people_2_know

STEVEN HELLER



THE EAMS




ALAN FLETCHER



ALEX STEINWEISS



ALVIN LUSTIG



ALEXANDER GIRARD



PAUL RAND



SAUL BASS

MOOOOOOOOOOd

This Means This

This Means This, This Means That Notes

Semiotics: the theory of signs

Signs can mean something other than themselves

Semiotics is about the tools, processes, and contexts we have for creating, interpreting and understanding meaning in a variety of different ways.

Signs are formed though the society that creates them

Signs are shaped by different societies in different ways

Societies have two basic sources of signing

1. Natural

2. Conventional

signs are composed or two inseparable elements: the signifier and the signified.

Seventeenth- century philosopher Rene Descartes

First modern philosopher

He believed that in order to build a system of knowledge, one must start from first principles

I think therefore I am

Messages are always transmitted through a medium

1. Presentational

Through the face, the voice or the body

2. Representational

Paintings, books, photographs, drawings, writings, books

3. Mechanical

Telephones, television, internet, radio, film

“The window of the soul is the mouth”

Non-literal forms of meaning enable us to make the familiar seem unfamiliar and the unfamiliar seem familiar.

Non-literal communication: simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction, and representation

The likening of one thing to another is a simile. A simile is a stated comparison between two different objects, images, ideas or likenesses.

Simile: x is like y

Metaphor: x is y

When one thing is substituted for another in a piece of communication we call it a metonym.

Using a part of something to stand for the whole thing, or the whole thing to stand for part, is called synecdoche. (Part/Whole relationship)

It Just Works

The following are three book designs that I believe to be successful.


I chose this book cover because of it's use of typography to make a graphic element. I think it is interesting when you look at the black 'W/M' by itself, it isn't how you would typically write a 'W' or and 'M'. But the mind puts the two together and connects the words with ease. Continuing the graphic across make the cover less static and more visually interesting. (+ I enjoy the playful use of the dot in the 'f').


What I liked most about this book cover was the unusual use of the title. I think when most people are thinking about where to put the title for a book they automatically think, "the top of the page." Also, the cover is covering half of the graphic on the page, another intriguing element. I haven't read this book, but the title to me seems like almost a question. Placing the title over half of the graphic makes me question what the rest of it looks like.. causing me to 'imagine'. I feel like the cover works well with the title of the book, and makes me want to read it. Therefor, I believe it is a successful book cover.

AND last but not least:

I picked this as my last book because, unlike the other two books I chose, this cover uses photography. I like the cleverness to the photograph, playing off of the title of the book. I also like the idea that the title is smaller than the author's name, which I think is something you don't see a lot in book covers. It makes since in this case, however, because while "My Unwritten Books" is the title of the book, the most important part is that is is George Steinbar's unwritten books. The title is almost an after thought, something to be placed in parenthesis, which can be interpreted through the bookend on either side of the title.

Redesign Research

Bookcover Project

1. Those Who Save Us

2. Jenna Blum: is of German and Jewish descent. She worked for Steven Spielburg’s Shoah Foundation for four years, interviewing Holocaust survivors. She currently teaches at Boston University and runs fiction workshops for Grub Street Writers.

3. The Stormchasers

4. For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy’s sole evidence of the past is an old photograph; a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer. Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the heartbreaking truth of her mother’s life. The book is about people whos lives are rearranged by huge forces beyond their control. It is about survivor guilt, secrecy and hope.

5. Moving, depressing, dark, sacrifice, provocative, morality, love, sad, hard times, contradictions, tension, persuasive

6. moral responsibility; how far will one go to protect those we love.

7. The story is split between Anna’s past in Germany and the Trudy’s present in America. Anna does everything to can to keep herself and her fatherless child Trudy alive during tough times. She must face the tough moral decisions to do what is right and what will help her survive. Trudy has unconsciously been searching her whole life for the answers to her mother’s past in Germany. Trudy’s shame for her mother’s possible past has began to effect her own life.

8. The Obersturmfuhrer is a heartless, brutal Nazi officer. When he comes to kill Anna for feeding the prisoners, he notices her beauty and decides to spare her life if she became his mistress. He provided Trudy and Anna with protection and essentials for a couple years but puts Anna through mental trials she will never recover from.

9. "Heimat. The word mean home in German, the place where one was born. But the term also conveys a subtler nuance, a certain tenderness. One's Heimat is not merely a matter of geography; it is where one's heart lies. "

"Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends."

