On 05/05/2010, at 10:23 AM, Terence Love wrote:
>
> Both these ideas are potentially usable in graphic design if the necessary
> theories were built (i.e. the right combinations of thought 'moves' ). The
> first would be a theory about how layouts could provide the maximum
> robustness to give the right interpretation regardless of variety and noise.
> This is the kind of thing that David Sless's research Institute has been
> doing empirically.
Oh Dear!
This is such a wildly odd way of characterising our research that I'm not even sure where to begin. Perhaps the best way would be to refer the insomniacs amongst you to an essay of mine that discusses the relationship between theory and practice in our research. It has two incarnations. One on our own web site (the full version) and the other on the AIGA web site (an edited version).
As a minor aside, your claim that:
> In graphic communications, the Shannon-Weaver model is commonly applied.
and by juxtaposition imply that this is the case in our own work. How wrong can yo get? We began our work on theory in communication many years ago, and one of the first things we did was to demonstrate that the Shannon and Weaver model was not applicable to human communication, and that there were far better ways of theorising human communication. I won't bore everyone here with a list of references to this work, but if anyone is interested, I'll happily provide some references to this work off-list. Or just browse our web site publications on principles & philosophy.
The urls for the 'theory for practice' essays are:
the full version
http://communication.org.au/publications/principles--amp--philosophy/Theory-for-practice/48,30.html
an edited version
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/theory-for-practice
Warm regards to all
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
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