The Semiotics of the Image within the Visual Messages of Graphic Design

This paper discusses new conceptions of design practice as research and seeks to challenge the invisibility of graphic design within cultural and academic fields. With a focus on the fetishisation of the image within commercial, branded messages the paper utilises semiotic theory to develop understanding of the complex sign systems that are both constructed and carried by graphic design. The paper argues that graphic design is not only a carrier of signs, it is itself, a sign. Through discussion of postgraduate design practice the paper suggests that by making semiotic codes more visible we can expose the role of design in naturalizing highly ideological messages. Graphic design, rather than masking its own condition within the process of cultural production could then acknowledge and draw attention to the process of making a text and through this its own construction and its own non-natural state.

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