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The public today knows that almost every work of art contains a message, and it is willing to find a message even in a product of industrial design, especially when the design seems "artistic" and differs from the conventional.
Art, like science, shows the public some basic structures of the world and of human life, but art does it in its own way. A scientist usually aims at presenting a regularity (invariance) of empiria by means of an abstract formula or a model that the general public can apply to its own problems; an artist, on the other hand, prefers to demonstrate general regularities in the form of one concrete, special case that the public can then apply analogously to their own situations.
The message of art (like that of science as well) would hardly interest the public if it only contained decorative presentations of single events. The more universal the truths presented by a work of art are, the more important is the message.
The manner of presentation in science is precise, and the
field of application of its postulates is strictly limited. The message of art is not as
exact, but it has often the power to convey information from very large contexts.
Consider how difficult it is for a physicist to make the public understand the nature of
light which has to interpreted sometimes as oscillation, sometimes as particles -- and
how easy it often is for an artist to show such dualisms and contrasts.
The public
consists of people, so its primary interest are relations between people: feelings,
attitudes, etc. that art must be able to convey. Such human relations are easily
presented in novel writing or pictorial art, for example, but it becomes more difficult in
the art of design of everyday objects, where the language of expression is more
limited and many practical restraints limit the freedom of the artist. Nevertheless,
things like people's clothes and belongings give a good possibility to convey
messages about their owners.
Messages and signs can be studied like any other of the various properties of products like utility, economy, beauty etc. The study calls for some special methods. Some of these can be adapted from the study of fine arts.
The study of signs and messages had a good start already in antiquity although the name of the science, semiotics, is of later origin. Research in this field has always proceeded in the best "normal-science" fashion (i.e. without "scientific revolutions" which include a break in paradigm) and most modern researchers use still many of the concepts of the earliest authors. That is why we start in the following with a historical account of the principal theories of semiotics. It has to be admitted that the earliest authors did not much consider industrial products but instead architecture and pictorial arts; nevertheless many of their findings can easily be applied to modern products. In the final chapter we shift the focus on the modern product as a medium of signs.
In antiquity, an eminent
researcher of the symbolism of art was Plotinus (204/5-270). His essay On
Beauty (Peri tou kalou) follows the lines of Plato, and declares that every work of
art must present an "idea". "An architect transforms an idea in his mind into a
house on the outside of his mind."
A work of art is a sign which refers to
the world of ideas. On the other hand, what is characteristic of ideas is simplicity, or,
one could even say, "unity", which implies that uniformity is also typical of a good work
of art.
The Middle Ages loved allegorical symbolism. This manifested itself for example in the fact that people wanted church buildings to symbolize Biblical objects: the roof of heaven, the heavenly Jerusalem or perhaps the temple of Salomon. Columns in a church symbolized the prophets or the Apostles. It was possible that proportions were found beautiful not so much because of their beauty but because of the numerical symbolism hidden in them, which was supposed to refer to the liturgic calendar.
The
Renaissance further developed symbolism suitable for church buildings. Palladio (IV,
II) thought that circular forms were suitable for a church, because they symbolize the
unity, infinity and fairness of God. Others thought that the proportions and forms of the
human body were suited to the church because, according to the Bible, a human
being was created in an image of God. On the left, you can see a 15th century
drawing by Francesco di Giorgio Martini following this line of thought.
Although instructions on the symbolism used in buildings had been published since the times of Vitruve, the basis of the instructions seem to have been rather arbitrary. The earliest real study on the logic of symbolism is a book called A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke (1729-97) from 1757. It sets out to create a "theory of passions". In it, Burke gives numerous examples of architecture that generates either elevated or other kind of feelings.
Studies of symbolism began in the modern sense of the word only when people
had learned to analyse the content of a work of art separately from the
form. G.F.W. Hegel (1170-1831) made this distinction into a cornerstone of his
aesthetics, and it laid down the road for later research in the field.
Hegel thought
that especially the first, primitive phase in the development of arts, which had
predominated in the ancient realms of Babylonia and Egypt was characterised by
symbolism. Hegel considered architecture as the best exponent of symbolic art of that
early era, not because of its sophisticated symbolism but because in that time there
were no pictorial arts which would have been more suited to presenting symbolism.
