning.

15. The Yin Yang
emphazises that
a city should live
in balance with
its surrounding
nature.
The blue of the
flag is
substituted with
water, showing
that the rising
sea level
threatens the
Netherlands.
The signature
makes human
rights a
personal matter.
An iconic representation of an ice bear,
which is in danger due to the rise of the
oceans.

16. Indexical signs are showing a causal relationship and supporting a narrative
aspect in the image. The wholes and the wall are standing for war, the
imprints of the ball show that also in war zones children play and should
have the right to play.

17. Sign Systems
• A set of signs is called a sign system or a code.
• Meaning comes not just from the individual
sign, but more importantly from the set of
signs within which it appears.
• Codes include language, gestures,food,
clothing, objects, dance, and music.
• In real life, just as no one sign stands alone,
codes must be understood in terms of their
mutual influences.

18. The Hidden Meaning of Layout

19. Gunther Kress and Theo Leeuwen analyze layout in terms of
three systems:
1. Information Value
The placement of elements endows them with the specific
informational values attached to the various ‘zones’ of the
image: left and right, top and bottom, centre and margin.
2. Salience
The elements are made to attract the viewer’s attention to
different degrees, as realized by such factors as placement in
the foreground or background, relative size, contrasts in
tonal value (or colour), differences in sharpness, etc.
3. Framing
The presence or absence of framing devices disconnects or
connects elements of the image, signifying that they belong
or do not belong together in some sense.

21. Information value can have three different structures:
1. Top-Bottom Structure
The ideal is found on the top, the real is found at the
bottom
2. Centre-Margin
Whatever is placed in the center is the nucleus of
information, there is little left-right movement, more
common in certain eastern cultures
3. Left-Right Structure
On the left hand side information is found that the
viewer already knows, on the right side information
which is new

22. ‘Make some noise for those who can’t be heard.’

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