Effective Design Report

Design Practice in Context 1

Effective Design

Key Words: Cognition, Composition, Effective, Response, Semiotics, Values

Chosen Piece: Das Committee – AIDS campaign

What does ‘effective design’ mean? We could look at the two words separately and claim ‘effective’ could potentially mean: influential, functional, appropriate, values, meaningful; all are of personal perception. Secondly ‘design’, there are many definitions to design such as: painting, drawing, montage, photograph, architecture, life. So, putting the two together we can claim ‘effective design’ is a personal perception of a denoted design.

The effectiveness of design is impacted by the evolutionary surroundings. We see social and virtual media taking a toll on cultural ideologies therefore peoples response to things in life today, is much different to others. This enables design to be much talked about through having many denotations for certain individuals. For example, the AIDS campaign produced by Das Committee (Hamburg). I will use my key words to deconstruct the poster design that are a response from my personal denotations.

Cognition –  you either adhere or abandon the intended denotation of the ad. The perception of the ad is affected by many things due to such explicit imagery and underlining value it empowers.

Composition –  the significant use of composition within the poster highlights the meaning the designers would like the audience to denote; the use of text across the middle of the poster attracts the initial attention from the audience. Therefore, when the actual image (which is the background) of the poster is recognized, the audience can immediately recognize the coherence between image and text. This is important as the overall denotation of the poster is to shock the viewer. The composition of the poster essentially sets the seed by laying out the text in the initial eye-catching area (though helped with the colour contrast) followed by the support of the vulgar imagery.

Effective – I personally think the campaign is effective, whether it be for the correct reasons or not. It clearly shocks the audience and caused severe controversy. The controversy all be it negative, however it gained the ad recognition. The vulgarity of the ad makes it effective as it shocks and disturbs the reader with its message thus the audience remembering it.

Response/Reflect – The reflection on this gives mixed response. As a group we discussed the ad many responding in mixed reviews. 70% of the group were shocked by the vulgarity and the representation within the ad and the other 30% agreed that its shock tactics were good in giving such a strong message.

Semiotics – There are so many routes to talk about with the semiotics of the ad. The immediate would be the significance of the use of sexual imagery portraying a very touching message. The semiotics would signify AIDS victims as mass murderers, that they are repulsive serial killers that kill for fun. In very very rare cases this is seen true but the message they were trying to convey “always where a condom” was taken to the extreme with the semiotics in this ad.

Values – The main values I immediately identified were the use of vulgar imagery of KILLERS. This significant value immediately address’ the severity of the message but also suggests offensive things to the victims of AIDS