What Is Graphic Design Part 2 - Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience

I noticed someone use this image in their 'No News is Good News' brief and found it a really interesting design. This is not the perfect picture of the logo... but it's an incredibly clever image you have to look at more than once to really understand the meaning. Some people see an arm first, some people a pair of legs... but combined brings a sinister image... very crude, but a perfect way of depicting child abuse.







This image is playing with symbols known world-wide. Immediately you know that the symbol standing up depicts a woman... and the one on the floor is a man. You can then tell exactly what this ironic image is showing, a stereotypical view of marriage.
It really interests me how these symbols can be manipulated to form almost any meaning, and the mind will decifer a meaning, without any text whatsoever.







'Droppin' bombs'
This image... once again, even without the use of text, clearly communicates it's message (however crude).





I found this image really clever... It's playing with widely-known symbols by people who use both PC's and Macs. When an image (always irritatingly) cannot be shown due to an error... a small red cross appears somewhere. The designers of this have played with people's irritation with this... and turned it into a photograph, removing the head and replacing it with a red cross... and, where you would expect to see a design on the t-shirt, again. It is immediately recognizable.







I loved this image when i first saw it, it really made me laugh. Once again, it's playing with people world-wide being able to decifer these simple images and relate them to real-life situations. Immediately we can see that whatever is being depicted by the people icons, is forbidden by the red slash through the middle.





'Love Sign'
Once again, an example of a widely known symbol, simply put in a context where you wouldn't usually find it... I think I like the composition of the photograph more than anything, but the heart symbol, a metonym for love has been cleverly put on the sign, in front of a little dirt track into the horizon. A really nice idea, who would'nt want to find love at the end of a sign-posted road. How easy!






'Header' Johnny Vulkan
OK, I don't immediately know what this is trying to depict... "if you go in there, you'll lose your head'? "there is someone with no head in there"? "go in the door and you'll lose your mind"? there are so many different ways to interpret it... I simply liked this image, as it plays with a symbol we know (men's toilet) into something we can't quite get our head around... a simple way of making us think...





'Band Aid - India' campaign
This image is incredibly simple, but also incredibly effective in it's delivery method. The symbol which is clearly the focus-point of the image, is immediately recognizable as the 'peace' sign and it has been created by using platers (or band-aids).... Without reading about it I had a clear idea what the image meant... and what it's use was.






'The World is in Our Hands'
I'm sure lots of people will use this as an example... but I think it's really clever and equally effective. A simple image of blue and green, painted onto a pair of hands... to create a sphere... is immediately recognized by the brain as The Earth. It's incredible.






Again, playing with our decifering of the colours used, this is instantly recognizable as being a metonym for the earth... and warning us that it is fragile, it can break... and it will be disastrous when it does. It is using the same kind of message as the previous image, but using an object which we associate with weakness to show the world... scary in some ways.
It's a really clever use of colour, bold and bright, to add impact to the message.