Semiotics: Icon, Index, symbol blog task
Icon:
Toxic
Flammable
Nuclear
Index:
No Smoking
No drinking
No dogs
Symbol:
Snapchat
Instagram
Twitter
Icons, indexes and symbols can be interpreted in many ways. That is why putting in icons or symbols or indexes in texts whether it is online or on hard copies like newspapers, can be so important. Furthermore, sometimes people say that pictures speak louder than words, so having symbols and pictures in media texts can have a bigger impact on the reader rather than just stating your words so many companies choose to add in symbols or icons or indexes in order to get their ideas through to the audience hoping for a bigger impact.
Global brands might want to choose not to use symbols in their adverts because they want their ideas and initial thoughts to be made clear to their audience. They do not want their audience assuming ideas form their advert because they have used symbols in them.
An example of an advert that was communicated in an unintentional way is this one on the left from Nivea. This came across to people as very racist as the audience interpreted this as a way of saying that if your skin colour is white, you are pure and that any other skin colour is dirty. This is an example of symbols as the letters of the alphabets are used to form sentences which was interpreted this way by the people who saw this advert. To expand on their advert, they posted a tweet with this image saying 'Keep it clean, keep bright. Don't let anything ruin it, #invisible' which was left with quite a 'few' negative comments to them.
The above is a link to one of googles adverts. It relays the message on how much we depend on google to find out information. Day in day out, people search on google for how to do this or how to do that or what is this or that etc. When you usually use google, you never really think about how much you depend on google to find out what you want. When you watch this advert, you come to realise that you really do spend alot of time just on google searching for stuff you are curious about and it makes you feel relieved that google is there for you. To some people, it finally makes them feel thankful that google exists as they rely on it so much. The use of symbols are used in this advert and through these words, it creates an impact to the audience. This is how much power symbols can have on people.
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