POSTER TEXT – Attraction/stimulus

Its important for any designer to know what gets attention and how to use it for any type of work. The aim of most design is to get noticed and attract attention, and if it cant do that, it has failed especially in advertising. When looking at visual language in public spaces it is vital that this is understood by the designer on how to get to through to an audience.

Attraction

Attracting attraction may be composed of three main elements, namely unusual, emotionally salient and involuntary neuro-biological stimulus.

Involuntary biological stimulus can be counted as things that make us react in particular ways that we cannot control because our inbuilt instincts. The stimuli may include sound, image, physical objects, all of which will make us react in particular ways, to either engage us with it or change our attention.

In our current days, we are overwhelmed with all kinds of stimulus everywhere we go, a lot of which is produced by people, for attracting and convincing people of particular messages. Most of this we see from Advertisements.

“The purpose of advertising is to convince people that products are of use to them in one way or another. If people agree, they will buy them. However, advertising must do its job very quickly; it doesn’t have the time or the space to go into detail or explanations.” - Richard F. Taflinger, PhD -1996

Visual stimulus

Visual stimulus, is the most effective way of attracting peoples attention. As humans we are more receptive to visuals as, we have a much greater “Visual Memory” then we do for the stimuli areas. (Whitfield - 2008)

“For one, Advertising uses a lot of Sex, as it is the second strongest of the psychological appeals. 1^st is self-preservation. Its strength is biological and instinctive, the genetic imperative of reproduction.”
- Richard F. Taflinger, PhD -1996

This may fall under methods of advertising, which use arousal as a means of gaining attention towards an advertisement. This can be done in few ways. Some examples are

1• The display of attractive people, desired objects.

2• The use of colour, and shapes

Within each element there is reaction: “stimulus=reaction” - Ranulfo Romo & Emilio Salinas – 1999

 

There is apart of our brains called the Aymgdala, which is the central system of decision making, mostly in response to fear and what will be harmful to us. In other words, it is the part of our brains that make decisions for us, and reacts before we do.

 

In terms of looking at advertising, the brain also makes decisions quickly on how an ad is viewed.

If there is something within the ad that imposes any kind of threat, even on a deep subconscious level, bias can be formed, often turning the ads message against its self.  - Bar, Moshe, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colour

Colour also plays a major influence on our judgment. Colour can manipulate perception on a range of levels, such as scale, form, taste.

Some preferences of colours are due to the upbringing of cultural learning, as well as sex and age. In the way of advertising, it is important to know what colours will attract your audience.

This can also be affected by whats known as “optimal stimulation level” which involves different groups of people and their (sensation seeking) needs. (Marie-Christine Lichtlé 2007)

People who may have a high sensation need will react strongly to vivid and colourful image.
Eg:• Young people prefer warm / vibrant colours and visuals such as red, yellow or orange.

Warm colours are more stimulating which marketers will often use to create arousal hence advancing attention drawn to advertising using sound, colours, rapid moving images.

Cooler colours are less stimulating which would be more attractive to people that don’t seek stimulation as much.

Eg: Older people prefer cool / calmer colours such as blue and green.

 

References

 Marie-Christine Lichtlé – The effect of an advertisement’s colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad, – International Journal of Advertising 2007, Vol. 26 Issue 1, p37-6  - EBSCOhost database Communication & Mass Media – Viewed 2 April 2008

Tamara Deswart -01.27.2007: Colours play a role in our emotions.
Viewed 3 April 2008

http://www.tamaranda.com/documents/33.html

Bar, Moshe, 2007 – TO GET INSIDE THEIR MINDS, LEARN HOW THEIR MINDS WORK. – Advertising Age; 11/26/2007, Vol. 78 Issue 47, p16-17, 2p – EBSCOhost database – Communication & Mass Media Complete – viewed 6 April 2008

Petronio A. Bendito, Aspects of Visual Attraction: Attention-Getting Model for Art and Design, Journal of Visual Literacy, Spring 2005 ,Volume 25, Number 1 67-76, EBSCOhost database Communication & Mass Media Complete, item: AN 17604476

