Images within a Society

Images represent the relations between the people, places and the things that they depict and the complex set of relations that can exist between images and their viewers. This is something that we have been talking about in another communications class that I am taking this semester, Media Criticism.

We have been discussing images through the medium of myth is a type of speech containing its own codes that can be explored though semiotics, the science that studies the life of signs within a society. These codes, also referred to as syntagmatic codes, are a form of syntactical rules that are employed usually the same way for all films of a specific genre. Within the syntagmatic codes there are signs that are made up of a signifier, the expression or real world image, and signified, what the word stands for. For example, a dove is a bird and also stands for peace; the dove as a bird is the signifier and the dove as a symbol of peace is the signified. These signs are seen in our everyday culture and in the mass media and at this point there no longer exists a theoretical mode of representation but a particular reoccurring image which represents a certain ideology/signification.

Another example is a rose. A rose can be a rose as in a flower or it can mean love/passion. It is a sign that when given a rose shows a true act of romance.

Try your hand at these logos: