What influence does modern artistic style have on symbols and shapes?

In 1960s, graphic design in the modern sense began to mature and perfect, and the development of modern art, technology and science had a great influence on graphic design. On the one hand, the research and development of semiotics provide theoretical guarantee for graphic design. It is because of its existence that the information transmission of graphic design is more scientific and accurate. On the other hand, the modern art movement has injected fresh blood into graphic design and greatly enriched the concept and form of graphic design. Graphic design absorbs the expression thoughts, ideologies and skills of modern art, making it a new, most powerful and effective visual expression language.

I. Graphics and symbols

Symbol is the visual information that uses certain media to express or indicate something. Semiotics refers to some theoretical principles that study symbols and how people understand words, sounds or graphics. Symbols in a narrow sense refer to symbols other than language, while symbols in a broad sense refer to all things with symbolic meaning and functions, such as language, expressions, body movements, etiquette and other means and ways of communication. Semiotics includes three branches: symbol, system and context. The famous Italian symbologist Eco put forward: "A symbol is defined as anything like this, which can be regarded as something that represents other things according to established social habits." The purpose of graphic design here is to convey information by using print media. It is based on a certain symbolic principle, and it is itself a symbolic expression. The theme of the graphic, the displayed text and the elements surrounding the main object will all become part of understanding and explaining the meaning of the graphic. By analyzing the denotative meaning and connotative meaning of graphics, readers can correctly understand graphics. Designers use symbols to convey their thinking process and conclusions to the audience, and show them through their own experiences, so that the audience can finally understand the thoughts and feelings that designers want to express. This process is the selection, combination, transformation and regeneration of graphic symbols in the process of design thinking, so it must be a part of generalized language in essence. Both daily language and artistic language are symbolic phenomena, but there are obvious differences in symbolic nature between artistic language and daily language. Langer further believes: "Art is the creation of the symbolic form of human emotion."

Modern semiotics, as an independent branch discipline, was formed in the early 20th century. The origin of this subject can be said to have two sources: one is the American philosopher Cha? Sang? Pierce laid the foundation for the establishment of theoretical semiotics; The second is Saussure, who put forward semiotic research from the perspective of linguistics and focused on the social function of symbols. Later, the American symbolist Charles? Morris further divides semiotics into three sub-disciplines, in which linguistics studies the structural relationship between linguistic symbols; Semantics studies the relationship between language symbols and the objects they represent; Pragmatics studies the structural relationship between language symbols, their users and the environment. The application of semiotics in the field of design began in the field of architecture. Since the 1960s, people have paid more attention to the meaning of works, thinking that the same design (such as international style) makes the environment lose its sense of place, even if the design loses its nationality, regionalism and culture. Therefore, the semiotic method has been widely used, which has promoted the rise of post-modern architecture and strengthened people's research on architectural semantics. Semiotics emphasizes the transmission of architectural meaning in architecture, and its basic means is metaphor. For example, the image of the Sydney Opera House is reminiscent of other buildings. Charles. Jencks pointed out: "... this matching from one experience to another is the characteristic of all kinds of thinking, especially creative thinking." Symbol consists of three elements: media, reference and interpretation. Among them, the medium is used as a symbol to represent something, the reference object is the specific object represented or expressed by the symbol, and interpretation refers to the interpreter's understanding or interpretation of the symbol. These three forms a complete symbolic relationship, and they exist simultaneously. Designers successfully select, combine, transform and regenerate some elements, and become symbols that refer to their own thoughts and are recognized by the audience. This is the real formation of communication. The application of semiotics affects the expressive thinking of graphic design. Only by understanding the meaning, essence, characteristics of symbols and their relationship with graphic design can we make use of the previous research results of semiotics to make the information transmission of graphic design more scientific and accurate and the expression more colorful.