Leone, Christopher, D’Arienzo, Justin, Dec2000 - Sensation-Seeking and Differentially Arousing Television Commercials. – Journal of Social Psychology;, Vol. 140 Issue 6, p710-720, 11p – Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection – viewed 6 April

Richard F. Taflinger, PhD -1996 – Taking ADvantage
You and Me, Babe: Sex and Advertising – viewed 19 April 2008 – http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/sex.html

Activity and reactivity – Ranulfo Romo & Emilio Salinas – 1999
Sensing and deciding in the somatosensory system
Current Opinion in Neurobilogy, 9: 487-493 – viewed 12 April 2008
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:4NR02z2cRcEJ:www.lce.hut.fi/teaching/S-114.4762/ActReact1.ppt+involuntary+neurobiological+stimulus.&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&client=safari

Alan Whitfield – 2008, National Institute of Design Research
Lecture: The hunter gatherer brain, viewed 31 March

Brands and cults – the persuaders continued

Brands and cults – the persuaders continued

“Find out why people follow cults, then apply it to your brand”

Its was also discussed in this video the following of brands, and brand loyalty due to branding. It just happened to be someone’s idea to investigate into the reason why people follow cults, being little sub groups of people that follow particular ideas or fashions. Some of these cults may be for example: Punk rock cults, or religious cults. For the same reasons that people may follow cults, people may also follow “a brand”. By making your brand in the same light as a cult, it may develop certain brand loyalties based around it.

In terms of the commercial world of products and advertising, the cults would be loyal to the “NIKE” brand or the “PESPI” brand. “Joining a cult is just like joining a brand”.

But this isn’t the only thing that will get peoples attention and loyalty to a brand.

Now emotions have to be attached to all of these products, for it to have any attraction to us, or at least, what marketers are using in order to appeal to us.

Things need to be “Inspiring, or Magical”, someway to connect to the consumers appeals, is through the heart, to make people feel better about what they are about to buy or become involved in.

Someone in this Video also mentioned the Idea of something called a”LOVE MARK” which is like an iconic place that you can relate to with particular products. The product has some connection to be able to reach into your heart: that you can build story’s from using the product, you can share it with you loved one’s, It reminds you of home… and so on.

But then again, how much needing to be “INSPIRED” can we actually take. The first time someone would have tried this would have seemed like a massive move for advertising, when actually emotionally connecting to people, then come all the other EPIC campaigns, and everything becomes the same. INSPIRATION is no loner relevant to the consumer and what they think they will be able to get our of the product, as in the long run “the shoes aren’t going to make you feel loved….. its just a shoe”.

 

“once a culture becomes entirely advertising friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all”

 

“Something that once moved you in theatre, music – is now used to sell Pepsi – Nike”

 

Technology

As technology changes, so will the strength and power of advertising. A lot of our advertisement viewing is at home in front of the TV set, where we aren’t moving back and forth from work or home, we probably take it in most in this time.

But now that technology has advanced so much, TV is changing where people can skip ads altogether and only just watch their programs. Advertising agencies spend millions of dollars on campaign that are effectively working less then they may have before.

If you can’t make advertisements that people wont see, then what can you do? PLACE THE BLOODY THINGS IN THEIR PROGRAMS”. Product placement is something that’s used a lot in TV, such as fashion shows “Queer eye for a straight guy” where fashionable brands are constantly mentioned. Movies do this a lot as well, if you ever notice a MAC APPLE logo panned whilst in a scene with the actor talking away.

Other Movies that almost base their whole theme around a brand could be:

• I AM SAM – starbucks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Cast away – Fed ex express

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://30gms.com/images/uploads/CastAway_2000_39_001.sized_thumb.jpg

The Persuaders

In terms of the kinds of research I am looking at currently “advertising and it’s effectiveness”. I was given a suggested title to view called “The Persuaders” when my group had discussed our research topics to our lecturers. The video discusses views on persuasion from mass media to the general public. It asks the question “Is our society too overloaded with advertising”? Everywhere we look, in elevators, up in the sky with sky writing, on buses, in golf holes at the golf course, IS THERE NO END to the mass spread of media and advertising? There is virtually no escape.

