Use Shannon & Weaver's model of the communication process to write a 300-400 word analysis of a work of Graphic Design. Comment on the ways in which the piece of Graphic Design attempts to communicate to a specific audience, using techniques of redundancy, entropy or noise.
By looking at Shannon and Weaver's communication model, I can look at this piece of graphic design and analyse this sign on a level of how it communicates. First of all is an information source and next the transmitter which together are the message. The information source is the sign, and then the transmitter encodes the message as a signal or signals. Here what is being encoding and transmitted as signals is the simplistic image of a male and female in white with a thick stroke in between them on a dark blue background. The channel is how the sign exists, it is a physical object which appears to be present on a fence here. The next thing is receiving the signal, or decoding the signs. What or how the signals represent, connote or denote, to the viewer perception, the destination.
The image has been created with one sole purpose and that is to be a sign to show for public toilets, both male and female. The image is associated worldwide and has been accepted into culture to stand for toilets, because of this the image has been created to be redundant. It is about as redundant as possible without showing toilets or having the word used in the sign as well, but without a doubt the image has been recognised throughout culture as a sign for toilets. The fact it is so redundant means the image has a very high predictability but low information, not much needs to be said. This creates a high effectiveness to the message and also helps to fight the possibility of noise, therefore try to combat interference.
The sign has been designed to have as little noise as possible, but things that could possibly interfere with the communication of this sign might be if anything got in the way of it, obscuring some of the image or if the image had been defaced by graffiti or the paint had started to come off which would manipulate the image and interfere with its signal.
There would be no entropy to see here in this piece of communication, entropy is the opposite of redundancy. It is unpredictable, unconventional and can include a lot of information. It is because of this it can often communicate a lot more than redundant design but may target a smaller audience, as opposed to this sign for example, where it has been designed to communicate to everyone.
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