“She should have known this would happen even with him; she should have known better than to tell him the truth. She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame.”

10. When I first looked at this book, the cover was what attracted me to it. I picked this book to redesign because I felt like the cover led me to believe the book was going to be different than it actually was.

1. Brave New World (1932)

2. Aldous Huxley: was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Huxley was a humanist and pacifist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics. By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank, and highly regarded as one of the most prominent explorers of visual communication and sight-related theories as well.

3. Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barron Leaves, Point Counter Point, Eyeless in Gaza, After Many the Summer Dies a Swan, Time Must Have a Stop, Ape and Essence, The Doors of Perception, The Genius and Goddess, Island.

4. Written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism.

5. Futuristic, sci-fi, fantasy, cold, semi-serious,

6. The use of technology to control society (dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technology), The consumer society (warning and satire), The incompatibility of happiness and truth (the use of Soma), dangers of an all-powerful state (different from 1984; force and intimidation. BNW; making citizens so happy and superficially fulfilled they don’t care about personal freedoms.

7. John becomes the central character of the novel because, rejected both by the “savage” Indian culture and the “civilized” World State culture, he is the ultimate outsider. John’s extensive knowledge of Shakespeare’s works serves him in several important ways: it enables him to verbalize his own complex emotions and reactions, it provides him with a framework from which to criticize World State values, and it provides him with language that allows him to hold his own against the formidable rhetorical skill of Mustapha Mond during their confrontation.

8. Mustapha Mond is a paradoxical figure. He reads Shakespeare and the Bible and he used to be an independent-minded scientist, but he also censors new ideas and controls a totalitarian state. For Mond, humankind’s ultimate goals are stability and happiness, as opposed to emotions, human relations, and individual expression.

9. "Cleanliness is next to fordliness."

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't look like that. Partly," he added, "because most of them die long before they reach this old creature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end." (7.22)

10. I picked this book because it is an older novel that many people have had to read for school, and the cover is ugly.

1. The Traveler’s Gift

2. Andy Andrews: a best selling novelist and speaker whose combines works have been translates into nearly twenty languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. As a speaker and corporate entertainer for the world’s largest organizations he is in constant demand. Andy has spoken at the request of four different United States presidents and toured military bases around the world, speaking to troops at the request of the United States Department of Defense.

3. The Lost Choice, The Noticer, Mastering the Seven Decisions

4. David Ponder has lost his faith in life. Formerly a high-ranking executive at a Fortune 500 company, David is now forced to work part-time at a minimum wage job. When his daughter becomes ill, David is unable to pay for her medical expenses. In an act of desperation, he crashes his car and finds himself not dead, but transported back in time to seven important moments in history.

In this modern parable, seven leaders and heroes from the past teach our protagonist the seven secrets of success. The cast of characters include King Solomon, Anne Frank, Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln. Through their tales of courage, resilience and passion, David Ponder realizes that his own choices and attitudes dictate whether he would succeed or fail.

5. Intriguing, mysterious, magical, inspiring, positive, challenging, touching, adventure, historical, success, self, help

6. You are responsible for your own past and future, you are where you are right now, your thinking dictates your decisions and choices, think constructive thoughts, when faced with an opportunity to make a decision make one and stand by it.

7. David Ponder is at a seriously rough time in his life. He finds himself with no job at fourty-five years old and no money to pay for his daughter’s surgery. After being fired from a second job, Ponder experiences some road rage that ends in a serious wreck. He is then magically taken on seven journeys to help him discover a new way to live life.

8. Through out the book the protagonist, Mr. Ponder, encounters seven people throughout history that have largely impacted the world. The seven people include; Harry Truman, King Solomon, Colonel Chamberlain, Christopher Columbus, Helen Keller, Abraham Lincoln and Gabrial. Each of the seven people that Ponder encounters teaches him an important life lessons and gives him one of the “seven decisions that determines personal success.”

9. “You have a condition common to most people. You hear, but you do not listen.”

“Truth is truth. If a thousand people believe something foolish, it is still foolish! Truth is never dependent upon consensus of opinion. I have found that it is better to be alone and acting upon the truth in my heart than to follow a gaggle of silly geese doomed to mediocrity.”

“As children we are afraid of the dark. Now as adults we are afraid of the light. We are afraid of the light. We are afraid to become more.”

10. I chose this book because I don’t read a lot of fiction but it was the last one I read.