This early symbolism of architecture expresses still formless, general matters and only
inadequately distinguished abstractions of nature mixed with religious thoughts.
In
the field of architecture, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) got slightly closer to
details. In his book Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (in the part "Zur
Ästhetik der Architektur"), he stated that the most important message in
architecture was the opposition between the load and the support (German:
Stütze und Last). The tensions and the burdens in the parts of a building
symbolize the manifestation of willpower in substance whose message the public
receives by emphatically identifying themselves with parts of the building.
This
thought was a forerunner of the emphatic theory of art which was later carried
further by German aestheticians.
"Architecture turns matter into visions that breathe in front of us... Is there anything more lifeless than a vertical or a horizontal line? Don't we feel our imagination rise with the vertical line?" (From the lectures by Friedrich Vischer, 1807-1887, cited by Miloutine Borissavlievitch, 148.)
The emphatic theory of architecture was developed first by Theodor Lipps (1851-1941), especially in the book Raumästhetik, and by Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-95), mainly in his thesis Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886.
Empathy (German "Einfühlung", French "imagination sympathique") means understanding the mental life of others. In it, on the basis of the expressions and other outer signs, a person imagines himself in the place of somebody else and tries to feel as he feels.
According to the emphatic theory of art, a human being can feel that he understands not only other people but also works of art.
"We look at every object comparing it with our own body. In our minds, it becomes a being with head and feet, front and back; if it is slanting or if it looks as if it was falling, we immediately guess that it is feeling bad; in any configuration at all, we can feel the joys, struggles and troubles of being... Everywhere we expect to find a corporal figure resembling ourselves; we interpret everything in the outside world with the same means of expression that we feel in ourselves" (Wölfflin, 1908-56).
Examples
of products with emphatical reverberations can be found in the book Om vackert
och fult, by Brochmann (1953, p.59, here on the left).
Especially in architecture man tends to project the structures of his own body: the closed shape of the body and the contrast between inside and outside; the supremacy of front side; balance of left and right; the placement of openings; decoration of clothing; appending a hat and shoes, etc. Moreover, buildings can make us recall the dynamics of our motion: being cramped but protected in the womb; the dramatics of entering and exiting; the rhythms of our steps and heartbeats; climbing and descending; standing upright or hunched; carrying burdens.
Oswald Spengler's theory on symbolism in architecture (1918) occasioned considerable remark in its time. In Spengler's opinion, every culture has a picture of the world of its own, a so-called initial symbol. It is especially visible in the fields of mathematics and architecture. The world vision of Egyptian culture is symbolized by the road, that of Arabs by the cave, the symbol in antiquity was the piece, and that of our culture is infinity. Spengler mentioned a number of buildings aptly reflecting these initial symbols, ignoring, however, all the buildings that did not fit his theory.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) marked out a fruitful direction for research with his writings on subconsciousness and psychoanalysis. His pupil Carl C. Jung (1875-1961) emphasized the fact that the reserve of symbols was largely common to people from the same culture. Part of it may even be innate, or at least acquired during the first years of life before the development of active consciousness and in conditions which for most people are the same. Jung used the name "collective unconscious" for this symbolical heritage common to most people.
Basic symbols common to everyone were called archetypes by Jung. Such archetypes are for example myths about heroes, about birth through water and reincarnation. Jung thought that some figures have also acquired an archetype-like position. Such figure is for example a mandala (figure on the right) which has been used to help meditation in some religions. There are contrasting figures, a square and a circle, combined in a way which can be called mystical, and which probably arouses interest just because of that contradictory character.
Other usual archetypal symbols applicable especially in building:
Rudolf Arnheim (1977) has also looked into the subconscious symbolism of architectural forms. "The strongest symbols are derived from our most primitive perceptions, because they have to do with such basic experiences of a human being that serve as a basis for everything else" (209) Arnheim found that dynamic forms which refer to movement were the most expressive whereas dynamics and expression are almost hampered if buildings imitate the forms of other objects too obviously (for instance if a church were built into the shape of a fish).
The emphatic way of perceiving is probably one of the original faculties of man, and at first it operated on a subconscious level. In the course of time some artists learned to create works which were consciously intended to arouse emphatical sensations. This development in the direction of explicit messages and knowledge was soon followed by researchers.