This problem of mass media and its sheer scale, with the amount of messages out there on every possible advertising medium trying to reach us, its seems now that the media and marketable space is running out, things don’t get our attention as they once did. Sure when the first bill board had been erected, no one would have seen anything of such scale before, hence getting all the attention. Marketers then took advantage of this by competing and putting up there own billboards. Eventually there are hundreds of these things around, are they so interesting now?

“The more messages advertisers create, the more they have to create to reach us”

Its just a vicious circle of clutter, when an advertising firm claims that they can 

“break through the clutter”, if you think about it, all they are doing is just adding to the clutter.

 

Research

For every advertisement and campaign, there is a lot of research involved into who the advertisement is going to be used for. In order to do this, the marketers must know exactly what the target audience will be attracted to.

Focus groups, surveys, field research, anything that will accumulate enough information to be able to describe who the target audience is. Once this research is conducted, the best way to understand exactly who the target audience is, is to actually make a (made up) physical profile of a user, their wants/needs/desires are.

Most of the time though, not enough care actually goes into where these ads are going and who they are targeting. “Ads are made for the people who are making it, not for the people who are the consumers. They are often made and used to build peoples port-folios or to make more money, or to get a better job, NOT for the consumers”.

 

Advertising Techniques

 

An old technique that was used, in almost every advertisement, was to use these BUZZ words that were constantly HAMMERED into our brains. The aim of ads were to try and out do others by using these words. The product always had to be “BRIGHTER, CLEANER, SMOOTHER, CRISPER”, anything to persuade us that it was better then another product, but then you hear it too much, and these words then become meaningless. HOW CAN ANY PRODUCT BE BETTER THEN ANOTHER?

 

Now, its not just about what the product did/does, but what it means to the consumer.

They call this “sudo-spiritual” marketing.

Example of this can be seen in NIKES marketing, depicting transcendence of spirit through sport.

 

http://www.adrants.com/images/TSA%20ESPNMag%2010-22_Running_2.jpg

 

 

Or even the STARBUCKS campaign and idea, that it didn’t need to be just another coffee shop, it became “a third place” as a communal meeting place that wasn’t work or home.

http://thomashawk.com/hello/209/1017/1024/Night%20Starbucks.jpg

ITS ABOUT THE INNER BRAND MEANING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING INTO THEIR MINDS

GETTING INTO THEIR MINDS

As a communication designer, its one main important thing that I will have learn is how to get into the minds of the people I am designing for. If I cant do this, then my designs will fail, and all the efforts put into designing this great object or visual, will be put to waste, as the people that I intended the message or object for, will either be completely misunderstood, or will be completely useless to them.

Being able to get someone’s attention is one thing, but to communicate the physical message is the other problem. There must be a balance not to out weigh the other. You can scream at people with fluro, crazy shapes, that may be ignored due to the fact that the information is un-interpretable. You can also provide an important message through bland imagery, which no-one would even bother to look at – the other extreme.

 

I have found some interesting articles that describe why certain things get our attention, and what may ward us away, based from our instinctual thoughts and reactions.

 

The effects of observation

We know as the most basic feeling, that colours can effect the moods we are in. Colours can change the perception and size, scale of a room. Can change the idea of weight looking at an object. But colour is only one part, being mostly applied as a flat medium, like paint on walls, or the colour of a leaf. Shape is also a crucial aspect that can effect the way we look at thing.

From previous research, I looked at how looking at certain drawn shapes on a page can evoke specific feelings and thoughts. How looking at a Sharp object, we somehow will form in our head, to verbally describe the shape, would be using hard sounding words like “Shaki” or “TAZIP” (made up words for example). Where if we had a rounded shape – we could name it, just by looking at it, using soft sounding words like “mibble or dome”. The same works with actual physical objects.

