The theory of Semiotics

To further understand the theory side of photography and design I read David Bate's The Key Concepts of Photography, and his writings on Semiotics.

Semiotics is the process of encoding and decoding; encoding is how the message is produced, and decoding is how the message is read.

An easy way of explaining the basics is that a 'sign' is made up from a 'signifier' and a 'signified'.
The Signifier is the sound of a word which is made up from a series of phonemes (letters);
e.g. t-a-b-l-e, and the signified is the image which our subconscious creates and stores all the information about a certain thing in a mental schema.

A good way of me understanding this was relating it to language learning and my friend Patricia, who when learning English, had to create a whole new set of linguistic semiotics, making new Signifieds for the new words she learns, as if she heard an english word which she didn't already have a signified image in her head for, the word means nothing.
I spoke to Patricia about the process I was learning about and how I was relating it to her, and she immediately knew I was talking about semiotics, and sent me a powerpoint presentation which she was given at the beginning of her graphics course at the start of the year as part of her contextual studies. She also explained semiotics to me in terms of design:

The bridge between the messenger and the person receiving the message has to be invisible and fluid for a design to be successful; good design has to work I the sense that this message comes across immediately.
As a designer, you have the power to shape the meaning of a word if your audience for your design hasn't got any schemas or stored information for that signifier.
To learn how to create effective design you need to learn how the design process works, including layout, composition, type etc, like you have to before you learn a language.

In terms of photography, codes such as lighting, focus, perspective, are all brought together to form a 'successful photograph'.

Lighting
We have predisposed interpretations for lighting; an example given by David Bate is that a street lamp is very moody and dark, and would suit a crime scene for example, and photographers need to understand these codes as it would be inappropriate to light a wedding in this way.

Focus
Focus in photography is used to indicate relevance and importance in an image. A shallow depth of field, and very specific focus is an easy way of drawing the viewers eye and saying 'look at this' before looking at anything else.

I always find it easy to have an infographic alongside my work as I learn and remember better visually so heres one I found on google.