Shannon and Weaver were employed by the American army to work in telephone labs. The army wanted to refine their efforts and processes of communication. They wanted to know when and pinpoint where, this process of communication was breaking down.
They worked prominently with radio and telephone communication.
The model above refers to communication in a more common sense, it could be relevant to any kind of communication such as social and visual.
As engineers of army communication, and us as graphic designers, we all need a common understanding of the components in the process of communication, and know the stages where communication could break down.
The communication theory and Graphic design.
By me and Sophie Abell.
Information source - Piece of graphic design.
Transmitter (encoder) - Media used eg. website, bilboard.
Chanel - The piece of work created.
Reciever - Everyone seeing the design.
Destination - Audience (Target Audience) - The message being understood.
When discussing to the rest of the class we found that our interpretation of the communication theory in relation to graphic design didn't really consider the process. Two people which I found did this successfully were Alex and Adam:
Information source - Client and brief.
Transmitter (encoder) - Designer.
Chanel - Piece of work created.
Reciever (decoder) - Audience receives message.
Destination - Audience understand the message.
Next using the system that Alex and Adam had thought of, in our pairs we looked at where the communication process could fall down in some aspects.
Information source - Client.
- May not communicate what they want clearly.
- The client may keep changing their mind.
- Client may not understand what they really want.
Transmitter (encoder) - Designer.
- Might be misinformed by the client on what the client is wanting.
- May mis interpret the brief.
Chanel - Piece of work.
- Could be placed in the wrong location (bilboard etc)
- Could have used the wrong scale/format to produce work.
- Could run into issues during print.
- The design may not reflect what the client wanted.
- Solution may not be appropriate to the brief.
- The channels you choose can limit communication.
Receiver (decoder) - Audience receives message.
- Audience may not receive correct message.
- The message might go to the wrong audience.
- Target audience may not be able to understand the message.
Destination - Audience understands message.
- Audience cannot understand the message.
- Design is rendered useless.
- Audience may not find final design interesting and not relate to it.
The noise source.
Noise - something that interrupts with the communicative acts.
Channel - noise on the line etc.
Brief noise:
- Scrawled handwriting and typo's.
- Client keeps changing their mind.
Transmitter (encoder):
- Designer is trying to do work and people are distracting them.
- Your mac/ the adobe suite stops working.
- Designing at the pub and being influenced/ distracted by people/ alcohol.
Receiver (decoder):
- Other pieces of graphic design are placed around yours therefore distracting the audience.
- People graffiting on a billboard is seen as noise.
Other noise:
- Interrupting the effectiveness of a message.
- People distracting the audience from the message.
- People saying/ communicating the opposite to what the work you have made is communicating to your audience.
- Too much volume of design eg spam.
Communication problems.
Level A - Technical problems.
- How accurately can the message be transmitted?
Level B - Semantic problems.
- How precisely is the message conveyed?
Level C - Effectiveness problems.
- How effectively does the received meaning affect behaviour?
How does it influence how much the audience understand the message you want to communicate.
The process of creating a piece of graphic design is not linear as suggested in the model by Shannon and weaver. It is in fact much more complex. Creating a piece of graphic design and allowing it to reach an audience is not just a communicative line from A to B. The communication between brief, designer and product constantly crosses back over itself with factors such as feedback, and necessary changes to the outcome. Every step of the communicative process in graphic design always links back to the information source as we constantly ask ourselves, Is what we are doing right for the brief? Communication in graphic design should always be a constant dialogue.
Redundancy and Entropy.
Redundancy: Path of least resistance.
- Telephone line communicates 100% off message and does not interrupt a message at all, this is therefore redundant.
Entropy: Moments of bleeding on the line.
- For example the leaking of gas in a gas pipe.
Redundancy is almost totally predictable.
It has to be socially predictable, conventional and understandable. Smaller amounts of information reduce the possibility for technical problems and entropy.
Redundant communacative act:
Shaking someones hand is easily understandable.
Entropic communacative act:
Attaching a buzzer to your hand. Initiates a radical shock and transfers a high amount of information which was unexpected, this is therefore entropic.
Toilet symbols are redundant for their simplicity however confusing ones introduce entropy.
A fine artist or stylist aims for entropy as they are less interested in communication.
If someone picks the name 'Jade palace' for a chinese restaurant or chooses a bamboo like font for a tiki party they are being redundant.
There is an already agreed system of understanding to a british audience etc, therefore it doesn't challenge stereotypes and stands on the shoulders of prejudice.
Entropy: Using helvetica bold for a Hawaiian bar, having a bauhaus inspired interior. A high amount of information to process.
Designers are more interested in building a system within their work to avoid mistakes and moments of entropy. However they may want to challenge the systems of communication.
An example I found and applied to the communicative theory:
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