Relating to lecture I had attended “the hunter gatherer brain” – (see lecture visualisations) talked about how the brain has a section called the “amygdala”, which is the “fear centre” for our brain, where it acts as a danger sensing guard, for the use of survival. The brain can make decisions at tremendous speed, whether something is good or bad, will it hurt us, will it eat us, or can we eat it, or can we mate with it. The Amygdala basically makes decisions before we do, forming a particular way of thinking to the object, obstacle, visual we have seen.

In Advertising, it is important to know how the target will think and react, as you don’t want your audience to react badly to something your going to be spending allot of money on.

 

 

An example of this is in this excerpt from an article

 

TO GET INSIDE THEIR MINDS, LEARN HOW THEIR MINDS WORK.

Bar, Moshe, Advertising Age; 11/26/2007, Vol. 78 Issue 47, p16-17, 2p

 

A few years ago, Taco Bell had billboards that depicted the arm of a man holding a taco. I didn’t mind Taco Bell as a fast-food option, but, oddly, I found this ad exceptionally aversive. I tried to figure out why.

One day I was driving and about to merge with traffic, just ahead of an approaching bus. Glancing very briefly to the left and then to the right, my impression was that the bus carried an ad depicting a cobra snake ready to bite. So I looked again and noticed it was the Taco Bell ad. My brain interpreted the configuration of the arm with the taco as a snake. Why?

It was a case of unconscious perception: Visual elements in the picture influenced my impression about it unconsciously, leaving me with a negative attitude toward the ad.

When we form our opinions, we do it extremely quickly, and once we have, it is very hard to change our impression, sometimes in the face of contradictory facts.

 

Here’s another example. By now we are all familiar with internet sites that force you to watch preroll spots. Most of us get somewhat annoyed by such pervasive advertising. Cognitive psychology experiments have shown that when people have to ignore a stimulus on the way to achieving another goal, not only do they get annoyed, they end up really disliking the distraction. And this disliking is very specific to that stimulus.

So, if I am interested in the latest Red Sox score, but am forced to watch a commercial for a new merlot first, chances are that I will develop an aversion to that very brand of merlot, which will create for the advertiser the opposite effect of what was intended. Or imagine a fashion retailer that would like to modify its conservative image. If we scientists have behavioral methods that we believe could modify the associations elicited in post-traumatic stress, changing associations in a retailer’s reputation should be a walk in the park in comparison, using exactly the same principles.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••• end excerpt ••••••••••••••••••••••••••

 

In short: My notes on it

• Ads and attraction depend on the human, natural responses (instinct)
eg: Looking at sharp edges make people “fearful” of the object, humans prefer “soft looking objects”

• The amygdala is apart of our brain that makes decisions very quickly, in fact, acts before we do.
Its acts out of survival, if something is good, or if something is bad.
Eg: Taco bill ad, hand being seen as a snakes head (unconsciously), from fast thinking.
From this, bad thoughts are created for the ad.

• Also, Quick reactions to things will also form bias in the brain. If we have to avoid something before looking at something we want to see, we will get annoyed quickly and instantly have bad feeling toward the ad that seen. (also possibly connected to the previous article – People with high stimulation levels – are constantly trying to find something else to stimulate them (stimulation seekers).

 

 

 

Visual Attraction

Visual Attraction / Stimulation Levels.

Elaborating more on the found article “The effect of an advertisement’s  colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad” – looking more in-depth into the psychological understanding, it expresses facts of how different kinds of people react differently to varying forms of visual stimulus.

What I also had found interesting in this article is the effects of colours and peoples reaction to colours in common advertisements.

Colour influences many aspects of human perception. Colour effects our moods, scale and sizes of objects, even the tastes food. – Marie-Christine Lichtlé,IAE de Dijon – (Bevan & Dukes 1953), (Warden & Flynn 1926), (Tinker 1938) (Ough & Amerine 1970; Tom et al.1987).

Physiological reactions: various studies have suggested that ‘warm’colours (red, yellow, orange) are physiologically stimulating, in contrast to ‘cold’ ones such as blue and green – Marie-Christine

Using colours will provoke certain moods in us that either attract us towards an object or ward us off.

Allot of advertising uses arousal as a means to attract peoples attention by using certain colours. – warm colours are said to be more stimulating than cooler colours.

