Semiotics: Label Swap
This product label swap explores how signifiers work to target two different markets.
How do people perceive a brand through its design and style of packaging?
Through this project, I gained a deeper understanding about how design works in a social and psychological context; uncovering what design means and analysing the effect that swapping the product labels can have on its respective target market.
To demonstrate semiotic analysis, I selected the products Mortein Odourless Fly Killer and Lewis Road Creamery Premium Ice Cream. I wanted to focus on these two products due to their contrasting purposes, target markets and signifiers.
Through this project, I learned how effective design is in targeting a particular market and product purpose. This explains why the strong colours and signifiers used for bug spray appear bizarre and uncanny when applied to a delicious dairy product.
Consumers, including myself, are so adapted to subconsciously linking certain design signifiers with our own ideas and socially constructed meanings, that when these are suddenly disrupted, we are left trying to make sense of the product and what it is trying to communicate.