Theories of communication and language. Study of conscious symbolism in art benefited greatly from advances in the study of communication. The year 1909 was the turning point when the English version of a book on aesthetics by Benedetto Croce (1866 - 1952) was published. According
to Croce (1909), art was a language, and aesthetics was the linguistics of art. What does art
then express with its language? Croce thinks that art is, above all, intuitive
impressions of expressions (Croce 21 and 234). Other researchers have later found
many other things that art can express.
Studying art as a language became possible after the lectures by a well known researcher of linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) (Cours de linguistique énérale) had been published. Saussure tried to study the logic of verbal or written language as a special case of semiotics (or semiology), that is, in such a way that the results could be applied even to other than textual codes. Some central concepts in his theory are:
In the research of communication, language is usually divided into two components:
Communication as a
process is often described by the theoretical model proposed by Claude Shannon (1948), figure on the right.
Shannon originally developed the model for the
purposes of communication technology, but it is nowadays also used in the research of artistic communication. Shannon's model shows how a message is always "coded", that is, interpreted, at least twice. The artist first puts the message into the language of the work of art, and the public then interprets it into its own language. The message
reaches the receiver only in so much as both the codes are congruent. Moreover,
Shannon's model shows how "noise", i.e. disturbances usually modify the message
and affect the receiver's interpretation of it.
Shannon's model was originally rather abstract and mathematical, and the central work to develop it better suitable for products was done by D.E. Broadbent in his book Perception and Communication (1958).
The available vocabulary is different in each field of art and therefore the possibilities to express hidden content are different. Perhaps easiest is the task in the art of poetry, and in fact the first known instances of premeditated layers of meaning can be found in a Sumerian fable from ca. 2000 BC:
A dog tried to snatch dates but the gardener drove him off.
"Bah! Sour dates" scorned the dog.
Quite probably, Sumerians already were able to translate this short but long-lived fable on several levels of meaning, e.g.
In the field of pictorial art, corresponding levels have been studied under the denomination of iconology. According to the theory of Panofsky (1939) usual levels of meaning in pictorial art are:
In poetry like in pictorial art, it is not too difficult to invent and use symbols which have an easily understandable relation to human life or to anything that the artist wishes to express. In other arts, the language of symbols is much more limited. Some basic architectural symbols were already presented above, and others can be found on another page, under the title Building as a Message. One possibility is to use architectural forms which relate to the human body. On the right, Giorgio Martini (a 15th c. architect) shows how the Corinthian style of decoration is adapted to symbolize the female sex.
For industrial products, the possible symbolic languages are discussed in a separate paragraph later on.
Perception of signs and symbols. A weakness of the symbolic message of art and, at the same time, its strength, is lack of precision. Symbols are usually more or less ambiguous, so their interpretation allows some dispersion. In art, this room for speculation is useful because it makes the application of the message to the varying needs of the public easier. Moreover, it adds a little mysterious excitement to the work of art and thus makes it more interesting to the public.
Another reason which justifies ambiguity is that the content of a work of art often uncovers itself gradually, and we at first can take for ambiguity such information which later will be revealed as important content of the work. The very aesthetic pleasure that a good work of art brings to us seems to result from our effort to perceive and from the success when we find the initially hidden content. In the best masterpieces of art we even can uncover several successive layers of hidden content. The uncovering of each new layer adds to our pleasure and it increases thus the total aesthetic value of the work, as the diagram on the right indicates. This psychological explanation of the pleasure of aesthetic perception is further discussed under the title Beauty of Discovery.
The message of a work of art is dependent not only of the work itself but as much of the public. It is necessary to take the expectations of the public into account. This concerns not only objects of fine arts, but perhaps even more the industrially designed objects in homes and
offices. These are rather institutionalized in every community, and the members of the community thus have strong expectations concerning them. Every deviation from the expectations conveys a strong message; one could almost claim that it is the deviation from expectations, the "surprise", that is able to convey the strongest messages.
In the Storybird jars on the right, for example, the message of the "expectation deviation" has been skilfully used. As we know, the public has strongly established
expectations concerning jars:
The designer, Kati
Tuominen, deviated from both these expectations, which makes the spectator ask
immediately: "Why?" "What is the meaning of all this?" In other words, the public
expects a message.
