Camberwell Design Key Ideas

There is another way to explore ‘language and design’ which is to consider what is meant by that word ‘language’. This word is sometimes used to describe pictures and objects but more often to describe something else. A quick Internet search gave 14 definitions of language most of which described the ‘something else’, for instance; “communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings; speech.” However there is another way of defining language, one that sets itself in opposition to the abstract and arbitrary nature of speech and is in concert with a means of communicating familiar to designers and image makers. It is one that has its roots in the earliest forms of communication and belies [or so some believe] deep rooted structures of ‘signs’ that we subconsciously use to say something to each other or make ourselves understood. “the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (opposed to speech ). “any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another.”