A little light reading?
As a visual producer one of the things that's always intrigued me is how to produce the most appropriate images for my clients and myself. One area of study that I stumbled upon in university was the field of Semiotics or Semiology, dependent upon which side of the pond you hail from. Until recently the field has dealt primarily with verbal language but over the last few decades has delved further into the visual arena of how we construct and view images.
In short Semiotics attempts to break down the relationships in signs and how through their juxtaposition we create meaning. Signs in this context don't refer to the roadside variety although after reading some of the material you'll find that they're closely related. Signs rather are a combination of a signifier and a signified as viewed through the eyes of an interpreter to create a message. If all this leaves you scratching your head I've provided a couple of links that might help sort some of it out.
The question is why bother studying it at all. As designers we all strive to get our message across, Semiotics provides a method for creating and understanding how the images we've created pass or fail in the market place.
Semiotics - a nice site that displays the content in nice digestible chunks along with images
Semiotics for Beginners
Semiotic Analysis of Images
Semiotics- a wide range of online articles including visual semiotics and advertising
Semiotics - Saussure
Books
Creating Effective Advertising: Using Semiotics- probably my favorite book on semiotics from the standpoint of how to structure an image for the best effect
Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics
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