 

 

(OUT) there and (In) there.

In terms of those introverts and extroverts I had spoken about before, these reactions can be measured by something known as “the optimal stimulation level”. A person OSL has its contribution to what may be seen by a person.

Individuals with high OSLs seek stimulation (extroverts), while those with low OSLs avoid it – (introverts) – Marie-Christine.

But this may also change within the person as experience changes there views within each environment.

I have found more information related to this which backs up these theory’s.

“The central nervous systems of persons high in sensation-seeking are thought to be especially accessible to stimuli. When initially presented with a stimulus, such persons react strongly. However, habituation sets in quickly, and they look elsewhere for renewed arousal. The central nervous systems of persons low in sensation-seeking are thought to be less accessible to stimuli” –

Sensation-Seeking and Differentially Arousing Television Commercials. –

Journal of Social Psychology; Dec2000, Vol. 140 Issue 6, p710-720, 11p –

Leone, Christopher, D’Arienzo, Justin.

In other words – “sensation seeking” people are highly reactive to high arousal – stimuli / visuals, but these people also tend to have short attention spans. (younger people)

People with Low OSL, have no need to seek vivid imagery (older people).

 

(I hope to find some imagery to give you an example, and hopefully to give you a better idea…. of what the bloody hell I’m on about.)

2nd Group – Research

From the previous group work – i had been researching general information on language. Most of information that i had stubbled upon and found most interesting for myself was about sound symbolism and onomatopoeia. With the use of sound symbolism, we were also looking at what possible forms of language could be communicated and understood. The Sounds and tones of words in a way could be partially understood by others who wouldn’t understand a given spoken language, as you can normally tell when someone is speaking to you calmly or in anger. Even with onomatopoeia, the interpretation of sounds into words, when spoken in a different language, with the context of a visual or comic/illustrated word, some meaning can still remain intact when being translated into other languages.

Now i have branched off with my new group to explore the visual form of language. With my own personal research, I found interest in what forms of visuals that may be universal in the ways of emotions portrayed and messages intended.

My thought on this would be to look at “colour”. I thought that, colour is something used in every culture to give meaning to everyday things and life.

But then again, even colour has different meanings to different cultures.

Here are some examples from what I have researched on this topic so far.

 

Colour Response

Black

Black is the color of authority and power.

In the west, the colour represents death and mourning, where as in the eastern country’s, it is used as a colour for beginning, to dress boys for the signification of their maturing and manhood. White on the other hand, the meanings are swapped again between the two wide cultures.

Red

In China this colour is used in many cultural ceremonies that range from weddings to funerals. When red in Eastern culture is combined with white, it signifies joy.

Western culture uses it for events such as Christmas and Valentines day, perhaps conveying similar meanings of joy and happiness as the eastern cultures do.

Red is considered stimulating; it is the colour of joy and childhood, but also that of blood, war and fire.

Colour also fulfils a role in representing cosmic, ethical and religious symbols.

This is a table I found which holds more information about it.

 

 image referenced from: http://www.versacreative.com.au/vault/inside_design/colour_symbolism.htm

I have also found research on the effects of colour on people, and the emotional effects that is left with people once experienced.

Some preferences of colours are due to the upbringing of cultural learning, as well as sex and age. In the way of advertising, it is important to know what colours will attract your audience. A good example of this is from an article I found

 

 “The effect of an advertisement’s  colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad” -Marie-Christine Lichtlé, IAE de Dijon (University of Burgundy) 

 

 Colour and Response

• Young people prefer warm / vibrant colours and visuals such as red, yellow or orange. (Guilford & Smith 1959),

• Older people prefer cool / calmer colours such as blue and green (Child et al. 1968; Benson et al. 2000).
Also included in this understanding of colours and preference comes personality traits.

For example.
• Its suggested that extroverts (are gregarious, assertive, and generally seek out excitement – wikipedia) prefer warm colours.
• On the contrary, Introverts (Introverts, in contrast, are more reserved, less outgoing, and less sociable – wikipedia) more attracted to cold colours.

