From ten years of working in communication design (specialising in digital and interactive) and thousands of dollars spent on universities, books and conferences I think one of the main things I’ve learnt and now base my work on is that visual meaning is personal to the reader, based on their previous experiences — whether that be with the product/media they are reading or something as straight forward as their culture, but usually a combination of sources. This may seem really obvious but I think it’s one of the biggest things I see overlooked when speaking to graduates or people beginning a career in the design industry.

This theory has been around since the early 20th century when linguists and philosophers began to investigate the communication process, such as Saussure, Peirce and later Barthes. Meaning can be taken from anything we choose to take it from, whether an intentional act or not. Designers are responsible for intentional acts of communication which should encourage readers to extract meaning. A designer may use a certain colour or image or any other element (signifier) that she/he believes conveys a particular message, while the reader takes that signifier and applies it to their own experiences or culture (signified) and creates a completely different meaning (sign). In these cases I think the design has failed, regardless of how precisely the elements were laid out, or how well the type was kerned. That’s not to say having an intimate knowledge in the craft of design isn’t useful. Knowing how to kern type can be used to make it more accessible, or alter the meaning, or even make it more appropriate for a certain audience. My main point is that unless the design communicates what it intends to, to the right audience, then it has been badly designed. So something that you may think is extremely ugly, with a horrible colour scheme and poor typeface may in fact be brilliantly designed and just either not meant to speak to you, or meant to communicate a poor aesthetic so it appears from an amateur designer or someone from a different culture.

So how do you ensure that your design works? Unfortunately I don’t have a process that woks all the time, but I believe having an understanding of this theory is a good place to start. Once you know how it works it’s all about research. Research your demographic, take case studies of how users are using the media or channel you intend to use, prototype your ideas and test them.

This theory can be applied to everything within visual communication, from the menu system on a digital camera to how passengers navigate their way through an airport. Typeface selection has long been used to make meaning in some cultures; The Romans used serif faces to represent the empire, while san-serif faces represented the republic.

Let’s look at an example I’ve recently been involved with — the rhetoric of letterforms on vehicle dashboards. The type used on the dashboard includes the face used for the speedometer. It is important to be able to be read this quickly and accurately. Most cars feature a sans-serif simple face, such as Futura, rather than using their corporate typeface, to ensure legibility. A few exceptions to that rule do exist, and it seems the manufactures chose the typefaces for their meaning as well as legibility. There’s a great site devoted to car typography here.

Left to right: Renault, Honda, BMW.

The Renault VelSatis, a French-made car, adopts a retro face reminiscent of 1930s numerals. This face suggests a classically styled car, appealing to consumers who buy to reflect their personality. It also matches the style of the rest of the car. A brighter and larger version of the typeface is used for speeds that are likely to be speed limits, ensuring legibility.

Honda, a large Japanese car manufacturer, seems to use typefaces purely for meaning rather than legibility. The Honda Jazz uses a very rough, square typeface that has been slanted. The slant suggests movement, while the squared face is probably an attempt to match the sharp edges found in the style of the body. The slant on the typeface makes it harder to read, and the type has been set in a small size, making it even more difficult. Honda uses a similar face in the Civic Type-R. Again, the slant suggests speed, and this car is targeted at young drivers who want a fast car. The kerning is tighter in the Type-R, making it less legible, but makes it appear faster and more on edge. The dials have a white background, which gives the speedometer a better contrast with the typeface. This makes it slightly easier to read, but it still not as clear as it should be, given the task it has been assigned.

BMW, one of the main German automobile manufacturers, uses Frutiger in all of its cars –- a typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in Switzerland in the 1920s. It’s a simple, strong, versatile, and very legible typeface, that suits its application perfectly. The face has a similar meaning to traditional German design qualities pushed by BMW, of reliability and quality. What is interesting is that BMW doesn’t use its corporate custom-designed typeface, which is very similar to Frutiger. BMW would have to license the use of Frutiger in every car they produce, adding up to quite a large fee.

One of the things that inspires me is design being used to improve a situation, rather than sell — just don’t ask me why I work for one of the world’s largest advertising agencies! IDEO has always served as a nice example, and I’ve linked to a few of them previously. The Design Council has a number of case studies on topics such as how design is being used to fight crime, reduce energy consumption and create better public services.

The use of a colour can be used to communicate a mood and therefor improve a situation. For example the theory of using Baked Miller Pink in gaol (jail) to calm inmates. However, like other elements of design, the meaning can shift from person to person depending on personal experience (see the example on the Baked Miller Pink page) and wider factors such as culture. That doesn’t mean you can’t use colour to convey meaning but simply relying on colour may not work as well as using a combination of visual codes. That is unless there is a particularly strong connection or instead of relying on a perceived meaning the colour establishes it’s own. The orange initiative uses orange to identify projectors as being property of the education system and therefor help reduce theft, rather than relying on colour perception.

Using design to fight crime is an interesting topic. Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London has established a Design Against Crime research centre to address issues such as criminal activities and developing products and services that aid in crime prevention. They also have another resource called in the bag to help prevent street crime.

The Design Council has a page listing all of the case studies concerned with crime prevention. The UK home office employed design to create a campaign warning people in high theft areas and advising how they could reduce their chance of being a victim — the yellow and black are instantly recognisable as a sign of danger.

Bike theft is another massive problem in London. If you own a bike in London you should watch this film by the DAC research centre. An interesting project called bike off addresses the need to redesign bike stands so users can secure their bikes easier.

Last month Adobe released beta versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth CS4. Registered CS3 users could try this software without any time limit. I downloaded Dreamweaver CS4 in the first week it was available but because computer security is so tight at Ogilvy I’ve been unable to install it. That hasn’t stopped me from exploring the new user interface changes through articles and videos written and taken by others, as well as Adobe’s designers.

One of the key changes causing a lot of debate at the moment is Adobe’s decision to offer an option in the OSX version of CS4 to put the document and UI in to one big window, with a solid grey background, and allow the window to be resized from any side rather than just the bottom right corner. This would be optional and it has yet to be decided what the default would be.

The Microsoft Window’s versions of Adobe’s suite has always had this design, as all Windows applications do. Traditionally Mac OS has kept the UI separate to the open document — so you could see the desktop behind the application.

The first reaction to this decision by Mac users has therefor been that they are making it look and behave like a Windows application, rather than following the design rules set in OSX. While I agree that it’s important to make applications look and behave consistently with the OS (and why I also use Safari instead of Firefox because it feels more like an OSX application), it’s interesting to note that Apple has been transitioning their software to use this design without anyone seeming to notice, or at least without causing as much debate as Adobe seems to be. Perhaps it’s because it’s been Apple software and so Mac users don’t make the connection to Windows and rather assume it’s just an evolution.

John Nack from Adobe has put a gallery together that shows some of the pro applications Apple makes that use the ‘Windows’ design. Apple are always preaching that Windows just copies Mac OS but perhaps this is one case where OSX has copied Windows?

I think it’s important that this new design remains an option, regardless of whether it’s an improvement or not, simply because many users are used to working the current way. It will be interesting to see how many people make use of the new UI and what the UI in CS5 ends up with though.