In this case, the marketing department provided the
"missing" messages and devised an ingenious message for each advertisement which
consists of a line of text seemingly uttered by one of the human-looking vases. (In the
ad shown above the line says: "I wonder if they still have the same welcome drink?")
We do not know if these lines are what the artist herself wanted to say; we could ask
her, of course. In an interview, she once said: "I cannot create anything if I don't have
anything to say." (Source: Form Function Finland 2/1995). Anyway the Storybird
vases show that seemingly lifeless industrial products can be made to carry messages
which concern intimately human psychology.
It is vitally important that the first
impression from a work of art has the right relation to the expectations of the public. In
this respect the artist is facing two different pitfalls. If the first impression of the work is
quite near to what was expected, the work will be deemed trivial, but if it is very
far from the expectations it becomes incomprehensible. In both events the work
loses its interest and gets rejected at once. The artist can try to avoid this disaster by
foreseeing the expectations of the public and adjusting his work accordingly, but the
difficulty is that the public often is heterogeneous. The expectations of connoisseurs of
art usually differ widely from those of laymen (see Beauty of
Discovery), which means that it is almost impossible to please simultaneously
both of these groups of public. In fact, on many fields of art there are today at least
two genres of works: "popular art" and "avant-garde art" or art for the critics.
Some artists have tried to bypass the dualism of art by making the message in their works double coded so that certain messages are meant for the general public and others for art connoisseurs. This trick is well known in the field of music: the best composers have always known how to make their work multi-faceted in a way that allows many different interpretations. Similar attempts in architecture have led to the birth of the post-modern style which is discussed elsewhere.
Intentionally created symbolic messages. Most functions of human societies depend on messages from those people that have power to those that are expected to obey. A great deal of these orders, wishes and prohibitions from political, religious and business leaders are given in symbolic language. Patriotic symbols of the monarch and the army, architectural splendour of governmental buildings, and prosaic traffic signs are just a few examples of these.
In business life, too, it is becoming usual that companies use signs and symbols in the purpose of promulgating the excellence of the company or its products, see Advertisement As Message, later on.
Above, a historical succession of the principal theories of symbolism in art were presented. Summing up all of them, we can gather that today there are several possible mechanisms which can attach symbolic significance to a work of art or to a product. The most important origins of symbolic significance are the following three:
Accordingly, signs are often classified in three types, the names of which fere first time defined by C.S. Peirce:
iconic signs, where the perceived
form of the sign resembles the object of reference. Typical iconic signs
include:
metaphors. Typical of these is that the sign is "borrowed" from another realm than that of the object of reference. The forms nevertheless must match. Susann Vihma (1995 p.68) gives as examples design products which resemble plants, animals, fairy tale figures or historic persons. The trademark of British Eagle Airlines (on the right) is an example.
Cf. Analogous Models.
The above division gives a good starting point, if the objective is to study the semiotics of a given type of products. In Products as Representations (68 pp, 93 pp) Susann Vihma amplified the division by adding a sub-division consisting of a total of twenty "modes of sign functions". Her list is as follows (the explanations edited by P.R.):
Metaphor. The resemblance of form to a not designed object. For example,
the front of a car may have features of a face. Other examples can be seen in the
figure on the right (from Klöcker 1980).
A pointing form. Arrows and pointers are
often found on the operating knobs of machines; sometimes the product itself has
such a form.Vihma's list can be used as a checklist when analysing typical design products; however such lists can never be universally valid. Already the physical size of a product modifies the available vocabulary in the language of signs: hand-held gadgets cannot duplicate the messages produced by e.g. the monumental artifacts of architecture (see Building As A Message).
In the research of signs and symbols these have mostly been examined in isolation from their original context and often in laboratory environment. This has helped to cut down disturbances, but the disadvantage is that the findings have not been very realistic. In real life the perceived meaning of a sign will be greatly affected by the context and the available clues for deciphering the message. For instance, the meaning of a beckoning hand depends on whether the person is a friend of yours or not, a small child, a policeman, etc.
Modification of meaning occurs also when the sign is presented together with text or another sign. Such premeditated associations are often used in advertisements: the product gets appreciated when presented in a favorable context, for example when it is being used by celebrated people. The favorable attitude tends to expand through association. There is also the opposite possibility of presenting a competing product in negative light. See below, Advertisement As Message.
The study of semiotics has until now been mainly of the informative type. There has not been much need for normative studies, evidently because symbols were seldom considered really important for practical life. When they appeared in works of art, it was something like an extra decoration which interested mainly art critics. Regarding semiotic studies of products, the situation seems to be changing for several reasons. Some of the most important of these are:
Any of these reasons can motivate research that aims at not only examining but also improving the content, clarity, and outcome of messages and signs associated with industrial products. Each of them will be discussed below.
A growing number of products necessitate transmission of information across language barriers. For example, traffic signs along the roads must be instantly explicit for people coming from any country, likewise the guiding placards in buildings which indicate elevators, exits, toilets, etc. Moreover, global intelligibility is desirable in those products that the manufacturer wishes to sell all over the world with as little variation as possible.
Another incentive to the increasing use of symbols instead of written text comes from the evolution of technology. Many modern machines have several alternative modes of work, which necessitates a detailed user interface. At the same time many portable instruments like telephones, cameras and computers have diminished in size so much that there is not enough space for written labels on the displays nor on the operating buttons. Signs must be used instead.
The problem is focused at the user interface of the product, consisting often of keys, knobs and levers. There can also be a channel for reports and/or instructions to the human user which can include indicator lamps, pointers or other moving parts and today very often a display for symbols or text which transmits not only internal feedback from the appliance itself but sometimes also external information from a suitable network.
It is self-evident that already security (not to mention the facility) of operation requires using intelligible symbols in user interfaces. Some instruments are today so common all over the world that most people have learned the symbols for their manipulation, for example the controls of a tape recorder which come near to global intelligibility today. The number of such widely understood symbols is steadily growing as a result of more and more people using them, and there is, too, some standardization of symbols going on. Nevertheless, new machines are created all the time, and with them comes the need for new symbols.
A number of signs can be learned in the schools all over the world, but as the need for new signs seems endless it seems beneficial to develop them on the basis of research. In this way we can hope that new signs will be designed so that they are more easily understandable for all people.
Note that symbols can include even other than visually perceived signs. There are situations when the user must be able to control the instrument and receive feedback from it even when the user cannot see the instrument:
You can cater for such situations by designing the operation knobs so that some of them give a specific feeling when you touch them. For example, some keys (F and J) of the modern computer keyboard have a special surface profile which can be sensed by touching. As to the displays, they can be enhanced by auditive signals. Some auditive signs are already in general use, like the air-raid alarm signals for the public and the stop-and-go buzzer of traffic lights.
Normative theory for the design of symbols and signs exists now mostly for specific details of products like displays and keys. Apart from them, also the general appearance (shape, structure, colour etc., see Vihma, above) of the product can convey some messages to the users, like:
The findings of the informative studies which were discussed above indicate that the message perceived by the user of a product depends very much on the personality of the user, on his origin, education, age etc. This variation means that when writing normative theory for products intended to be sold and used in several countries it is not enough to make a survey in the researcher's home country only. You should consider extending the study to the whole population of the future users of the product. There are, of course, sampling methods that you can use for limiting the population.
When gathering opinions from large populations of people you will often find that many opinions are in contrast. The problems and methods in compressing or arbitrating conflicting opinions are discussed on another page about Normative Research.
Companies that have long been in business have usually a good reputation among customers, which they can capitalize on in their operations and especially when they launch new products. Even such companies which have no long history behind them have perhaps been able to generate a comparable prominence with a prolonged campaign of advertisement and publicity. To take advantage of this renown it is necessary to take care that potential customers can associate right products with the right company.
The association between a company and its products is normally created by using unmistakable visible marks on the products and on their packages, on the company's letterheads, on buildings, retail shops and, of course, in all the advertisements. It is no bad thing if these identifying features have some relevance with the company's intended business mission which is a broadly defined, enduring statement of purpose that distinguishes a business from others of its type (according to Ackoff, 1987, 30).
These identifying features are normally described in special written guidelines (styling guides) for designers of products, architects, interior decorators, graphic artists etc., and in the best case these guidelines have also been tested with a sample of customers.
Beside the product itself which can function as a message, there are also a few other channels of messages from the manufacturer to the customers. Together with the product are given instructions for its use, and there can also be after-sales information about the care of the product. These messages are seldom problematic and they will not be discussed here. Instead, a few words should be said about the message of advertising which is typically sent and received before the act of buying the product. The same viewpoints can be applied even to publicity which means news-like information about new activities and products that a company distributes to the media but does not pay for its further transmission.