(Marie-Christine Lichtlé,IAE de Dijon (University of Burgundy))

Group Post”a” submission

The Poster My group had submitted, which visually describes our research, from Historical reference, to Onomatopoeia, body language and semiotics. Through its presentation of columns, links have been drawn as attempts to connect the images that may relate to one another in terms of their meaning and communication.    

Poster Visual Research and Analysis

As apart of my visual research into Onomatopoeia, i have also briefly looked into other fields, such as symbolism and semiotics. Although onomatopoeia only seems relevant in terms of the relevance to the mimicking of a sounds and it’s relative object, it’s a from of sound symbolism that is used in many languages. If such visual descriptions or even the sound were repeated in another language, perhaps the idea or partial meaning can still be intact once translated.

In this way, the use of Onomatopoeia may contain attributes that can be understood universally. Even through the use of Symbols, although the reading and understanding of symbols may be something that us learnt within your cultural origins, sub-consciously, meaning can be withdrawn and at least partially understood.

The examples of semiotics that I have looked at “under my current impressions, as its still a new topic to research”, the use of words with the attachments of a visual impression, creates a dynamic that may change the “interpretation” of the word, or visually spoken voice. Much like the previous examples of Onomatopoeia, the written form of the sound with a visual impression attached to it, creates the dynamic to form a “mental sound” by the interpreter.

As for the “go to hell” baby, I thought this was an interesting combination of visuals and text as one element has an effect to change the other, in terms of the idea that’s formed when viewing the two aspects. Seeing that phrase on a “bikies” jacket for instance would create an appropriate message. Seeing a baby by itself create certain emotions and ideas, where the addition of the phrase changes the message altogether.

Perhaps, when one form has been taken out of its original context and then placed into a different environment, the message can easily be manipulated.  

  

 

 

Research Summery

Sound Symbolism summery

 

Sound Symbolism:

 

Sound symbolism or phonosemantics is a branch of linguistics which refers to the idea that vocal sounds have meaning. In particular, sound symbolism is the idea that written representations of sounds carry meaning in and of themselves. (1)

One example of this is “Onomatopoeia” using words such as “WHAM, BANG, WHOOSH” to enhance the description of an action. As used in many languages “Onomatopoeic words can seem to have a tenuous relationship with the object they describe” (2), but perhaps only understood by the native speaker of the language as variations of the same sound may differ juristically in others when translated.

An example of this can be given in the sound a dog makes:

(2)

Bow wow – English

Wau Wau – German

Uau Uau – Interlingua

Vov viv – Danish

 

There are also theory’s behind the use of “sound words”  that could relate back to primitive humanist communication as from where our first spoken words had come from.

“This hypothesis places the origin of human language in onomatopoeia: the various imitative sounds that humans make to mimic the sounds of the world around them” (3)As well as the idea that, humans may have also learnt to speak from mimicking the sounds of other animals”(3)

‘”Size” is the immediate meaning projected by the pitch of voice but the ultimate meanings, by association, are undoubtedly much wider. Low pitch probably means not only “large” but also aggressive, assertive, self-confident, dominant, self-sufficient, etc. The meaning of high pitch in addition to small is non threatening, submissive, subordinate, in need of the receiver’s cooperation and good will’ (4) – Ohala cites many languages to support his position. Furthermore, he argues that animals also use pitch variations in the same way that humans do (4) 

However, there is more to the meaning of sounds and relationships to their physical partners then just the plain mimicry of them.

Although many linguists have said that sound and meaning are arbitrary

“Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) “the sign is arbitrary, the words that we use to indicate things and concepts could be any words – they are essentially just a consensus agreed upon by the speakers of a language and have no discernible pattern or relationship to the thing. Thus, the sounds themselves have no linguistic meaning.” (5)

Adjacent to this view is the use of “Phonosemantics” which describes positive relationships between sound and “ideas” or in particularly “the link between letters and ideas” (5)

Ie: In words such as “trembling, rugged, strike, crush, bruise, break, crumble and whirl” all depict the notion of movement by using the letter “R” (6)

