Semiotics

A lot of times I find out as I go along that I didn't understand a concept as well as I initially thought, but here is what I am fairly certain I understand about semiotics. Its something I won't understand fully if at all until I have put it to practice, but it seems to have a lot to do with the relationships between things or ideas, and the symbols that represent them. I also understand that it has a lot to do with my future, and my work as a graphic designer and is something I will need to improve upon greatly if I ever intend to do anything worthy of being noticed. I am a very detail oriented person, but I also think pretty literally. I think possibly both these qualities can either help or hinder me in my improvement of understanding semiotics. Although, I have noticed myself starting to think about these types of things just in the past few days. Mr. Babcock talked about focusing on shapes not lines. And while watching my boyfriend pack to leave for college, I noticed his Swiss Army duffel bag. On the outside on one end there was a pouch, attached but completely separate from the rest of the bag it had the Swiss Army cross logo in the center, and on either side of the cross there were three shapes put together. An ellipse attached to a longer narrower ellipse, which was attached to a squiggly line. In our society anyone would immediately recognize this composition of shapes as a pair of ear buds. Almost a symbol in itself of our current society. So just from the appearance of the ear buds I immediately knew the pouch was to be used for a portable music storage device. Semiotics :) So basically instead of a detailed image of gradients and shading and details, the simple three shapes are just as affective if not more so. I will post a picture of this image later as I have access.