1,721,713 research outputs found
"The ‘other’ Europeans: the semiotic imperative of style in Euro Visions by Magnum Photos"
No full textIn this article, the author examines Euro Visions, the exhibition created by Magnum Photos to portray the new countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007. She begins by observing that this project's deviations from the world-leading agency's trademark humanist style of photography were discursively ascribed to Euro Visions photographers' authorial style. In this regard, she identifies two key semiotic resources - typing and juxtaposition - that were mobilized as markers of individual style. She then argues that both typing and juxtaposition should instead be seen as generic semiotic resources rooted in corporate styles of visual communication, which contribute to othering the 'new' Europeans. She also argues that in Euro Visions, the notion of 'distinctive' authorial style was deployed as symbolic currency for a global(ist) market that rewards cultural production and, broadly, aestheticization. She finally posits that, in projects like Euro Visions, what is mostly (generic) design may get passed off as (specific) representation, and that this aestheticization of styles and identities may be mystified as the substantial honouring of difference and diversity
"Theoretical advances in critical visual analysis: Perception, ideology, mythologies and social semiotics"
No full textThis article discusses how social semiotics is contributing to advancing the field of critical visual analysis. First, the article introduces social semiotics as a discipline, by outlining its theoretical foundations, methodological principles, and scholarly agenda. Second, it discusses how established paradigms such as semiotics, iconography, and cultural studies have approached notions such as meaning and ideology in relation to visual signification. Third, it discusses the distinctive nature of the social semiotic approach to ideology in visual analysis. The article finally argues that the critical ends of social semiotics can benefit greatly from a closer - critical and political - reading of Barthes' Mythologies (1970/1990) as well as an increased concern with the role of perception in visual signification
"Generiche differenze: La comunicazione visiva della soggettività lesbica nell’archivio fotografico Getty Images"
No full textThis article offers a critical analysis of stock photographs aimed at generically representing lesbians for a variety of communicative contexts. In particular, the article examines issues such as embodiment, sexualization and discursive constructions of individual and relational identities. This research combines a qualitative content analysis of 1500 stock photos from the global corporate image bank Getty Images with in-depth interviews with some of the photographers directly involved in the production of images associated with the tag «lesbian». What emerges from this concurrent evaluation of key semiotic and social dimensions of stock photography is a complex approach to the visual communication of «generic» lesbian subjectivities. On one hand, there is an increasing visibility of non-standardized forms of lesbian embodiment and sexualization. On the other hand, as a visual concept «lesbian» is most often communicated in a homonormative manner, by means of association with conservative relational modes (e.g. the married couple) and neoliberal lifestyles
"Fra abiezione e stilizzazione: Corpi femminili, corpi lesbici e corpi queer nella comunicazione visiva globale"
No full textSince the 1970s, feminist and LGBT scholarship has extensively focused on the impact that advertising, television and film have on the standardization and objectification of the female and lesbian body. However, little attention has been given to the images produced in global(izing) communication industries such as branding and stock photography. Brands and stock photographs alike may seem to be more invisible, although and perhaps because they are in fact much more pervasive than “traditional” media images. These images originate from major centers of post-industrial capitalist power and are used and consumed by multiple actors, ranging from communication professionals to ordinary consumers. In this article, I offer an in-depth critical reading of some key communication resources of two global corporations: the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks and the world-leading provider of stock photography Getty Images. First, I examine some of the key branding strategies used by Starbucks, with a specific focus on the deployment of the female body in the mermaid logo. Second, I examine Getty photographs aimed at representing lesbian subjectivities for a variety of uses. The differences that set us apart, or the eccentricities of our bodies, are increasingly exploited in globalizing contexts that require differentiation and distinction, though within the rigid structures that underlie the economic, political and cultural marketplaces of contemporaneity. For this reason, in my analysis I also and foremost focus on the visual treatment of key “abject” or “queer” features that characterize images produced both by Starbucks and Getty. In this way, I ultimately highlight some of the dynamics that underlie the coding of differences, rather than the homogenization of discursive practices in contemporary communication
Review of Landscapes of Capital: Representing Time, Space, and Globalization in Corporate Advertising (by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson)
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Communicating the “world-class” city: a visual-material approach
Full text linkIn this article, I demonstrate my visual-material approach to researching the urban built environment as a medium of communication in its own right. Specifically, I discuss my research on second-tier cities with “world-class” aspirations, which highlights the significance of both symbolic and material resources in processes of urban regeneration and redevelopment. A visual-material approach draws not only from social semiotics and multimodality, but also from critical and material rhetoric to engage with the ways in which increasingly widespread “formats” of urban regeneration and redevelopment are mobilized to transform the urban built environment in the service of a globally appealing aesthetic. In doing so, this is also an approach that illuminates the dialectical relationship between cities’ perceived necessity to appear competitive on a heavily mediatized global stage and to intervene on their landscape in ways that mediate the everyday lives of urban communities in lasting ways
"All Tögethé® now: The recontextualization of corporate branding and the stylization of diversity in EU public communication"
No full textThis article examines the EU Birthday Logo Competition, which was launched jointly by the major European Union (EU) institutions to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome in 2007. As the first public communication initiative by the European Commission's newly restructured Directorate General for Communication, the logo competition is a particularly rich micro-textual “site” for a critical investigation of the recontextualization of corporate communication discourses and practices into institutional approaches to the communication of EU identity. Through an analysis of policy documents, on-site observations, textual artifacts, and in-depth interviews with policy-makers and design professionals I argue that the tensions and challenges that characterized the EU Birthday Logo Competition and related EU communication policy as a site of recontextualization may have led to the communication of a much more stylized, rather than complex and nuanced, version of European identity. In particular, I argue that the dialectic between the “professional/corporate” and “institutional/political” cultures that interacted in the selection, production and implementation of the anniversary logo may have contributed to obscuring key principles of corporate branding at work in the design, and may have in fact worked to produce a highly generic, decontextualized and ultimately also bland, although certainly problematic, “vision” of EU diversity
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