Metonyms, Metaphors, and Blending

I’ve always been fascinated by metonymy, and I thought this reading had a good analysis of how it showed up in the various comic strips in this ad campaign. I wish it had spent more time on what metonymy accomplishes in visual design, rather than only talking about how it was used. If I had to say myself, metonymy allows the designer to refer to a larger concept or group that might otherwise be hard to depict visually, enabling clearer design that’s still referring to things people care about. In addition, I think that forcing the viewer to make the connection of what the metonym is forces them to be more connected to the design and may even make them feel clever or excited once they make the connection. Conceptual metaphors apply in much the same way, and are very effective when used properly. Here, rather than strictly referring to an object, a conceptual metaphor enables the mapping of concepts and big ideas onto these short panels, allowing viewers to extract more meaning out of a limited space and again generalize what the comic is saying, but with something more idea oriented rather than referring to a specific object. Blending isn’t a concept I’ve heard about before, but I think it’s an interesting framework for analysis, as it enables analysis of both the original frame and whatever new concept is being referred to at the same time, rather than only trying to figure out the meaning that the designer may be trying to map. I think the image below is interesting to analyze because a good analysis of it should use some of these concepts. Here, the metonym of the hand shape refers to the entire body, and even more broadly, the millions of bodies of hungry children. The blending here is done by the design of the fork itself, which is still functionally a fork but resembles an outstretched hand and thus evokes both food and donation at the same time. It is only in this blended space that having this object refer to World Food Day makes sense, as its an event specifically to bring awareness to world hunger, and thus referring to only charity or food more broadly would miss the meaning and potentially be inconsiderate.