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The rhetoric of distance : a model of the visual narrator in design

This thesis describes the development of a model of the relationships between the designer and their visual outcome that is intended to assist the designers understanding and management of the viewer experience. To date the focus of design discourse has been towards theories of interpretation that offer methods to decode messages, one of the more significant being semiotics. The application of semiotic theory to the field of design has enabled a greater understanding of how meaning is produced in visual communication, it does not account for how the designer affects the type of engagement the viewer has with the material which is a significant aspect of the communication process. The aim of this research is to develop a model of the design/visual outcome relationship that will assist designer’s management of viewer experience. To develop this model, the author examined literary theory as it is a discourse that has analysed its own creative process extensively. While there are many useful parallels that can be drawn between design and literary discourses, it is the notion of distance that is the most useful for this research. Through modifying the textual devices used by an author to create these varying distances, a model that identifies four types of visual narrators was developed – Idiosyncratic, Implicit, Imperative and Esoteric. This research demonstrates the effectiveness of the design concept of distance as a method of analysis for design and proposes how the designers might adopt distance method for considering the viewer experience during the design process, as opposed to leaving it to semioticians to critique post-publication / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Design)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/182363
Date January 2003
CreatorsSweetapple, Kate, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, School of Contemporary Arts
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
SourceTHESIS_CAESS_CAR_Sweetapple_K.xml

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