In this piece, I will be investigating as to whether a theory or process can help a person’s creativity, or in fact hinder said creativity.
The first approach that I will be looking at will be the ‘Process Theory’ put forward by Shannon and Weaver. This approach suggests that the emphasis on design should be placed firmly with the medium used by the designer. This has been simply summarised by Marshall McLuhan, an academic and a writer, when he said ‘the medium is the message’. This theory suggests that the information source transmits a message via a ‘channel’. The transmitter then encodes this message, which is then received by the receiver, decoded and the original message arrives at the destination.
This is possibly the simplest of the theories and yet this has been found to have its limitations. Shannon and weaver identified 3 tribulations with all matters of communication, this includes visual and auditory. These 3 difficulties have are; Technical (is the system universal? What system should we use to encode/decode?), Semantic (What language should we use? Will we lose some of the message?) and finally Effectiveness (Does the message affect people the way we want?).
The technical problem is essentially based on the target audience and their ability to understand and recognise the message. Some designers have ‘upstream involvement’; this means that they are included in the decisions of technical proportions, including the target audience. The best way of communicating with an audience is selecting a target audience and deciding on the appropriate medium that will coincide with the selected target audience.
The effectiveness issue is established around the motion of feedback from other people. This was ignored in the Shannon and Weaver ‘Process Theory’. Feedback fundamentally allows the person sending the message to determine how effective they are being and then modify their design accordingly. Feedback comes in numerous forms, such as; facial expressions, body language, verbal communication etc. The process of feedback allows the designer to gauge their own effectiveness and the effectiveness of their work. The effectiveness of the piece is also associated to the technical problem, as the target audience has to be appropriate for the effectiveness to be precise. Feedback is measured throughout the design process, from the initial draft to the final release, feedback is gathered to check that the message of the work is being communicated effectively.
The model can now be interpreted into the tangible design process. This now shows that the Client gives the message to the designer whose assignment is mainly semantic, as they are given the role of conveying the intended meaning. It is imperative that the designer does not misunderstand the client’s objectives. From there, the design is given to the media outlet that tests the effectiveness through focus groups and experiments. If this turns out to be successful, the design is sent out to the intended target audience.
There are people that have been given the role of dealing with the technical problems that this theory produces. These are the media planners. It is their job to make sure they know what the client wants on a technical basis. This includes knowing the target audience. The same can be said for the effectiveness problem too, the market researchers have to responsibility of knowing the market and therefore knowing what the target audience wants. Now that we know that, there is less responsibility put on the designer, therefore the ‘Process Theory’ needs to be adapted once again.
This new ‘Process Theory’ diagram shows that the client gives the message to the Media Planners and the Market Researchers who then have to convey the actual meaning given by the client and find out who the target audience is and the medium in which to use. This is then sent on to the designer who uses the specification given by the Media Planners and the Market Researchers to create a design that is to the clients liking. This design is sent onto the media outlet that will again, experiment with the effectiveness with focus groups, if successful, this is then sent out to the specific target audience. The effectiveness, as previously mentioned, will be continuously monitored throughout the design process. This includes after the release of the design. This can be done using sales figures and other reliable statistics.
This theory has not yet considered external factors such as anything that gets added between the client and the audience. This has been referred to as ‘noise’. There are 3 types of noise; Level A, B and C. Level A is an obvious problem (bad workmanship, bad reception), level B is based on the culture and background (ethnicity, economic) level C is down to the effectiveness (if a message is hard to determine). Noise can include many things. For example; too much decoration may be aesthetic noise, however, the reverse is called redundancy. This implies that the decoration may be the redundancy that the visual communication needs.
According to research, about half of English words are unused (or redundant), this interested Shannon and Weaver when sending messages, as they wanted to keep the meaning of the message but use as little words as possible. Principally redundancy adds context and understanding; it aids us, as we would still comprehend a message, even without hearing several words, as we can fill in the blanks. If a design is intended to have a certain effect; the ‘Process Theory’ suggests that this design would need to be highly redundant. However, this does not mean it cannot be creative. The term ‘Redundancy’ refers to the message portrayed by the design rather than the design itself. Therefore a good piece of design would need to have high redundancy (a simple message) but it does not affect the creativity of the piece in any way.
I have considered the possibility of the ‘Process Theory’ being a help or hindrance to a person’s creativity. Overall, after reviewing the process and theory, I think that theory does not hinder the creative process or a person’s creativity. I believe that these theories have been made to support the designer and help them make their designs as suitable as they can be. The Shannon and Weaver ‘Process Theory’ gradually complexes to adapt to the issues in hand, showing that they have acknowledged that the design process and the communications cannot be explained by a very simple model of creativity. I believe that the redundancy and noise sections are particularly important, as I have previously mentioned, “the term ‘Redundancy’ refers to the message portrayed by the design rather than the design itself. Therefore a good piece of design would need to have high redundancy (a simple message) but it does not affect the creativity of the piece in any way.” I feel that the ‘Process Theory’ as a whole is similar to that quote. The theory is designed to help with the thought process behind a design and I think that the overall design is down to the individual and not because of a theory. In fact, many designers refuse to believe that they even work to a particular process.