Iconism also calls upon similar concepts, but through grouping words with similar meanings such as “stamp, stomp, tamp, tromp, tramp, step”. The (m) makes an action more forceful when placed before (p) – to compare stamp with step. The (r) then sets the word in motion – as tamp is standing still, whilst tramp is descriptive of movement (5)

This idea can also apply to the analogy of images and word associations. Certain sounds may evoke shapes and colours, and idea’s as to how a sound could be represented and vice-versa. For instance, if seeing a pointy/sharp shape, it could relate to words with hard consonants, where a round shape will evoke soft consonants. (7)

Evidence of this is shown through research and testing of names in multiple languages to fit with animals or objects with specific characteristics (7). For instance, in the language of South American, a “mezaha” is a large slow moving animal, where a “kuzikuzi” is small, fast animal.

“ah” and “ee” sounds in each of the words create the feel for slower and faster sounding things. (7)

Other testing of this can also be found in “Brand names”, where the name given to a product attaches certain attributes to it, hence creating an underlying message for the product and its attractiveness to consumers.

“Obstruents are perceived as harder and more masculine, sonorants as softer and more feminine. Consider the two name brands Clorox, a hard-working laundry product, and Chanel, a perfume”(8)

 

Some examples using non-sense names

 

* Voiceless stops (p, t, k) carry a greater connotation of

  speed than do voiced stops (b, d, g). E.g., Pavil sounds faster

  than Bavil.

 

* Voiceless stops (p, k) connote smallness better than voiced

  stops (b, g). E.g., Kortan seems smaller than Gortan.

 

* Fricatives (v, f, z, s) connote speed better than stops (b, p,

  d, t). E.g., Sarrant seems faster than Tarrant.

 

* z connotes smallness better than s. E.g., Zyndron seems more

  compact than Syndron.

 

* Voiced fricatives (v and z) connote speed better than voiceless

  fricatives (f and s). E.g., Valdon seems faster than Faldon.

 

* Dentals (d and t) connote speed better than labials (b and p).

  E.g., Taza seems faster than Paza.

 

* Stops (b, p, d) connote dependability better than fricatives (v,

  f, z, s). E.g., Bazia seems relatively more dependable than

  Vazia.

 

* d seems relatively dependable, while g seems relatively

  undependable. E.g., Damza seems more dependable than Gamza.

(8)

 

Bibliography:

 

(1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism#Phenomimes_and_psychomimes

(2)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia

(03)

http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&f=8951976686&m=300104935&r=300104935

(4)

Ohala, John J. 1983. ‘Cross-language use of pitch: an ethological view’, Phonetica, Vol. 40: 1-18.

Sound symbolic and grammatical frameworks: A typology of ideophones in Asian and African languages.

(5)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism#Phenomimes_and_psychomimes

(6)

Plato and Cratylus Dialogue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism#Phenomimes_and_psychomimes

(7)

What’s in a name? Sound symbolism… By: C.M., Science News, 00368423, 04/12/97, Vol. 151, Issue 15(8)

http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=9&sid=5992ae3a-4d73-465b-85e8-e32dc6a53684%40sessionmgr104

Sound that name. By: Cohen, Bob, Across the Board, 01471554, Nov/Dec95, Vol. 32, Issue 10

 

 

 

cre”8″ed world

Hello, My name is Shaun Bryndzia (cre8shaun) and welcome to my weblog. As this is my first blog, i should describe what the purpose of it all is. As i am studying designer doing honours, this blog will be keeping track of all the continue research that i will undertake with the subjects of Design Research Analysis, Methods and Studio.

Currently the research i am undertaking is Language, and its effects on Social Patterns. Topics my group had found interesting were based around: Onomatopoeia, which is the imitation of sounds in word form aiming to capture the same meaning during description. I was found that it is possibly a theory as to how human language evolved. The other idea we had were Body Language and investigating the general ideas of the Origin of Language.

Some very interesting things, but also, very large in scope. We aim as a group to try and capture this information in a visual way, but how will all this be helping to solve problems with current social patterns? its something thats currently in progress, so i look forward to inform you all of these findings.