Comments on Semiotics of Kinetic Typography
I appreciated this reading because I had never considered kinetic typography as its own medium, but it’s clear from this reading that it has its own ways of communicating meaning that are worth analyzing. Pictorialization as discussed in this reading relates strongly to McCloud’s idea of the Big Triangle, specifically the axis between reality and pure meaning. By mixing pictures with letter forms and making the text move in ways similar to things we can recognize in the real word, we are shifting text left on the triangle. This opens up a whole world of possibilities, as once text is free to move around the triangle it can also be moved upwards to be closer to the picture plane and be more abstracted for its own sake. The simple act of pictorialization allows artists to flood in and explore the opportunities inherent in kinetic typography. Informalization can be connected to the reading we did on morphic semiotics, as all text inherently engages with the viewer in a certain context. Through informalization, we can change the way the reader interacts with the text and their mental representation of it, opening the doors to brand new ways of thinking. Emotivization can be connected back to the section of the McCloud reading on synaesthetics, representing the other senses through image. Through emotivization, kinetic typography can invoke an array of meanings far beyond what text can do alone. Dynamicization is also the most similar to McCloud’s idea of completion, but while comics can invoke movement between frames, kinetic typography actually can move, allowing it to communicate more through its motion. A grammar of kinetic design can allow new venues for creativity as it allows for the construction of additional meaning by combining different elements, as opposed to the current lexese where the items can only represent meaning individually.