Susan. Langer divides symbols into two categories: reasoning symbols and representation symbols. Inferential symbols mainly refer to natural language, while figurative (artistic symbols) symbols mainly refer to works of art such as painting, sculpture and design. There are also various scientific symbols and logical symbols, which belong to reasoning symbols. Susan. Langer also mentioned the difference between artistic symbols and symbols in art. Symbols in art refer to the universal symbols used in them. It is a metaphor and a part of the whole artistic symbol, which has its own open or hidden practical significance. Graphic design is a visual art, its core function is concept, communication and explanation, and its purpose is to make people understand it. These characteristics can explain that graphic design is a symbol in art and a kind of coded image information, that is, an image symbol endowed with connotation. American philosopher Pierce divides symbols into icons, indexes and symbols from the relationship between graphics and the objects it refers to (that is, the things or fields it refers to), which has been widely recognized in the field of graphic theory research. These three types are a process of deepening the degree and increasing the amount of information. Graphics in the concept of graphic creativity are closely related to indicators and symbols. Macroscopically, graphic symbols mainly refer to visual symbols other than language, and the visual elements in creative graphic design are the combination of graphic symbols (or words and graphics), which are different from language symbols. Graphic symbols express the semantics of graphics through the fabric relationship of the three symbols, words understand the semantics through imagination, and images understand the artistic conception through intuition. Characters and images are contextual and complementary in design, and the relationship between them can be regarded as the cooperative relationship between two symbol systems. Graphics are different from signs, symbols and patterns. They are neither simple symbols nor simple symbols, but a form of splicing or reconstructing one or more symbolic images with specific concepts and creative methods.

Second, the influence of modern art on graphic forms and concepts.

Contemporary graphic design presents a variety of design styles, and many schools in modern art have great influence on graphic design. Many designers apply many techniques in modern art to graphic design, which greatly enriches graphic language and visual communication, and injects vitality into graphics in thought or form. Some emphasize form, some emphasize concept, and some have both, which makes graphic expression present a strong style.

After the 20th century, a series of art forms appeared in Europe and America, and all-round changes have taken place in the way of thinking, expression and creative means. One is the modern art from the beginning of this century to around World War II, and the other is the modern art since the Pop Movement (1960s). These movements have changed many traditional artistic expressions in the west, such as scientific perspective, color, anatomy and so on. Mr. Wang Shouzhi said: "Since 1900, European art has developed in two directions. One is to emphasize the individual expression of art, the true portrayal of psychology and the expression of human overall consciousness, which is influenced by Freud's experimental psychology. This is true of expressionism, surrealism and abstract expressionism developed in the United States after World War II. The other is to try to express the' real art of the new era' in form, such as Dutch cubism, constructivism,' de stijl' and the large color gamut art, reductionism and light effect art developed in the United States. In addition, some arts have both, such as Dadaism and Futurism, which form the basis of modern art (including design). " No matter emphasizing consciousness or form, these two different designs have laid a good foundation for the development of graphic design. Because the two core contents of graphic design are to express language and ideological connotation, although these modern art schools have the characteristics of the times and some art forms may have declined by now, as a practical graphic design, the styles and forms of these schools have injected extremely important nutrients into it. Other art schools, such as expressionism, supremacism, minimalism, deconstruction and conceptual art, also promoted the development of design. For example, futurism provides a highly free arrangement reference for plane layout in formal expression; Cubism emphasizes the combination of vertical and horizontal laws and the key role of rational laws in expressing "others", which lays the foundation of modern graphic design thought; Constructivism and de stijl rationally use mathematical logic to create pictures, resulting in calm, accurate and clear formal beauty; The collage combination of Dadaism emphasizes contingency, contingency and irony, and emphasizes the bold breakthrough and exploration spirit of tradition in creation; Surrealism makes good use of contradictions and conflicts, embodies the psychology of subconscious, instinct and illusion, and uses the artistic language of symbols and metaphors to inject fresh blood into graphic design in concept and creativity. Pop art strives to embody the meaning of environment, excavate the relationship between works and surrounding environment, directly borrow cultural symbols produced in commercial society, and then sublimate the theme of art from it, breaking the distinction between elegance and vulgarity of art; Light effect art graphics use optical illusion effect to cause visual stimulation and make eyes receive information. The participation of modern computer in color matching, color changing and filter makes graphics random and uncertain, which has become the new favorite of a new generation of designers.

Three. Concluding remarks

Modern graphic design has entered a new level from design creativity to expression, which can be said to keep pace with the times. Especially due to the rapid development of modern science and technology and the spread of various modern art schools, people's design concepts have broken through the limitations of their original occupations, and many designers have created a new style of graphic design with diversified knowledge structure and extraordinary artistic imagination. People's understanding of graphic design, with the development of the times, has moved towards a new consciousness. Under the influence of a series of new media such as computers and digital media (TV, movies, web pages, mobile phones, display screens, etc.). ), a series of new elements related to graphics, such as expression, composition, color, language and feeling, are sprouting quietly, resulting in so-called new forms of expression, such as the interactivity of human images, the uncertainty of images and the continuity of images. The innate pursuit of beauty will also make its form constantly develop and update. I believe that graphics, a fresh and ancient art, will always be full of vitality with the constant changes of modern thinking and the emergence of new media.