Portfolio Task 6 - Theory Into Practice

This is a response to Garry Barker's blog post regarding his thoughts on communication theory. The entry starts as a simple description of communication; the attempt in a relationship to share and to understand meaning by assigning certain things with that meaning. In this way we don't need to actually have the thing we are trying to communicate, as the shared understanding of what represents it is enough to convey meaning.
He then goes on to talk specifically about design and how we, as designers, have come to the assumption that the combination of type and image is the best solution to the problem of communication. This is true to a degree, although this idea is really subjective as far as designers go. Many prefer to use type instead of image or image instead of type to communicate although it obviously depends entirely on the message. He then goes on to a really interesting point:


"You could say that one implication of communication theory is that evaluation of a good visual design/communication can be done by measuring the comprehension by its audience, not by aesthetic or artistic preference."


This is something that I have always thought about. As a graphic designer, the point of my work is to communicate messages, but does that mean that the message should be visually communicated as simply as possible without any other visual information? To communicate a message as best as possible without any possibility of confusion or misunderstanding, surely a printed statement alone should suffice. In this way the audience will read exactly what the point is and nothing more. There could be no confusion because there would be no grey areas. With this chain of thinking, how good a design is would not be based on how it looks but probably just on how simple and clear it is. 
However, this is obviously not the case otherwise genuinely good elaborate design would not be appreciated (no matter how subjective that statement may be). I think that this has something to do with more complex communication theory regarding memory and experience caused by interacting with vivid and exciting design. 
Another point that Garry makes:


"In this case the problem in terms of communication theory is that if the people evaluating the design are themselves design professionals they are too 'attuned' to design to be aware of how a non designer would receive the communication."

This is a piece of design work that I created this year on a brief based around designing packaging for airline meals that promoted information and awareness for the unethical killing and consumption of Manta ray in eastern Asia (Strange and oddly specific, I know). Design-wise, I quite like the illustrations and the way the each image comes together as a whole, although I'm not sure how well the message has been conveyed. 

This touches on Garry's point about designers evaluating design. I spent several weeks looking at these images over and over again, and I even know exactly what they are meant to represent and what kind of reaction they are supposed to create.

From my completely subjective view and over-exposure to the images, I would think that they communicate relatively well in terms of the message that they are actually supposed to give. In a similar way, Garry actually says that maybe ANY designer who looks at the work will look at it with a designer's eye, concentrating on aesthetics and layout and typography.

In essence, both the designer and myself could be reading these images in a way that contradict each others views but also both contradict that of a completely objective passenger on a plane which would be the audience that the product is actually intended for.