Week 4.1 Reading Commentary

Phantasmal Media

Harrell describes how different representations can be used to convey meaning in a computing systems. I found it interesting how he defined iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs. Iconic signs bear direct resemblance to the actual scenario/object it is representing while indexical signs represent causal or physical relationships, and symbolic signs do not bear resemblance to the original object at all, instead using text and symbols to represent the same meaning. His examples of various traffic signs made me think of how interchangeable iconic/indexical/symbolic signs are—I see all three types of signs in my everyday life but never stopped to distinguish between the three since they all communicate their meaning effectively. Since there are also signs that use combinations of these methods (iconic sign with text underneath, etc.), it made me wonder what combination is most effective for fast communication and if there have been any psychology studies done to measure this.

Gestalt Psychology

I’ve learned about Gestalt principles in my psychology class before, so it was fun to revisit them in the context of visual design. I particularly liked the examples the website showed for Law of Figure/Ground. The description about figure/ground reversals creating a visual surprise made me think of the FedEx logo, and it made me wonder how many other designs also use this principle.