The normal starting point when planning an advertisement campaign for a product, or a for a group of them, is the marketing mix. It is a combination of several decisions made on the basis of the business mission by the management of the company. It contains at least the following topics (the 4Ps, cf. Jobber 1995, p.15):
By studying the marketing mix and gathering data from market research among the target customers, it should be possible to decide which are the points in the marketing mix that need reinforcement through advertising. On this basis you can start planning the message content of an advertisement campaign.
The information content in advertisements and publicity is often divided in two genres, though the division is vague and both types can be mixed in one advertisement:
Normally only one topic is chosen for each advertisement in order to keep the message clear. Usually it will not be too difficult to formulate the message of the advertisement, because the company has already done its best to make a good product and you have only to explain it to the customers using an approach and wording that corresponds to their point of view.
However, there may be complications when people receive the message of an advertisement because they will associate the message with their existing attitudes and mental images.
The attitudes of potential customers, in turn, have already in advance been affected by numerous sources which can be either people (e.g. family members, friends, colleagues) or information (e.g. consumer journals with tests of products; publicity of competitors).
It can be useful to keep apart those mental images (or their sources) which endorse purchasing your product and those which disapprove it or your company. In the figure on the right (modified from Merja Salo 1994, p. 20) these two groups are called:
Target for an advertising campaign that wants to convert potential customers' attitudes becomes thus either one (or perhaps both) of two alternatives (see figure on the right):
The first-named target is more common because people have seldom much disagreement with a company's messages. Nevertheless, the latter situation occurred quite dramatically in tobacco advertising in the middle of 20 century, when the public began to be aware of the dangers of the product. Copywriters had then the almost superhuman task of persuading people to buy a product that would perhaps kill them. Below are factual examples of advertisement messages which aim at manipulating attitudes to cigarettes, taken from the empirical study of Salo, 1994, who examined tobacco advertisements in Finland from 1870 to 1994.
The first table below contains only favorable attitudes to smoking, and in the right column of it are listed a few of the most common message contents found in the advertisements. All of them might be effective in supporting some attitudes of customers, though no written evidence has remained to us about the factual intentions of the advertising copywriters. The attitude that the advertisement probably wanted to support is characterized in the left column of the table.
| Supposed favorable attitude of potential customers: | Message which can strengthen the attitude e.g. |
| Smoking gives pleasure | This is proved by photos of pleased smokers |
| A cigarette helps you to face problems and master difficulties | Pictures of aeroplane pilots, racing car drivers etc. smoking |
| Smoking is all right anywhere, anytime | Pictures of numerous different situations of smoking |
| "People have always smoked" | (Fabricated) pictures of historical persons smoking |
| Smoking is typical of higher social classes, professionals, sportsmen and other admired people | Examples of noble smokers, professionals etc. |
| Smokers are independent, brave people | The Marlboro Wild West cowboy etc. |
| Smokers are sexy | Picture of a cozy couple, one or both smoking. |
| Our cigarettes are same as in America, therefore high quality | Proved by photos of the Marlboro cowboy etc. |
From the same source we select as examples some usual message contents which evidently were intended to resist existing negative attitudes of customers:
| Supposed negative attitude of potential customers: | Message which can resist the attitude e.g.: |
| Smoking can damage your health | Strategy 1: Our cigarettes are mild, scientifically tested and have effective filters |
| Strategy 2: Courageous, independent people (like the Marlboro cowboy) enjoy facing risks | |
| Our competitor's tobacco is said to be better or cheaper | Connoisseurs say that ours is best. Competing products are just cheap imitations of us. |
| You should prefer domestic products, not imported ones | Strategy 1: Our factory is here |
| Strategy 2: Our packages carry patriotic symbols |
The examples above demonstrate that advertising has been used to counter-attack not only negative attitudes but also "negative" facts that could discourage consumers. Another question is, whether it is consistent with your ethical principles and those of your company, and also with the laws of the country. Especially tobacco advertising in the latter half of 20 century was found to be so unconcerned about facts that the legislators of many countries prohibited it completely.
Vocabulary of advertisement message. In an advertisement campaign it is not necessary to restrict the message to the "natural" (i.e. traditional, archetypal and collective) sign types, listed above. In advertisements there is much more freedom and possibilities to use signs and symbols and even to develop new ones and use them successfully. Reasons for this are:
The necessity of prominence. The message of an advertisement can have effect only if it catches the attention of the public (which seldom has much interest in advertisements) and coaxes it to have a look at the intended message, too. For this reason many advertisements include a conspicuous, striking element which often has only superficial relevance to the principal message.
The normative character of an advertisement is sometimes condensed into the formula "AIDA" which is an abbreviation of four targets of advertising: it should arouse first Attention (or Awareness), then Interest, Desire and finally Action which does not necessarily mean immediately buying the product. It can simply mean that the person's attitudes become generally more favorable to the company or to its products.
From antiquity until Spengler and Jung in the 20 century, research of the potential messages of products was mostly informative. The method was usually solitary contemplation. It seemed unnecessary to affiliate other people in the research project, because symbols were the same for all people, thought the researchers. The method was probably quite similar to that of modern phenomenology; additionally sometimes hermeneutics was needed to decipher older writings on the topic.
Today we know that the interpretations of signs and symbols are not at all uniform all over the world, and the patterns of interpretation found by the above-mentioned early authors are often valid only in the writer's own sphere of culture. This does not mean that there were no universally valid mechanisms and patterns in the use of symbols and signs in various times and different countries, and it is also quite possible that already some of the earliest writers found some of these invariances. However, if we want to know exactly how universal the patterns of meaning are, we need to demarcate the population of people who are deciphering the messages. For example, if the findings of the study are to be used in several countries, it will be necessary to incorporate people from all those countries.
When studying the symbolic meanings attached to products, by either the artesan-designers or by the general public, the most suited method will usually be a thematic interview. As an alternative, polls have also been used (e.g. Väkevä 1997), but then the researcher must have an exact and realistic hypothesis about what he is going to study already at the beginning of the project because in the questionnaire method new and surprising factors would be difficult to deal with.
If the researcher has a definite hypothesis about e.g. how certain variations in a work of art will change the message conveyed, he can test this hypothesis with experimentation in laboratory, for example by preparing variations of a suitable work of art to be used as stimuli in the experiment. These variations differ only with regard to one variable, and the experiment will reveal which effect the variation has to the message conveyed, see Stimulus in the experiment. Of course, there is always another important variable: the test persons have different backgrounds and have different expectations concerning the object of study. Consequently, you should try to register not only people's reactions but also their expectations (and other factors that are relevant in your particular study) because they are independent variables that perhaps can explain people's reactions to the variations in the objects.
You can, of course, take as your object of study the existing products themselves, though the difficulty is often their great variation. Some methods are explained under the title Holistic Study of Products. If you intend to study not static objects but procedures, like for example musical compositions, dramas or computer programs, you can perhaps adopt the technique for their description from the designers of these commodities if the normal methods of observation are not sufficient.
When the purpose of the study is normative, i.e. if you want to develop tools for the design of signs or symbols affiliated with products, you can use many of the informative methods listed above. The approach is slightly different depending on whether you want to create general design theory, i.e. models, standards and other tools for semiotic design, or if you just want to assist the creation of one product. The latter task is usually easier. Its methods are explained in Artistic Research and Developing an Industrial Product.
The methods for creating general design theory are explained in Preparing Design Theory, but as was stated above, normative work is obstructed by the great variation in people's usage of symbols. The researcher's proposals to design guidelines should always be tested with a sample from the intended customers. For clarity, it is best to test not only written guidelines but also as fidel mock-ups as possible. Suitable methods are listed in Presenting the Draft and Prototype and Evaluating a Design Proposal. Do not forget to include in the testing group people with impaired abilities of perception.
Creating general design theory for semiotic design is relatively difficult compared to several other aspects in the design of products (like usability, economy and ecology) because of the scarcity of empirically tested research. On the other hand, the researchers of semiology need not laboriously search compromises between contrasting goals, examples of which are described in Theories of Architectural Synthesis, because in the practical work of designers the creation of signs and symbols is not likely to get in conflict with other goals of design (like e.g. ecology and economy often do).
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January 12, 2004. Original location:
http://www2.uiah.fi/projects/metodi
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